The Intermission

This morning, I was thinking about bags — like the kind you keep your laptop and notebooks in, not the kind that form under your eyes. To be totally honest, I think about bags more than normal people, so this wasn’t an unusual train of thought for me. Sometimes I feel like I’m that luggage guy from Joe vs. The Volcano…

Luggage Salesman: Have you thought much about luggage, Mr. Banks?
Joe Banks: No.
Luggage Salesman: It’s the central preoccupation of my life.

[…]

Luggage Salesman: This is our premier steamer trunk, it’s all handmade, only the finest materials. It’s even watertight, tight as a drum. If I had the need, and the wherewithal, Mr. Banks, this would be my trunk of choice.
Joe Banks: I’ll take four of them.
Luggage Salesman: May you live to be a thousand years old, sir.

As I walked from my parking lot into work, I watched a row of people who all had very different bags. One guy had a shiny black leather case with buckles, the second guy had one of those corporate-issue kevlar bags that comes for free with a corporate-issue laptop, and the third guy had some funny bag that was made out of wood.

In fact, I know the third guy from work. He’s a designer, so it makes sense that he would have a unique bag. That got me to thinking that, if I knew the other two guys, their bag choices would probably make sense also. I have a feeling that, generally speaking, peoples’ bags say a lot about them. And doesn’t that make sense? We all know that people judge by sight, and the first thing you’re often seen with is your bag. It says a lot about the kind of person you are and the work you do.

So what kind of bag do I have? I’m glad you asked.

I have a Tom Bihn bag called the ID. (In fact, it’s the same one in the picture on his website: black/steel/wasabi.) This bag is phenomenal. Honestly, I could write a blog post every day about why I like this bag and why his company appeals to me. But to get a sense, I recommend reading his FAQ page.

I’m not sure what having the ID says about me, except perhaps that I care a lot about bag quality! It’s an extremely sturdy bag, cleanly styled, with a moderate number of pockets. It’s big enough for a laptop, change of clothes, a notebook, and accessories — so it’s great for overnight business trips. But it’s small enough to discourage overloading (e.g. bringing more books than you could reasonably use).

So what kind of bag do you have? And what does it say about you?

Sarah got this video from her mom, and I thought it might be fun to share. It’s a woman named Anita Renfroe singing a compilation of mom-type advice to the William Tell Overture. Enjoy!

Mom’s William Tell Overture

Microsoft Announces Office Live Workspace - Like a “SharePoint Lite”

Ars Technica reports on a new “software plus services” offering for Microsoft Office. Office Live Workspace is basically just 250 MB of online storage that’s exceptionally well integrated with Microsoft Office. If you’ve ever shared files that are stored on SharePoint, I expect this will be very similar. This will be more notable if I find out that OLW provides all the nice check in/check out/versioning features of SharePoint. If so, this is a nifty little service.

I’m not quick to praise Microsoft, but SharePoint is a pretty nice piece of software. Well, “nice” might not be the right word. It’s extremely powerful and extremely complex. For a lot of applications, though, it’s an obvious choice over other web portal offerings. I’m hopeful that OLW will be simpler in proportion to is lesser feature set.

Use Coke’s MyCokeRewards to Get a Free Coke

All you have to do is enter a special code and tell them where you ship your free 20 oz. Nice This one comes courtesy of TechBargains.

European Finance Group is Worried about the US Dollar

Understandably, the leader of the G7 (now called G8?) is concerned about the declining value of the dollar. An article in the International Herald Tribune explains his plea to the US to do something to reverse this trend. I’m sure this plea is based on the interests of his and other countries, and less based on his concern for the US. But it still shows that other countries are worried about a recession in the US. And if they’re worried for their own sake, maybe we should be worried for ours.

Alternate Sleep Patterns (or, How I Got Through College)

Do you remember that Seinfeld episode where Kramer learns about how DaVinci didn’t sleep at night, but instead took little naps throughout the day, and then he tries the same technique for himself? I actually used this technique fairly often in college. If I had to stay up late to finish a project, I’d prepare by taking a 30 minute nap and then washing my face. All in all, I’d say it worked pretty well. But, in retrospect, I have no idea how I got by with so little sleep in college.

Well, Wired has a how-to page that describes how to Cheat on the Need to Sleep. Apparently, there are legitimate techniques that are intended for use in situations that require people to be awake for long periods of time. For example, if you’re in a long distance solo boat race. The techniques are similar to what Kramer tried, except a little more sophisticated. Here’s my favorite part of the article:

Scientists say that a successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.

1. Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in.

2. Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you’ll get what’s known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness.

3. Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot.

So what have you found online that’s interesting?

