I’m not a natural runner, but I’ve gotten in the habit of jogging 2-3 miles around the track three times a week. It keeps me healthy and — once I got over the initial pain — it has become addictive.
After a mile or two, my body wants to call it quits. I start shuffling my legs instead of taking long, efficient strides. My head sags. My feet begin flailing outward. My breathing becomes irregular and my back hunches up.
No, I’m not having a stroke — I’m just tired.
When my body is exhausted, I’ve found that I need to pay special attention to my form. Too easily, my tired body becomes a clumsy body. Clumsy movements are inefficient, and only tire me out more quickly.
In the next few weeks, Idea Works will be adding a new employee to the team. As applications have been rolling in, I’ve been amazed at some of the mistakes people make which instantly decrease their chances of landing an interview.
Unfortunately, these blunders distract me from absorbing the information that matters — qualifications, experience and passion for the position.
Next time you email your resume to a prospective employer, make sure to avoid these mistakes:
As a designer in search of the perfect user experience, I’m used to employing quantitative measures to capture user patterns and preferences. Information about popular links, click-thru rates, average time spent on particular pages, traffic sources and browser specs (usually collected by Google Analytics) give me a sense of what our users are doing and how they do it.
Last week, I got a chance to journey beyond my computer screen and help lead a focus group testing a project in development, the Peer Advising System (PAS). After some brief instructions, our potential users were let loose to explore the application. And I got to watch.
I called a 1-800 number the other day to activate my new Discover card, and instantly wondered why they needed to transfer me to a live operator. In the past, I’ve just punched in a few numbers on my phone, and in a few seconds had a new, activated card.
After a short wait, I was greeted by a friendly female voice from a call center in Arizona. She commented on my new card design (lazy sunset….a “beautiful choice”) and asked if my wife needed a new card. So far, so good.
Very quickly, it went downhill:
Her: “Would you like to add account protection for only $2 a month?”
Me: “No, thanks.”
Her: “Are you sure? It’s only pennies a day.”
Me: “Yes, I’m sure (I can do the math).” (repeat 3 times)
Her: “Ah, okay then. I’ll go ahead and sign you up for card protection.”
Me: “No. I don’t want that either.”
Her: “Well, many people use it. It’s a good deal, so I’ll go ahead and get you enrolled.”
Me: “No, no. I really don’t want that….” (repeat 4 times)
Without exaggerating, I had to say “no” about eight times. Argggg!
I understand that I am a customer and Discover is trying to serve me as best they can by offering me new services.
But there is a fine line between serving a customer and annoying him.
By using their card, I’ve given them permission to offer me upgrades. But I haven’t given them permission to bother me after I’ve clearly declined. Service is about providing relevant information at the appropriate time. Relevant. Appropriate. An example of an inappropriate time would be, say, after I just declined your offer four times.
Everyone has customers. Yours might be students, teachers, or another business. Where are you on the service spectrum? Not providing enough help and information? Or being annoyingly persistent?
It’s a fine-line, but a line worth paying attention to.
Shopping at the mall this Christmas was a horrible experience. I circled the lot three times before finding a parking space, inventory was a bit picked over, and checkout lines wrapped halfway around the store.
All I could think was: Man, I love shopping on the internet. Not only do I avoid the aforementioned hazards; I gain incredible shopping tools. I admit it. I’m a product review junkie. Product reviews, user ratings, price comparisons…it almost makes shopping enjoyable.
But this year something started nagging at me about product reviews. Are they trustworthy? Do the customers whose reviews I read have the same priorities as me? More to the point, what if the people rating these products are woefully ignorant?
For example, I have a friend who recently bought a new TV. I asked him how he liked it. “It’s got an awesome remote! See how it lights up?”
The remote. Really? Are these the type of people leaving reviews of big ticket items on the websites I browse? Maybe the guy who recommended my hiking boots just liked the laces, and the woman who raved about the digital camera I just bought liked the pretty blue color.
There are a few product review sites attempting to mitigate this challenge. CNET reviews pair their user ratings with a “CNET editors’ rating” to give you an expert opinion.
ConsumerSearch claims to “analyze…reviews and sources and rank them according to how credible they are, based on specific criteria we have developed for this purpose.” In short, they tend to favor professional reviews, and consider only aggregate data of consumer reviews. Buzzillions, on the other hand, emphasizes customer reviews. They categorize reviewers into meaningful groups to help the consumer align themselves with a certain type of reviewer. For example, for shoe reviews I can view reviews by people that are comfort-oriented, stylish or conservative.
A step in the right direction, but I’m not totally convinced that the product reviews I see are accurate. But I’ll live with it. In the same way I trust contributors to Wikipedia about the Island of California or a lamp-post with a name, I’ll have to trust Epinions reviewers to recommend the best breadmaker.
After all, it’s much better than going to the mall.
Pownce closed down this week, and they definitely left the party with their integrity intact. They announced their closure a few weeks ago on their blog and in an email sent out to members. I haven’t been an active user of Pownce in a long time (it’s not my fault they didn’t make it…) but this part of the email caught my eye:
To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can
save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.
Pownce clearly cares about their users, at least enough to add a new feature after they knew they were shutting down. Maybe I’m making too big a deal of it, but that alone is enough of a reason to switch from Twitter to Pownce. Well, except that it’s too late now.
Is anyone else annoyed by the ostentatious graphics on the news?
Election night was the worst. In an effort to be super-informative, most networks succeeded only in assaulting my eyes with distracting, overbearing graphics for three hours.
The result? I actually watched Katie Couric on election night.
Now, I’m no Katie Couric fan, but I’ve got to say that CBS sported the least annoying graphics of the night. In fact, they were downright classy.
And, for the most part, their charts were minimalist and clean. They avoided the bright, “PowerPoint 95″ color scheme. And they didn’t have 18 graphs on the screen at one time.
Compare this to NBC:
Normally, I like NBC’s look. But, wow, what was going on tonight?
What was the deal with the virtual hologram images in the horribly rendered pillar-room? It made me feel like I was in a bad role playing game.
Last, let’s look at Fox:
Well, Fox is Fox. Still using five different fonts per screen.
I just don’t get why networks think that an excess of brightly colored charts is a good thing. For me, visual aids count for a lot, especially for something as important as the news. Unfortunately, things seem to be getting worse rather than better…
As a John Lennon fan and a sucker for interesting animation, I loved this short animated film “I Met the Walrus“. It’s an Academy Award Nominee for Best Animated Short Film and combines the artistic talents of director Josh Raskin with pen work from James Braithwaite and digital illustration by Alex Kurina.
A perfect example of how a great director can piece together different types of media to create an engaging experience. Kudos. I hope they win the Academy Award.
As a designer in search of the perfect user experience, I’m used to employing quantitative measures to capture user patterns and preferences. Information about popular links, click-thru rates, average time spent on particular pages, traffic sources and browser specs (usually collected by Google Analytics) give me a sense of what our users are doing and how they do it.
