things what I writ

Select/Deselect

December 19, 2007

Or maybe that’s Unselect, although that’s obviously not a real word, but when does that stop us? As I try and complete a design specification for a product finder, only interrupted by my writing about trying to complete a design specification for a product finder, I notice that its the subtle nuances that really take the time to figure out. I know what a table looks like. I also know what a drop-down list of comparable subcategory products looks like. I even know what a Products By Category: Subcategory Listing: Filtered: Single Attribute product list item looks like. But I don’t know whether the 508 label for a button that allows you to uncheck a range of checkboxes should say ‘Unselect All’ or ‘Deselect All’.

Actually, I do know that its ‘Deselect All’, but I only know that because somebody told me. I’m sure someone here who can quote the style and editorial guides complete with page references and footnotes off the top of their head would have been able to point out to me the grammatical and semantic reasoning behind that decision, notwithstanding the fact that unselect isn’t actually a word, even though I thought it might be, because my vocabulary necessarily contains a mixture of English, US English, and web terms, which means I’m never quite sure these days when I write an email or comp a blurb that I’m making any sense at all. Much like as I’m writing this.

The thing is, however long I agonize/agonise over the relative placement of a product image and whether the attribute listings should be bulleted or repeat the attribute names, or what labels we give to information architecture in context with other category pages, the thing that will take 20 minutes to resolve, in a meeting where you’ve got 15 minutes to present the design specification, of which that component appears on 2 pages which should take 2 minutes to cover, will be the annoying label for the widget. So I’m sorting that out right now. I’ve probably missed an entire interaction flow as a result, but that label is now correct, right?

Listening Post: Teenage Fanclub: Commercial Alternative

The Secret Is Out

December 17, 2007

There’s no magic bullet for design, no one-size fits all, or cross-market, cross-audience component set that captures unique customer needs across your entire audience. But there is some cream.

It’s worth investing 7 minutes of your life watching the video to discover what you probably already knew – customers really do know best when it comes to design. Designers are just here to do exactly what you say.

In noting this approach to making your design customers instantly happy, I’m considering making a purchase. As we wind down to the holiday season, we’re winding up on deliverables on a few design projects that should see the light of day early in 2008. I could really do with some Information Architecturizer Spray to instantly organize some category page frameworks. If anyone knows where I can get some by Wednesday, that would be great.

But seriously. No, hang on, that was seriously.

p.s. Happy birthday, Martin

Listening Post: Iggy Pop: Nightclubbing

New Team Home

December 14, 2007

For any of you have been following the Sun.com Customer Experience and Stuff blog, you’ve probably realized it’s no longer Martin Hardee writing it. Since Martin left Sun to go and customer experienceizate Cisco.com, we’ve been running that blog as a team effort and it’s probably about time we got ourselves a new team home. There’s no particularly good reason for moving, except that the blog’s URL is a personal one – blogs.sun.com/martinhardee – and we wouldn’t want to misrepresent Martin, or give a false impression of who’s writing for it.

Actually, that’s not 100% true. It sounds good in a corporately responsible way, but actually, the reason we’re moving is that this new blog is MINE. ALL MINE. Well, its the sun.com design team’s, so we’ve given it an abstract URL identifier so that its not associated with one person. We’ll probably lose 80% of our regular readership that linked to the old URL in a feed reader or added a link in their del.ectab.le bookmarks or just have it favorited, but I’ll be sure to put an enormous blinking message on the old blog, to try and redirect folks here. If nothing else, it’ll show us if people actually read the other one, rather it being popular through automated referrals.

We will endeavor, of course, to make this an interesting place to come, so hopefully, if you’ve never even read the old blog and are reading this because you thought ‘New Team Home’ might have something to do with football, then we’re already reaching out. As a point of interest, even though I might say something like ‘favorite endeavor’, I’m actually in the UK, so when I say ‘football’, I really mean ‘soccer’, but I’ll let you interpret it as it makes most sense to you, which is probably more sense than it makes to me. Most other contributors to this blog are in the US, so when they say ‘soccer’, they probably mean ‘football’, if you’re reading this in London. Not that they will. They might say something like ‘community’, though, which will refer to our programs to engage with specific audiences to build a relationship, not to a block of flats in Hackney.

