I’ve been on the road for a few weeks, it seems. Now I’m in Banff for a couple more days, then Calgary, then home. Haven’t been blogging much because of the travel, but add to that the death (gasp) of my beloved laptop, and the fritziness of my digital camera, I’m being forced to simply have experiences and not document experiences.

This is enormously troubling

This type of thing seems disturbingly common nowadays: I am preparing to book a hotel for an upcoming conference. The hotel is part of a chain I’ve never stayed at before, so I decide to see if they’ve got some sort of affiliate program or bonus/loyalty/mileage thing, before I book.

I sign up for the program and get my number about 12 hours later. I tried to book online but because I was looking for a conference rate (without a code) I gave up and ended up calling.

And they don’t show my loyalty number.

I’m looking at the auto-generated email, with the number in bold text. And we try several times. They try my name, everything. And give up. Even though I have the “receipt” on hand. No dice.

So the convenience factor – not having to read out every single piece of contact info I’ve already entered, not having to specify room preferences that I’ve already entered, all gone.

They pointed me to the service number for the loyalty program, and the person I speak with explains it may take 7 to 10 days for a newly issued number to be available to the rest of the hotel systems (such as reservations). He was able to quickly put the number into my reservation for credit, and both people I spoke to were incredibly helpful and genuine (besides being forced to read some clunky scripts), so this isn’t really a complaint about bad service, but really an eyebrow-raised in amazement over bad design.

Shouldn’t a requirement of the system they design to create and issue the loyalty numbers be rapid integration with the reservation system? Isn’t a likely use scenario going to be booking of a reservation very quickly after creating a new account? IT systems in silos is scary for what it prevents.

I guess the band-aid would have been to explain this limitation in their “welcome” email but that might have been too big a peek behind the curtain. They did inform me it would take 48 hours to issue the new account at the beginning of all this (although that also seems silly, what are they doing, checking my references?)…

In general, poor interoperability is a major challenge to creating a good user experience. And this example seems highly typical.

Recently nytimes.com rolled out an integration of their home delivery accounts and web-content accounts (I think to help sell their premium access service), but they did it in a terribly clumsy and confusing way, leading to service calls to agents who had no information (I was told, after a lot of vague language like “when you go out of the system you have to come back and and when it asks for your account you enter your number” to wait 24 hours and try again) and no interest in helping (“this is all the information we have. We can only read this out to you; that’s all we can do.”)…a disaster, as far as I am concerned. Maybe it’ll be better now, but the NYT hurt their brand pretty badly, at least in my case.

Tags: design, hotel, interoperability, loyalty, New York Times, NYT, nytimes.com, service, systems, user exerience

bplusd is Jess McMullin’s new blog on the intersection of business and design. Nice to see the conversation gaining momentum from a variety of fronts (and countries). It’s starting to feel like a real community, and pretty quickly (compared to the years I’ve felt out in the cold as “an ethnographer”).

Tags: business, design, design thinking, innovation, Jess McMullin

For the fourth year running, I’ll be speaking at About, With, and For, organized by the ID in Chicago. This year it’s October 28-29, at Navy Pier. The details of my talk aren’t up, but I’ll be doing a workshop about the relationships between improv and ethnography and innovation. It’s similar to the tutorial I’m teaching at DUX in early November. AWF is always a great event, and the first set of speakers they’ve announced looks pretty good; check it out!

Tags: About With and For, About With For, AWF, conference, ethnography, IIT, improv, innovation, institute of design, presentation

Read the story for an obviously simplified version of how Kodak had the technology but didn’t enter the market. Innovation, as always, presents significant cultural challenges.

More digital camera history here.

Tags: camera, digicam, digital, digital camera, digital photography, history, innovation, kodak, photography, prototype, steven sasson

Strange New Products blogged about ScatShovel, yet another pooper scooper. But what is really amusing are the brand extensions on their site. The obvious ScatRake, and ScatBags, and the not-so-obvious ScatManual

written primarily to assist young people ages 10 – 15 in establishing and building a dog waste removal business. Although it is geared to a specific age group, all of the information in this manual and material included in its appendices can be used by anyone regardless of age to start a profitable business. This manual is a compilation of lessons learned through trial and error by two young entrepreneurs over the course of three years. The ScatManual describes a business model that works. The manual describes all aspects of the business model, from marketing to accounting and all the important details in between. Click here to view the Table of Contents.

With a minimum investment in time and money, your young entrepreneur will learn valuable lessons that go beyond the money he/she will earn.

Right. Because there’s a real demand for such a service, and poop cleanup is really the kind of thing that young people are looking to go into (when the paper routes, mall jobs, fast food, babysitting and lawn mowing gigs are all taken), but are stymied by the lack of information available.

