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<dateCreated>Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT</dateCreated>
<dateModified>Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:14:50 GMT</dateModified>
<ownerName>Tom Morris</ownerName>
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<body><outline text="And while we are castigating clueless with a jolly large cluebat, I can't resist &lt;a href=&quot;http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/19/2046249&quot;&gt;this story&lt;/a&gt;. Gotta get off the train in a second, but go and read it. &lt;acronym title=&quot;Oh My Gawd&quot;&gt;OMG&lt;/acronym&gt; TEH INTERNET WILL RUN OUT OF BANDWIDTH!!!1! BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES!" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:14:50 GMT"/><outline text="Speaking of clueless shysters, the &lt;acronym title=&quot;Internet Service Provider&quot;&gt;ISP&lt;/acronym&gt;s are as much a bunch of arsebags as the recording industry, it seems. Imagine if every time you used your mobile phone, the phone company would intercept your calls, listen for any mention of a commercial product and then insert an ad into the middle of your call. Would that not get just a little bit irritating? Well, &lt;a href=&quot;http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/19/2148215&quot;&gt;that's the new business model&lt;/a&gt; - finding new and exciting ways of irritating their customers. I think what we need is a comprehensive connection testing system - basically a big regression test suite so you can see at a glance what horribly shitty things the crooked miscreants who run the network are doing with your packets (filtering, redirecting, ad insertion, DNS mauling, intentional slowdown etc.). And then the government should pass a law saying that if a commercial provider fails the test more than three times a week, the customers are allowed to remotely zap the gonads of the directors. All these problems would go away in a week. Okay, maybe we can't get the latter part of the bargain, but a test suite to protect consumers against connection mangling is a good start." created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:08:49 GMT"/>
<outline text="When not to redesign a service" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT"><outline text="I'm all in favour of good user experience design. Just in case you haven't heard, I also am all in favour of cute puppies, saving the planet and soft French cheeses. Hey, someone's gotta grasp the really controverisal nettles.&#13;" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT"/><outline text="But this morning, I got to the station in a state of barely disturbed slumber only to find that someone had redesigned the ticket vending machine. I have programmed the operation of the machine into my muscle memory - punch the 'London Cheap Day Travelcard' button (or Standard Day if it's before 8.31am - don't ask), then punch 'Young Persons Railcard', then put my card in, enter the number, wait a moment and then collect printed ticket and receipt.&#13;" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT"/><outline text="Seems fairly easy. Only the geniuses who design these things decided that they should change all the menu layouts so that the simple task of buying a train ticket to the largest city in Europe should be made unnecessarily complex.&#13;" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT"/><outline text="Now you have to choose from 'Destinations' or 'Travelcards' on the main screen. Well, I want to go &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; London, and I want &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; Travelcard. It pisses me off at a formal and a practical level, since you might say &quot;I want to go to Brighton, but I'm not sure whether I need a Travelcard or not&quot; - when in fact, Travelcards are only for people going to London. I chose Travelcards, and then I was presented with a list consisting of 'All Zones', and then each zone ticket from 1-6 and combinations of different zones. I bashed in Zone 1. No go. You can't buy a ticket for anything other than All Zones - which makes sense. If you are travelling from outside of London, you are going through all the zones anyway and the price of going into London is rolled into the ticket. Again, don't ask. But, why exactly is the machine offering Travelcards plural when there is actually only one option you can choose?&#13;" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT"/><outline text="Having chosen the only option that works, it then presents me with a highly complex page listing all the different options I might want to add to my ticket. Hey, I haven't got time for this! My train goes in two minutes! Just leave me alone and let me buy the ticket! I guess I should be thankful that it's less complicated than booking a flight. Eventually, I manage to add my railcard to the ticket and get the thing to print with enough time to comically sprint across the bridge.&#13;" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT"/><outline text="Here's my vision of the same procedure. I get to the station, push my credit card into the machine, it then says &quot;Good morning, Mr Morris. The usual, then? That'll be 11.75 then. Enter your PIN. Done. Here's yout ticket. We've e-mailed the reciept to the address we have on file. Enjoy the journey - and, by the way, the Circle Line is right royally fucked, so steer clear.&quot; Okay, it's slightly creepy and Big Brotherly - but it means I don't have to think early in the morning.&#13;" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT"/><outline text="At the very least, reduce the number of options. If you cannot actually buy a particular ticket, why offer it and then, when it's chosen, tell the customer that it's not actually available.&#13;" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT"/><outline text="What's particularly irritating about this is if I get a decision wrong, then I'm breaking the law. Surely, in designing a machine which increases the probability of me cocking up what should otherwise be a simple procedure, the designer of the system is aiding and abetting frustration and failure." created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:57:54 GMT"/></outline><outline text="When not to redesign a service" created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:58:30 GMT"><outline text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://techdirt.com/articles/20080417/032312872.shtml&quot;&gt;Techdirt&lt;/a&gt; reports that NBC Universal wants to force Apple to cripple iTunes so that it sucks so much that nobody will use it, just like all the other attempts to do &lt;acronym title=&quot;Digital Restrictions Management&quot;&gt;DRM&lt;/acronym&gt;. Whoops, I meant to say to enforce digital piracy prevention. You know, because an MP3 you download off the Internet is very easy to distinguish from an MP3 you've ripped from a CD. This kind of shit makes me look forward to the inevitable failure of these dinosaurs." created="Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:58:30 GMT"/></outline></body>
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