Jun 8, 2011
User Experience is important: Reason #65398
I have a last-minute trip to New York this week. Because this is the season, apparently, of $750 hotel rooms when you book them late, I decided instead to save some money and make it an up-and-back trip in one day.
Which means I wanted an early train. So I searched for morning trains on the Amtrak site:
…and found that the earliest train possible got me from Baltimore to NYC by 8:44:
I thought I’d remembered earlier trains, but guessed that they may have been sold out, given that I was traveling at the last minute (UX note: See how quickly I assume I’m doing something wrong, instead of the site). But this morning, as I pondered the mad 20-block dash to get to my meeting a half-hour late, it struck me as impossibly odd. So I searched other dates into the summer, all with the same result of no trains before 6 a.m.
I downloaded the official Amtrak Northeast Corridor timetable (updated March 2011) and it confirmed my suspicions: there were earlier trains. So why weren’t they showing up on the Amtrak site when I was looking, I thought, at all morning trains?
I called to talk to a ticket agent. While I was on hold, I did what all flummoxed web users do: I clicked on random things. Finally, I hit on the secret combination: Instead of selecting “morning,” I should select a particular hour in the morning. 5 a.m., for example.
When I finally got the friendly Amtrak web support person on the phone, I asked her why the choice of “morning” did not, in fact, display all of the morning trains. She didn’t know, but her guess (and I think she’s correct) was that the site designer assumed that most people meant 6 a.m. when they said morning.
Assumed.
Most people.
Dangerous words.
Anyway, I got what I wanted, I suppose. And now I’ll be setting the alarm for 4:30 a.m., instead of the comparatively luxurious 5:30 a.m.
Apr 5, 2011
“What problem are you solving?”
This is a link to the most useful post I’ve read in ages.
Ostensibly, it’s about how Mark Wahlberg “cut some corners” to make his magnificent “The Fighter” movie. But it’s really about how to focus on what you’re trying to accomplish, and whether the methods to get there you’ve been told are the right ones really are the right ones.
It ties in with another great question to ask: What problem are you solving? The goal was to make the fights seem real. Not to make them look good. To seem real. Focusing on that changes the requirements.
And that leads to another good question you should always come back to: Is there an easier way? The HBO fight crew is made up of experts at filming fights. They don’t need to be taught how to make it look real. They’re used to capturing a fight in one take — and that’s without knowing what will happen beforehand. Shooting this way is a piece of cake for them.
And maybe the most important question: What’s the opportunity cost? The whole film had a shooting calendar of 33 days. Filming it the HBO way means the movie gets made. A longer, pricier approach might have doomed the film and prevented it from ever being shot in the first place.
Most of us aren’t filming fight scenes. But the way Wahlberg and his team challenged assumptions and questioned traditional “best practices” is something that can be applied to all kinds of arenas, not just boxing ones.
Me, elsewhere