I have a habit on this blog of complaining about something, and then quickly finding out that problem has already been solved (perfect example). Well, I say that’s good! Go on, World, give me less to complain about!

In this case, I recently complained about the state of rich prototyping tools, but then today I heard about new beta software from Adobe called Thermo. I’m fully expecting to love Thermo. Adobe’s article on it is extremely short winded, but it sounds very promising. In essence, it lets you draw a user interface (which I love doing in OmniGraffle and Visio) and then wire it up to act like a real website, without writing code. But the code it generates for you is actually usable! A developer can take the UI you’ve mocked up and turn it into a working Flex website.

If Thermo works as I understand it, then it solves all my major complaints about prototyping tools. I still get to draw my UIs, plus I can add interactivity without fiddling with code, plus I can turn my prototype into a working solution.

Of course, I’ll reserve final judgment for when I get to use it. For example, I’m guessing the rich interactions I have to choose from will be somewhat limited, especially at first. I could see Thermo providing a drag-and-drop interaction, but maybe not something more exotic, like an AJAX window resizing interaction. Version 1 will probably still require some hand coding to get just what you want. Nonetheless, I’m excited! Adobe, I’m ready to be a beta tester!

For a little more information, I also found an article at MacWorld magazine.

Apple is already well known for it’s original Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), which have been deprecated by the new Apple Human Interface Guidelines, tailored for Mac OS X.

Now, Apple has introduced a HIG for the iPhone. The document is primarily about making web applications that look good and work well on the iPhone. I skimmed through it, and I don’t see too much that’s ground breaking. Basically, if you’re an iPhone web designer with much design sense, the HIG will save you a few hours of trial and error. Still, it’s cool that Apple is providing one. It suggests they’re taking iPhone development seriously at a time when they’re clearly cracking down on unapproved 3rd party iPhone applications.

One interesting thing that jumped out at me in the iPhone HIG is this picture of a “Multiple select element”.

I haven’t used the iPhone much, but I’m interpreting this to be something like a drop-down list, but with the ability to select multiple options in the list. If this convention is something we can apply to normal, non-iPhone web pages, then it would be a huge space saver in some instances. Can anyone who has used this widget before comment on its usefulness?

The multiple select element is described in the iPhone HIG here:
iPhone HIG > Metrics, Layout Guidelines, and Tips > Be Aware of Default Control Styles

As a side note, for those interested in iPhone development, you should check out the Interactive Gestures Pattern Library, (the brainchild of Dan Saffer). It’s a wiki designed to collect touch interface design patterns, such as those used in the iPhone. The goal is to create a set of touch interface best practices, so as touch interfaces take off, all our future devices work similarly.

This past week, my company has been promoting web accessibility through a series of seminars that explain its importance for business and some techniques that we can use to make our web sites more accessible. On Friday, I attended a seminar hosted by the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (CABVI), in which they demonstrated how web sites appear to users with poor or no vision.

For those with poor vision…

For users with poor vision, they have applications that can zoom in so close that the icon for one application basically takes up the entire screen. These users work more slowly, since they have to pan around the screen a lot, but they can still use most web sites. Mainly, you just want to provide ALT tags for your pictures, since it’s hard to tell what something is at that close range.

For those who are blind…

For users who are blind, they have applications such as JAWS or Window Eyes, which read the screen for you. This is a totally crappy experience on the web. Really, I can’t exaggerate how bad it was. They guy who demonstrated these tools is an instructor at CABVI, and he seemed about as savvy as you can get with the software — and it was still awful. The software provides a lot of keyboard shortcuts, such as a key to move down to the next heading in the text, or a key to open a list of all the hyperlinks on the page. These keys helped a little bit, but you still have no sense of context for what you’re hearing. The screen reader tells you the name of a link, but you don’t know if you’re in the main nav, somewhere in the body (left column, right column, a call out), or in the footer.

Filling out a form is next to impossible. Screen readers operate by reading the HTML behind the page, not the page you would normally see.  So when the user tabs to a field, it often just says “edit field” without providing the name of the field. Who knows if it wants your name or your phone number or what. Unless the name of the field is directly before the field itself in the HTML, the screen reader doesn’t give you any context. (And although it seems like it would be easy to write HTML with the name of a field next to the field itself, it’s not. A lot of forms are built with ASP.NET or JSP, and it seems like those languages sometimes separate HTML and forms automatically.)