I guess if Zingerman’s deli can spin off ZingTrain, the scat people can do it too? At least they didn’t call it ScatTrain.

Tags: business, cleanup, dog, dog poo, dog poop, dog shit, poo, poop, removal, shit, Zingerman’s, Zingtrain

Popcorn hacks is a posting to one of the most popular blogs out there, kottke.org

If you’ve got a bag of Orville Redenbacher’s Butter microwave popcorn on hand but no microwave, there’s no need to panic. Just tear open the bag and pour the kernels into a large pot. Put over medium heat. The kernels will be in a big clump of congealed butter-like substance…break them apart with a wooden spoon as the pot heats up and the ‘butter’ starts to melt.

When the ‘butter’ is melted, stir the kernels around with the spoon so they don’t burn. At this point, you may want to don some protective eyewear so that when the first kernels pop, you don’t get hot butter-like liquid in your eye; I just put on my sunglasses. When the first kernels pop, cover the pot and shake it across the burner so the kernels don’t burn. Stop periodically to listen for pops and to exclaim, ‘I can’t believe this is actually working!’ When popping stops, quickly remove from the heat, and get it out of that hot pot into a bowl. Eat. As good as microwaved.

This is just everything that irks me about these over-the-top popular blogs; there’s no sense of quality control. What a moronic post, on the level of “I called my best friend last nite but he had to go too bad” but written with slightly higher level of precision. Why is everything a “hack” nowadays? This isn’t a hack, it’s just stupid. Why would you ever want to do this? I guess this guy did a post recently about how to clean up spilled cola, too. At least that wasn’t a hack.

Update: I neglected to mention that this guy made history by claiming that blogging was now his job, and asking his readers to support him. I did not, but if I had, I would certainly be looking for a refund. Great riff on this is here. Let me suggest that he’s probably taking product placement money from the Orville Redenbacher people.

Update2: I posted my product placement theory to MetaFilter. See if there’s any discussion (or if it gets canceled).

Update3: Canceled. Maybe that took about 20 minutes? Nice.

Tags: blogging, hack, kottke, popcorn

Pretty good Wired interview with Jon Stewart and Ben Karlin. Wired, being Wired, is pushing these guys to say brilliant stuff about the future, about technology, business models being revamped, distribution channels being introduced, utter changes in how we watch and how they make. But Stewart and Karlin continue to resist, falling back on their stance of hey, we just make a show; we’re show makers. But they get them to give up this quote

Karlin: From a creative standpoint, there used to be this idea that network was the holy grail and that cable was where people went who couldn’t work on network. That’s the old model. And now that there’s just as many quality shows coming out of cable – on FX there’s good shows, Comedy Central has good shows, HBO � I think the audience is going to cease noticing, “Oh, that’s got the NBC logo on it.”
Stewart: It’s the idea that the content is no longer valued by where it stands, in what neighborhood it lives. What matters is what you put out there, not its location. I think that’s what people have come to learn from the Internet – it doesn’t matter where it comes from. If it’s good, it’s good. Just because our channel is after HGTV and right before Spanish people playing soccer doesn’t make it any less valuable than something that exists in the single digits on your television set.

which just struck me as untrue. I think the networks (and by that I mean cable networks as well as network networks) have built pretty strong brands that attract people. HBO, especially. On one hand, I guess they’re saying that the network (ABC CBS NBC) is not the purest endorser of quality any more, that’s absolutely true, but the statement the location of the content has no meaning and the show is judged on its own merit, well, that doesn’t seem true at all.

Reminds me of some recent ethnographic work with consumers about food and groceries. Without revealing anything confidential, I think I can mention that I was surprised by how strong the grocery store brand was in conveying positive meaning about food choices. Far stronger than any indvidual food producer brand. Perhaps an analogy for HBO (the place you get Sopranos and Six Feet Under). Perhaps not.

Tags: ben karlin, brand, cable, daily show, grocery, HBO, jon stewart, network, shopping, tv, wired

Reminiscent of the Y2K technology problems, some older gas pumps don’t allow prices to be set about $3.00. Station owners are turning away customers or have state permission to display only the cents portion of the price.

Tags: display, gallon, gas, gas price, pump

I just got a brand-new elliptical trainer, the Lifefitness X1. It’s in the bedroom and although it’s the smallest model they make, it’s absolutely huge. There’s this giant metal techno design thing sitting next to the bed.

Every time I walk into the bedroom I’m reminded of some memorable sci-fi movie apparati.

Tags: alien, design, elliptical, exercise, home, lifefitness, matrix, robot

I’ll be the keynote speaker at Easy6, India’s conference on software usability. Held in Bangalore, India, in January, 2006. Here’s the page for Easy5.

Tags: bangalore, easy5, easy6, ethnography, india, keynote, presentation, usability