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moo.com is now my friend

Published at 15 May, 2008 in Usability. 4 Comments

After the turbulence of the last couple of days - where I was disappointed at a moo.com interaction failure and their support response, I am very pleased to announce that moo.com is now my friend.

One of their supervisory folk got back to me and apologised, advised of a refund of what Donna’s promotion code would have given me, and offered me another promotion code for my next order.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Honest, responsive, open, and wanting me to be able to recommend them to others, as they had been recommended to me.

Thank you, moo.com.

moo.com: How to fail worse

Published at 14 May, 2008 in Epic FAIL. 2 Comments

UPDATE: This issue has now been resolved - please see moo.com is now my friend.

Yes Internets, it is possible to compound an error.

It is easy to do - and here is how:

Infer that the customer is stealing from you (see moo.com: FAIL), then
Deny that it is a problem.

To be fair, I contacted moo.com support and told them about my issue.

They got back to me just now:

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for getting in touch with the MOO Team.

Can you tell me where you got your code and what it entitles you to?

You need to make sure you put your code into the promo field on the payment page and click go before submitting the order. You will then see either a green tick which means the code will successfully deduct the discount off a pack. Or you will see a message saying the code is not right.

We can’t deduct the discount after the order is placed, but please try again and let me know if you still have problems.

Please feel free to contact us again if you have further questions.

Best Regards,

Miss Fauzia Hussein
Service Agent - MOO

I replied:

Fauzia,

thank you for your reply.

I got my code from my partner Donna Maurer - it said to give it to a friend so she did. It was supposed to entitle me to a 15% discount as a newcomer to moo.com. Instead, it told me that I was not a newcomer to moo, which does not make sense because I created my account then and there.

I did put my code in the promo field and clicked go before proceeding - if you had read the blog post, you would have seen the order in which the error occured.

It figures that you will not retrospectively apply the discount. If you wanted to encourage people to refer others to your site, you would probably have tested the system that tells newcomers that the newcomers discount does not apply and have sorted out the issue by now.

I am not sure that missing the point and inferring that I didn’t follow the correct process is helpful. Please watch for the follow-on blog article on humaneia.com.

Best regards, Andrew Boyd

My message asked them to look at the blog posting for screen captured evidence that their system was flawed. I sent them the URL of the post.

I can but repeat my comment to Susan:

In effect, we’re talking about a $4.50 or so discount - it is not the money I am worried about, it is the fundamental cluelessness of yet another hip online retailer that has all the functional integrity of a beached jellyfish - 20 years of New Marketing, the world has changed, the consumer is your friend not your sheep to be shorn, blah blah blah, and we have a company that punishes referrals with a message that comes across as “I’m sorry, you are obviously trying to steal from us, please go away”. It beggars belief.

It does, indeed, beggar belief.

moo.com: FAIL

Published at 13 May, 2008 in Epic FAIL. 4 Comments

UPDATE: This issue has now been resolved - please see moo.com is now my friend.

Donna passed a moo.com discount voucher on to me - it came with her first set of MooCards in the mail today. It was intended to be given to a friend - so she gave it to me.

Starry eyed and full of gratitude I went to the moo.com site and designed my cards - then duly paid for them and entered the promotion code. This is what I saw:

That error message again:

Just in case you can’t read the graphic, it says “Hello! It seems you’ve used moo.com before. It’s lovely to see you again, but we’re afraid this promotion is for new MOO customers only. Sorry about that.”

On my mother’s life, I have never been to moo.com before. Chances are, I never will again. Why offer a new customer promotion and then take it away arbitrarily? Of all the things that I’d test to ensure 100% flawless execution, that is right up there.

Having invested the time to design the card I put through the order anyway, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

moo.com: FAIL

GANTT games at Oz-IA

Published at 7 April, 2008 in IA Community. 0 Comments

To try and combat post-lunch snoozing at last year’s OzIA, I circulated a hotel pad with the following question on it:

What does GANTT stand for? Have a guess and pass it on.

The answers were:

Get Another New Time Trap

Good Architects Need Time Tables

Girly Terrible Tablets

Great Amebeous Nervewracked Thought Taker

Gigantic Antisocial Nonsensical Talent Thief

Gutteral African Nose-lead Temper Tantrum

Goosey Arse-whipped Nebulous Tabular Terror

Interestingly enough, I came across the above when tidying up my townhouse prior to heading off to Miami for IASummit.

