Month: May 2008

“Whatever you do, don’t tell me the result, I don’t want to know”.

Thus goes the refrain.

The refrain of people with a new problem, a problem that was nascent for maybe thirty years, but one that’s been maturing for nearly a decade, and is full-blown now.

A problem caused by time-shifting.

More and more people record things for viewing later; many of the things recorded are contests based around elimination: knockout tournaments, Cup finals, boxing matches, Come Dancing, X Factor, Who’s Going to be <Pick One from : Maria, Joseph, Oliver, Nancy,> the list goes on.

And once they’ve done the time-shifting, they’re trapped. They don’t want to know what happened. Not until they get the time to watch what they recorded.

They don’t want to know what happened.

Now there’s a real challenge for news personalisation. Letting me pick the things I specifically don’t want to know about. So when I get my paper online, I should be able to pick the things I want to hear about (my preferences), the things that my community’s doing (my news feed, as it were), the things my community recommends for me (actively and onymously as well as through profiling and collaborative filtering).

Filtered, of course. By my choice of filter. Shaken, not stirred.

And explicitly not containing things I didn’t want to read about.

Possible? Likely? It’s happening now.

So what next? I can just see it. In ten years time they’re going to be saying: Don’t tell me who won the election. Don’t tell me who won the war. I might want to go back and watch it.

I’ve just got to Shanghai for the first time, and despite working through what passed for night in China and in the UK, I found myself bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and full of beans. Having been ensconced in design strategy papers for a good few days, I think I’m looking at everything through “design” eyes, and trying to make sure I’m not jaundiced in any way.

The first thing that made me feel good was the socket (or what I used to call a “plug-point” in India). At the hotel here, they have sockets that look like this:

Wikipedia (which is where I got that illustration, by the way) tells me that this is a Type G (British 3 Pin) plug and socket, conforming to BS 1363. Which means I didn’t need an adaptor for once, a nice feeling. Strange, that I have to come all the way to China to get that feeling. Incidentally, just take a look at this map, available from Wikimedia Commons:

What the map does is set out the plug type in use in a given region, and it’s interesting to see some sort of colonial history laid out in the process. We’d probably get something similar if we looked at rail gauges, I guess, and I can’t help worrying that there’s an internet variant just waiting for us, a 21st century map of standards and protocols that reflect colonies of lock-in.

Enough worrying. There are so many things in this hotel room that make me feel good, that make me realise that someone’s applied thought to the design of the room, that someone’s actually considered what the customer may want.

There’s the ethernet point just where you would look for one, built subtly into the desk and covered with a little removable leather pad; there’s the cups and saucers and tea bags loudly signalling the existence of a kettle somewhere, and the kettle turns out to be where you would look for it, and the socket turns out to be where you would look for it. And the tea bags included a selection of green tea and jasmine. Something I guess you would expect in China, like the torch thoughtfully placed in the wardrobe almost at eye level.

Lots of little things that show that someone thought about what people want. My favourite is the wardrobe itself. It’s in the usual place, to my right as I enter the room, along the passageway to the area where the bed and desk are. What makes it special is what they’ve done to the back of the wardrobe. Sliding doors, accessible from the bathroom. Now that is useful. And simple.

Putting things where people would intuitively look for things. Looking at, and catering for,  all possible uses when designing something. Using open standards wherever possible. Building things with the customer in mind, actually thinking about how the customer would use something. Precisely how. Thinking about where a customer’s eye would fall, what his reach would be.

When we design systems, there is much we can learn from people who take customer service seriously. Like the hotel in Shanghai I happen to be staying in.

Ever since Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood announced StackOverflow, almost counterintuitively, I’ve spent more time reading their individual blogs.

I really enjoyed Jeff’s latest, Crash Responsibly. [Even though it is not the headline I want to see just before boarding a transatlantic flight.]

I love the four “rules” Jeff puts forward, particularly the first one: “It is not the user’s job to tell you about errors in your software”. Even in perennial beta environments, what we have to provide is software that works, even if the functionality is very limited. Providing additional functionality incrementally is fine and dandy, everyone understands that. But the software has to work in the first place.

As I grow older, I find that what I need is less “something for the weekend” and more “something to help me with the week ahead”. So I’m always looking for things that will make me smile, laugh, guffaw:

LOLManuscripts. Definitely in the guffaw class. Here are a couple of examples:

What a wonderful idea. Now the pedants amongst us will argue that these are not manuscripts, but I have no problem accepting the author’s “excuse”:

(P.S. I know they aren’t manuscripts…but LOL Early Modern Printed Materials didn’t have the same ring to it. LOLNomenclature! Let it go.)

I also loved the Shakespearian quote: [And yes, it’s accurate]

The large Achilles, on his press’d bed lolling, / From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause; / Cries ‘Excellent!'”

To me it’s a brilliant, if trivial, example of the sheer possibilities of modern digital culture, mashing LOLCats with old books. Something that remains possible despite the stupidities of modern intellectual property regimes. [I guess we’re not going to see LOLH***yP***er soon. Maybe someone should do it. We could all fall asleep reading the court records…..]

Update: I couldn’t resist adding these three illustrations, if they don’t tempt you into going there nothing else will:

Thank you Sarah Redmond. Fantastic stuff!