What can be done about it? - Part 1

In the meeting, my friend Ian asked if the people at CABVI have ever heard of Quicksilver. For those who don’t know, Quicksilver is an amazing program for the Mac. It’s like Spotlight, except much much cooler. You can find any file (let’s say a song) and do almost anything with it (e.g. open it with any application, play it in iTunes, show it in Finder, etc.) all with keystrokes. I think this would be especially cool for the blind because it’s very intelligent. For example, you could type “ffox” to find Firefox. The first time you do that, Firefox might not be the first result, but then next time you type “ffox”, Quicksilver is smart enough to know that “ffox” means “Firefox” to you. The developer, Nicholas Jitkoff, explains the theory behind his application in a Google video (warning: Nicholas is brilliant and worth listening to, but he’s not the most engaging speaker). In fact, his philosophy was a partial inspiration for my Google Social application.

So Quicksilver might be a good solution for the visually impaired on the Mac desktop (has anyone tried this before? can anyone confirm it?), but it doesn’t help too much for browsing web sites.

What can be done about it? - Part 2

My initial impression is that the people who develop screen readers are going to be constantly at odds with the legions of people who make web sites. Web developers are always finding new ways to do things, and web designers are interested in whatever technology helps websites look better (even though those advances generally seem to hurt accessibility), but almost nobody is thinking about accessibility. So these people developing screen readers are working as hard as they can to keep up with technologies that weren’t build with them in mind.

That reminded me of an important idea (that nobody talks about anymore) called the Semantic Web. According to the guy who invented the current world wide web, this is the future of the internet. Basically, it’s a new form of markup that allows machines to really understand what’s on the web.

Imagine, if we has semantically accessible web sites, your computer would know if a link is part of the main nav or part of the body. It would know the name of every form field. The computer would know what’s inside a picture. In the short term, this means your screen reader could actually be useful. In the long run, it means you could give your computer a command like “order me a medium pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut” and it would do everything for you (like the Star Trek computer!)

Bottom Line

Those of us who are shaping the direction of the web need to support accessibility. My feeling is that making the web more accessible for the disabled will ultimately make it more accessible for everyone.

I’ve been thinking about picking up some additional skills, specifically around rich prototyping. So I’ve done a little reading, and I have a short list of options for creating Web 2.0 interactions in prototypes. Fair warning up front… I have only questions about these tools, no answers. If you have answers, please share!

First, there’s a new resource called Protoscript that claims it can help me easily add AJAX interactions to my websites. It looks fairly promising, but my immediate question is: why is this only for prototyping? If I’m adding rich interactions to my website, why can’t I go live using the same scripts?

From what I can tell, Protoscript isn’t substantially different from script.aculo.us, except script.aculo.us looks to be better documented.

But my feeling is that, in terms of time commitment, diving into all those javascripts is only one step down from learning Ruby on Rails.

I’ll confess to something up front… I can code, but I don’t like to. There’s nothing worse, for me, than trying to express an interaction I want, but being unable to because I can’t get some dumb script to work. That’s like asking a graphic designer to figure out how to get CSS floats to work at the same time as he’s coming up with a design concept. You don’t want to be struggling with a language that has its own quirks while you’re still working out the ideas in your head. So I know that the instant I have trouble getting a technology to work, I’ll go back to my trusty old copy of Visio, or OmniGraffle, or a paper and pencil.

This leads me to a product from Adobe called the Spry framework. Like Protoscript and script.aculo.us, it’s a javascript library that you can plug into existing web pages. However, it sounds like Adobe has gone to great lengths to simplify the process. They claim that using Spry is akin to using HTML, so you shouldn’t have to learn a lot of new tags. This sounds promising, but I’m still expecting something better. I’m expecting deep integration with Dreamweaver, so I can just click a few buttons and set a few options to add rich interactions to my web pages. When Adobe builds that, I’ll be on board.

In the mean time, I’ll probably stick with low fidelity methods of showing rich interactions (e.g. sketches, verbal descriptions, and a little hand waving). I wish I could find a link to a PDF I read recently. I’m almost positive the article was from Adaptive Path, and specifically from Jesse James Garrett. The document describes three non-rich methods for expressing rich interactions. My favorite of the three methods was just a sequence of static wireframes. So, for example, if you’re showing drag-and-drop behavior, you would have three frames — one for the object being grabbed, one to show it being dragged, and one to show the object dropped. I can wireframe that up in a minute, rather than taking an hour to fiddle with scripts.

But, admittedly, non-rich prototypes of rich applications fall a little flat when it comes time to demo. Which is why I’m still on the lookout for a tool that will fit my needs. If Adobe doesn’t rush to fill this need with Dreamweaver, I’m sure Microsoft will with Expression Web. (Hint, hint, Adobe!)

I’d like to introduce you all to my puppy, Keiko (pronounced kay-co). Sarah and I are pretty sure she’s some kind of Border Collie mix, although there’s a chance she is a McNab, which is specific kind of Border Collie mix. She has loads of energy and a great personality. Here are some fun pictures we took recently:

Keiko is my little pal.