We’ll be posting thoughts on web design, customer experience, usability and letting you know what’s happening on sun.com and associated sites. I expect we’ll post completely irrelevant things too, but we’ll try and make them sound relevant by adding a web design tie-in in the last paragraph. You can let us know what you think, or maybe just quietly agree/disagree. Either way, we hope you’ll find it a worthy distraction for a few minutes and maybe we’ll even be interesting or useful. That’ll be a first for me, but there’s more cleverer people on the design team, so if I can somehow bribe/blackmail them into breaking their blogging duck, it should be an interesting web experience.

Listening Post: Chris Morris: Radio Show 27/07/94

watching the pigeon detectives

November 7, 2007

the only time the waterfront has got emptier as the night got longer. I’m not sure where everybody went but huge spaces opened up as the night drew on. when I arrived there wasn’t space to swing a glow stick and just enough of a thoroughfare in front of the mixing desk to stumble over a number of pairs of converse and court shoes to the bar where it was strangely empty and while a man who looked like he tried very hard was holding his guitar in the air I shouted for a pint of stella which I didn’t really need but that’s what I do when I arrive.

not 30 minutes earlier I had been up to 2865b and witnessed the most efficient back garden firework display of modern times which latest longer then the ones from the plantation garden which we saw from the bedroom window and after a swift baked potato I shot up the earlham road to find that everybody else was looking for a parking space where actually nearly every parking space is a resident’s space and that audi a3 will get a ticket later ho ho I’ll go in the car park up the road how much is that blimey.

back inside, there was a strange propensity of upturned collars which must be the way you wear them these days although I though it went out with eric cantona kung fu kicks but then that was before most of the people in here were born apart from me and that bloke over there who looks like he should be security but he’s only looking after his girlfriend tonight excuse me mate sorry nice tattoo is that your neck sorry mate and there’s another I hope I don’t look like that he’s supposed to wait outside for his daughter not come in and wait for her. the pillar placement in the old warehouse for that’s where we are was perplexing some people and strange it is with at least 2 empty v shapes of blind spot in the middle of the floor where the occasional group of 16 year olds will delight in finding only to discover its the worst place in the building to be standing even though you’re only 5 feet from the stage that you can’t see so I’m positioned left of pillar #1 spotting the mic stand front centre which is the kind of uninteresting detail you fixate yourself with when you’re in between bands on your own with a pint of stella wondering if all the short people can see alright but then not really caring too much because you can and you’ve set your feet on the floor in such a way that you won’t move for anything even if the celebrity deathmatching starts which is doesn’t anyway not tonight a bit subdued

I’m not sorry no I’m not sorry no I’m not sorry no I’m not sorry. I saw that Ash a few days ago and that was alright in a kind of I wish charlotte hatherley was still there kind of way although that one they did at the end about twilight was enormous and he’s still got it and there was some good arm fighting going on got pushed right to the back of the pit and everything but tonight was more like it even though it seems to me that every band I see these days is just too good at what they do to be that exciting. once they rattled through the album and a couple of b sides that was it and so they left, sans encore, and so did we. they came round on the shuffle on my walkman the next day and I thought oh yes they were quite good and oh, funny how you sometimes get a genre run on shuffle at random and I got distracted and forgot everything. we are scientists on tuesday. then its double maths on wednesday. hahahahaaahaahaaa.

its a bit twangy

October 31, 2007

no. its them again. with that singer that can only be described as dave tong incarnate. I nearly actually liked them this time but only very nearly. there was that one song at the beginning that was pretty good and as I’ve heard it 3 times in the last few weeks I’ve almost got used to it. but he looks like dave. can’t get over that.

as the ripples of one hand clapping bade little man tate farewell back up to sheffield or wherever they come from I just picked sheffield because that’s probably true which in fact it is, so the strangely empty pit began to swell slightly. and then a bit more. and then a bit more. but nothing too menacing. lots of short little stoners behaving themselves which I hadn’t really expected I thought at least there’d be a travelling minibus full of lacostes from wolverhampton openly flauting the smoking ban. oh. here they are. much like the banter that befell the 6 foot 7 young man at the enemy, this lot took ownership of their immediate area with some carefully placed ribbing of hapless students and middle class ‘dads picking me up after’ types who were no match for their untrained wit. their sword of glib swathed a path through the throng like a pencil flitting over a betting slip until they found their nirvana – a spot a bit to the left, behind some nervous teenage first timers. truth be told, these are the kind of people you like to see at the uea because they open their mouths occasionally and are wantonly up for it. without them each performance ends up being greeted by the faint sound of someone in the offices upstairs buttering a snackajack and a 12-year-old wooping like a girl, which they are.