For the benefit of the thick: I know that GANTT is not actually an acronym, and that it is named for Henry Gantt. It’s just a game

So, which is your favourite? Can you think of a better one?

Is IA more than just not screwing up?

Published at 31 December, 2007 in Definition and Information Architecture. 3 Comments

Donna and I went on a roadtrip today with her daughter Amber to complete the family Christmas visits. Along the way we discussed the content for her revamped website, and with it, the business benefits of IA.

Try as we might, we couldn’t come up with anything better than “You are going to do this stuff anyway - structure a site and some content to satisfy a business need. Hire me or some other smart person and we’ll help you to not screw it up”.

Can this be all there is?

Aussie Bloggers Forum is born!

Published at 30 December, 2007 in Social Computing. 0 Comments

The secret can now be revealed: Snoskred, Meg and I (and a team of very helpful moderators) have been working on the Aussie Bloggers Forum over the last couple of weeks. It has been an exciting time, with a lot of community-in-action networking (and a lot of hard work, including a sterling effort by Snoskred’s partner as forum administrator).

So what is the Aussie Bloggers Forum about? Here is what the front page says:

Aussies, and bloggers, can be really nice people Put the two together and you have the potential for a wonderful community.

At Aussie Bloggers, we are passionate about blogging and helping other Aussies do the same. But you don’t have to be an Aussie to join the forums, all nationalities are welcome here. If you are interested in blogging at all then join us in the forums today.

Unlike other forums out there on the web, questions are welcome and you will find lots of friendly Aussies willing to help. Helping out mates is part of the Aussie way, after all.

One aim we have for this forum is to gather a range of Aussie bloggers who have skills over different blogging platforms and social media sites to help provide information and advice to other Aussies who are not as experienced.

Let’s face it, the blogosphere is a really big place! We’ve enjoyed connecting with other Aussie bloggers and the friendships we’ve formed. We hope these forums will make meeting other Aussie bloggers much easier.

We want this to be a happy, helpful place where advice and networking occurs in an non threatening and collaborative environment. Nastiness won’t be tolerated.

If you are a ridgy didge, fair dinkum, true blue, dinky die Aussie who is already blogging, or thinking about it - then you’ve found the right place.

I encourage you to register today - it is free, fun, and a great way of sharing what you know about blogging and life in general.

If you need more convincing, watch the slideshow.

Knowledge Worker: Redundant concept through ubiquosity or elitism?

Published at 29 December, 2007 in Knowledge Management. 0 Comments

Steve Collins wrote the following:

Shawn Callahan of Anecdote argues that the need for the term knowledge worker is redundant now that technology is ubiquitous in the developed world and that almost every worker trades in knowledge of some sort. He sees its use as a way to discriminate between identified knowledge workers and those whose roles are not traditionally viewed this way:

It’s an dark undercurrent and tacitly becomes a basis for discrimination. “Our salespeople are knowledge workers but our gas fitters are not.” I suspect this feeling of superiority comes from the erroneous data-information-knowledge model where knowledge (and even more ridiculously, wisdom) sits at the pinnacle of the pyramid.

I see where Shawn is going with his argument, particularly in developed nations. But I agree with Matthew Hodgson, who puts forth an alternative position that Shawn’s views are misplaced. Matthew argues that Shawn misses an opportunity to communicate an understanding of knowledge work outward from the insider community to the larger workforce and organisational management who don’t necessarily label themselves as knowledge workers - “Oh, no! I work in marketing/HR/finance/logistics/whatever.”

This is the story so far as I can tell:

Shawn sees every worker as a knowledge worker and worries about discrimination against perceived non-knowledge workers.
Matt is worried about over-generalisation that implies an under-specialisation of the knowledge worker role, and what might happen in a world without knowledge workers.
Steve is worried that people might read Shawn’s post and think that identified knowledge workers are no longer necessary.

Generally speaking, these guys know what they are on about. All three are respected within their own fields of endeavour. By the tone of the three posts, we can probably guess that Shawn doesn’t identify as a knowledge worker - but Matt and Steve do, and are looking to defend the distinct identity of the term.

There is a discrimination, if subtle, against non-knowledge workers by those who see themselves as being different. I’ve seen it. Wherever one profession sets themselves above another, there are territorial disputes - this piece of the project is mine, that is yours, don’t touch. Following the example set in IA recon, I think that the defenders of the concept need to separate knowledge worker as a role from knowledge work as an activity - then they may find more common ground with people like Shawn (and I) who see the role as devalued but the activity as essential.