Keiko has me by the neck.

Do you see the family resemblance?

Recently, I’ve observed some interesting customer service behavior from Apple and Google that suggests an approach to customer service I would not have thought about on my own. Consider these two cases:

Case #1 - Google Cancels Its Video Download Service

On August 10, I received an email from Google informing me that they decided to cancel their video download service. Since Google’s video download service works by streaming videos to you every time you watch them (unlike Apple’s iTunes store, in which you download videos permanently), canceling the service means the videos I bought will not be playable.

To make up for canceling the service, Google gave me (and everyone else who bought videos) a credit for the cost of the videos that I can use at any Google Checkout store. To me, this seemed okay. I buy a lot of stuff online, so I was pretty sure I could find something I wanted. Even so, I never feel great about the “store credit” approach to refunds.

Lo and behold, on August 21 (11 days later), Google sent me another email saying that they’re sorry for only giving store credit, and they’re now also refunding everyone’s money. This made me very happy! I got $15 to spend online, and I got $15 refunded to my credit card. (And, to be honest, I never watched those videos much anyway.)

Case #2 - Apple Reduces the iPhone Price by $200

Only 2 months after the release of the iPhone, Apple slashed the price of the 8 GB model from $599 to $399, ostensibly to make the phone more appealing for holiday buyers. At the time, Steve Jobs basically just said “too bad” to all the early adopters. The technology world changes quickly, and prices change too. There was an outcry of angry bloggers.

A day later, Apply announced that it would be offering a $100 Apple Store credit to everyone who bought an iPhone before the price drop. Generally, people still aren’t thrilled, but they feel better.

Conclusion

Perhaps the lesson to be drawn from all this is that, in customer service, it’s sometimes better to disappoint, and then over-compensate, than it is to simply satisfy the customer. Satisfactory service is good, but it generally goes unnoticed. In contrast, bad service that gets quickly remedied is very memorable. Honestly, Google did a much better job of this than Apple did. The disappointment (store credit) was more mild and the over-compensation (full refund) was much more satisfying.

But consider what would have happened if Apple announced the $100 rebate at the same time as the price drop. There still would have been an outcry of unfairness, but Apple would have had nothing left to offer. By letting people complain first, and then satisfying them, they were able to squelch most of the bad sentiment.

In college, I had a marketing professor with a background in hotel guest services (I think he worked with Four Seasons). I remember him once explaining that the reason Four Seasons has a great reputation is not necessarily for the service, although it’s good, but for the way they over-compensate when there is a problem. If you do complain about the quality of the room or the service, they have a whole system that springs into place to shower you with special services and treatment intended to overcome any bad impression you might have gotten.

I’m going to try to remember this “disappoint then over-compensate” technique. Seems like it might be useful. I don’t suppose this is already documented somewhere in research on customer service? Anyone know for sure?

A friend who recently read my post about the Nokia iPhone knockoff referred me to another blog where Gong Szeto explains why he likes knockoffs. Gong is talking primarily about the fashion industry, but most of his points could apply to any industry. Basically, he argues that copying is good for innovation because it forces designers to keep innovating. Also, he says it encourages what I will call “deep innovation” — inventing new fabrics, new distribution methods, new categories of clothing.

I can’t disagree with much of what Gong says, but I still disagree with his ultimate conclusion. Although its true that copy cats force established companies to keep innovating, it still feels very wrong to think that the company who spends millions of dollars in R&D for a new product can ultimately lose to a company who just clones that innovation. Of course the copy cat can sell their product for less… they didn’t have to do any of the hard thinking! And by buying from the copy cat, you’re rewarding their laziness.

Think of it this way… you either believe that companies who innovate should be rewarded with success, or you believe that companies who innovate should ultimately be killed by those who are good at copying. Personally, I’m willing to pay a little more to reward a company for innovating, and to encourage them to keep going. Though I’m willing to admit that probably puts me in the minority.

I don’t have the knowledge to do a thorough history lesson on this subject, but I know that people have made basically this same complaint against Microsoft for years. Microsoft finds something successful (e.g. graphical user interfaces, desktop publishing tools, web browsers) and creates a cheap copy. The cheap copy undercuts their competition and forces them out of the market. Then that market stagnates.

Although it sounds good and Darwinian to say that the true innovators will always survive, that’s not really true if they can’t make money from their innovations. But I will agree with Gong that I don’t care for those protracted copyright battles. Companies shouldn’t need the government to protect their intellectual property. Consumers should just buy goods from the companies they want to support.