by his own admission, the singer was feeling ‘a little rof’ as he had a throat infection and the first number was slightly encumbered by technical spasms so it was all rather ignominious and I was wondering if top gear was repeated on bbc3 tonight when things got better largely fuelled by the lager and brandy washing around on stage and notwithstanding the washing-up water sound system in the lower common room it all got subliminally marvellous. by the the time they cracked into ‘either way’ I was barking along with the wolves stoners, with my best EEVER WAYE, EEVER WAYE and the occasional I LUV YA spontaneous outburst and by now I really had no care whether I looked like an embarrassing dad at a wedding disco because I had the epiphinal feeling that them up there wouldn’t care. I mean, they were largely off their faces, but we were avin a parrtee.

incidentally, the guitarist who suffered good natured finger-poking throughout for being a miserable perfectionist was a one-man niagra of sound who should be stuck on a huge column somewhere and gold plated. he was smiling about it all by the end, like we all were.

NME 2007

October 15, 2007

alright norwich la, I ope lethal bizzle warmed you up good and proper yeah <small woop> we’re from liverpool 1 2 3 4. what? warmed you up? it’s 10 past 8. and anyway, since when should it have been wombats/milburn/holloways/pigeon detectives/other bunch of students on after lethal bizzle? I’m about as interested in the wombats as I was about the mystery jets who opened the NME tour last year who I missed because I was at a parent’s evening or something but lethal bizzle sounded like he might at least be a bit interesting even if he does just kind of shout about running away from the filth after he’s crashed his joyride up that london or wherever it is. but never mind

its not busy in the Lethargic Cramped Ruin like it was last year either, but that’s because there isn’t the same wet pants frenzy around the enemy as there was around arctic monkeys so even though its chocked up with 15 year olds there’s a satisfyingly healthy contingent of stoners and boners who look like they might have a fight later, which, coincidentally, they do. even as the wombats tread pedestrianly through their me too english eccentricities there’s loads of space to wander down to the sticky wooden floor. you’d even say it was a bit empty really. the thing about the NME tours is that they don’t turn up the house lights in between the acts, so you’re never quite sure how many people are in and what their demographic is, but in the main, everybody is short tonight, except for the occasional 6 foot 7 20 year old who’s getting lambasted by small groups of carlsberg exports for just being tall which isn’t funny really but they’ve got that pissed-up local turn of phase that I still think is funny even when they’re lobbing a pint of watery lager at your head.

after the adverts for the NME have scrolled around on the projected backdrop about a million times and we’re all wondering what the shock might be about the new radiohead album the lights that there are go dim and there’s a small ripple of enemy, enemy, enemy, after which more projection, but very loud this time, and that cleverly pitched (old idea, new audience) railway station noticeboard rattle begins as it flips through a number of provincial towns until it finally settles on norwich, which elicits a deafening “norwich, har, look, norwich, thass good hint ut” and then today’s date. it’s cringingly basic, but splendid all the same. and then the jam come on stage and do in the city a few times.

if last year was faux shakespearian ponderings from sheffield and reading, then this year is cmon norwich lets see what you’re made of up for it no f**kin abaht from the heart of the empire, erm, coventry. the enemy are quite angry about stuff, mainly inner city decay and provincial apathy and the loss of identity and the hopelessness of youth and slashed seat affairs and travelling on buses etc., but they are wantonly uplifting and undeniably up for it. I’d tell you more about them, but their web site is currently just a black page with nothing on, which is probably appropriate. I mean, they are the jam reincarnate, but without the red wellerism. not sure what else you would need to know. they shouted most of the album and there were nice fights going on between delirious stoners and petrified students in the circle of death. the sound was terrible and it was all over by about 10:30. I watched a programme about sharks and hitler when I got home.

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