The Chris Motes Blog

My Dog's New Toy

Dollar
Originally uploaded by cmotes Carla chewed this up today.

Not sure how much it was worth.

Bad Design Illustrated

Here is a transcript of a recent IM conversation I had with a co-worker.

It's a great example of the impact of bad design.

'chris' (10/9/2008 3:17:48 PM): So in Empire Strikes Back, on Hoth, the rebels had the Ion Cannon thing which disabled some Star Destroyers so transports could get away. Do you understand why the rebels just didn't fire the ion cannon at the imperial walkers (ATATs)? Could have saved lots of trouble it seems.

'Kathryn' (10/9/2008 3:18:50 PM): Because the walkers were to far away

'chris' (10/9/2008 3:19:10 PM): so ion cannon could fire into outer space
'chris' (10/9/2008 3:19:18 PM): but not couple miles away on ground

'Kathryn' (10/9/2008 3:19:34 PM): Not with the positioning of the cannon.

'chris motes' (10/9/2008 3:19:48 PM): Poorly designed cannon

Lesson in a down economy

In the 2000 downturn, when I was in Austin, TX: Don't keep all your eggs in one basket

In the 2008 downturn, where I am in San Francisco, CA: Don't keep all your free-range eggs in one handmade basket bought from etsy.com.

Incentive To Shoot Yourself?

From CNN.COM: Fannie Mae forgives loan for woman who shot herself.

A woman shot herself twice as sherrifs came to evict her from her house which was in foreclosure.

Might set a bad example for other people to shoot themselves to get their loan forgiven.

Vending Machine Wonkiness

Vending Machine Wonkiness
Originally uploaded by cmotes

Interaction designers - Pay attention!

This is a picture of the control panel of a vending machine at my work. There are letters and numbers. Every piece of candy in the machine has a unique letter number combination (A1, G9, etc.). There are 40 pieces of candy in the machine, thus you need 40 unique pairs of letters and numbers to be able to select all the candy.

In this interaction, users scan the machine then zero in on the candy they want. They read the candy ID then head over to the machine to type in that ID with the fear that a mistake will get them stuck with some dreadful candy. Seeing that there are letters and numbers, the mind thinks that this is a 2-step interaction - type the letter... then the number.

But wait - in this vending machine they've assigned two digit numbers to some of the candies! So that's a three character/digit ID in some cases!

So what do you think happens when a user sees the beloved cashews with ID D10? They type in D-1-0. But because there is a "10" on this panel, user is stuck with nougat-filled Snickers. Not really satisfying, and not what user wanted.

The designers meant well - they wanted each row to start with a unique identifier. And they wanted candies to be numbered sequentially in each row. But that's not how users interact with the machine. We're not counting rows from the top, or counting how many candies from the left our beloved 100 Grand is. We're looking at the candy ID code. And including double digit numbers is seriously confusing.

Suggestion: Use numbers for the rows and letters for the columns (1A, 8Q, etc.).

I feel better now. But I hate Snickers.