Dodo: Information silos in action/inaction

Published at 26 December, 2007 in Knowledge Management. 1 Comment

Insanity took me a couple of months ago and I’ve been a Dodo customer (of sorts) ever since. I say “of sorts” because they haven’t provided me with much of any kind of service yet, and they haven’t billed me so I haven’t paid them. It’s a funny relationship.

Dodo has issues. Here is a rough timeline:

A couple of months ago I filled out a Dodo website form, seeking further information on their broadband/landline plans.
A few days later a salesrep called, and I confirmed the broadband/landline deal with him.
The following week, a technical salesrep called, and said that I would have to pay an extra $300 or so for my landline as I wasn’t getting broadband at the same time. This is where things went seriously wrong - I spent an hour and a half on the phone to them, talking to representatives of five different departments. Five. The first couple of people I spoke to couldn’t be convinced that I had originally ordered the broadband and landline together, and the next three departments were concerned with cancelling the original order. I repeatedly sought assurance that they were going to be sending me a broadband router.
The landline was connected a couple of weeks back. Surprise surprise, they sent the technicians to the wrong address, so these guys were wandering up and down my street calling me on their mobiles as they couldn’t believe that they had been sent to the wrong place. I know Dodo have my right address, as they have sent me mail here.

I do have the landline - it does work, woohoo, but still no broadband, and no router.

If this was an isolated incident then I would be feeling a bit paranoid - but Dodo is infamous for the highest number of complaints of any Australian ISP, twice that of runner-up Bigpond.

Where do they go so wrong? My guess, based on receiving-end experience, is that they have an information silo issue. Judging by the accents they have three different sets of call centres - one or more in Australia, one in India, and one in the Phillipines. There is nothing wrong with overseas call centres - they make good business sense when they are set up correctly - but when a routine foulup requires action by five different departments that don’t seem to talk to one another (and there is no effective resolution of the issue) then I have to guess that the information just isn’t being passed from one department to the next.

I’ve seen this happen on client site as well, and it always strikes me as an opportunity to change for the better. If consulting opportunity is the intersection of chaos and money, then all Dodo needs is the money. Chaos they have in abundance.

When collaborative interface design goes wrong…

Published at 20 December, 2007 in Information Architecture. 0 Comments

The tale can now be told.

Wikipedia defines the Dunning-Kruger effect as:

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.

The phenomenon was demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, then both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999.^[1]

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,

incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,

incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,

incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,

if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

I did not just quietly observe this - I actively saw it happen around me.

Third party company business analysts being left to run wild and free doing interface and interaction design.
Project managers turning a blind eye because it is in the third party company contract and “we’ll pick up on that user stuff in UAT (user acceptance testing)”.
Removal of usability and accessibility testing from all pre-UAT stages because it might expose too many errors.
Third party company folks not providing a complete set of prototypes until UAT because they may have to change them if users complain.

And no, I’m not kidding. I wish that I was. I’m not naming names because (a) I’m no longer on that project and (b) to do so would be unprofessional.

WebBlast Canberra 2007: Yes, it was a blast! :)

Published at 16 December, 2007 in IA Community. 0 Comments

WebBlast Canberra 2007 took place on 12 December 2007.

The success of the evening was a credit to the organisational skills of co-convenor Gavin Dispain. This is the second time that he and I (and a lot of volunteers) have got together to make an end-of-year social occasion that is open to everyone within the web industry - managing directors, web managers, information architects, graphic designers, university lecturers, students, and account managers.

This is me, slumped in a chair exhausted at the end of the evening:

It was great, but by 9PM or so (when this photo was taken) I’d pretty much adrenalined myself into a stupor

Everyone seemed to have fun - and there was the added bonus of a lot of business-related networking in amongst the celebration.

The chap hoisting his glass in the far background is none other than our own Stephen Hall. Also visible in this photo are Susan Schuller, Susan MacGillivray, Scott Ward, Paul Cooper, Andrew Meers, John Kennedy, Steve Collins, and many more besides. If you are in this shot and I haven’t mentioned you, please accept my apologies - leave me a comment

WebBlast Canberra 20o7 would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support of the following sponsors: