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Whilst in town at lunchtime I spotted this advert for the perfume Insolence. Insolence?! What’s next? Contempt, by Chanel?
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when they pitched this; to have witnessed the focus group’s reaction to it. And I can’t begin to imagine the mood boards!
Things have been a little quiet around here lately. One of the reasons (there are others, like house hunting and number 2 baby) is that I've been migrating my blog engine from LiveJournal to WordPress (sorry LiveJournal, I just couldn't get the hang of your templating language). To ease the transition I've copied my RSS feed to FeedBurner so that in the future it won't matter what engine I'm using for the blog, or where it's being served from. I don't know if I have any subscribers (I suppose I'll find out), but if anyone out there is reading along and you want to continue, then please seek professional help, er, point your reader at http://feeds.feedburner.com/userhappiness.
See you on the other side …
Would you return to a shop where the assistants politely acknowledged you and then proceeded as if you didn’t exist for the remainder of your stay? Probably not. How would you feel about software companies that did the same?
Trial software is a great opportunity for vendors to connect with customers beyond the products they’re selling: you’ve got a captive audience; you know they’re interested in the product (they just downloaded it); and as new users they’ll want to learn all about it. So why do so many companies send the ‘thank you for downloading our trial’ e-mail and then forget about you? Surely it’s better to invest a little effort during the trial to teach people about your software? To begin to create passionate users and customer advocates who will sell your products for you rather than simply having people that use your programs. It doesn’t even require that much effort from the developers.
Iolo Systems recently provided me with a great example of how a little effort in those magic 30 days can go a long way. I downloaded their System Mechanic trial to help keep my PC in shape. (As someone who’s done tech support before I know the horrors that lurk in an untamed Registry.) Throughout the trial period they sent regular e-mails detailing different aspects of the product. Each message dealt with a particular problem area (slow hard disks or spyware, for example) and explained in simple steps how System Mechanic could help. The e-mails showed me how best to use the software and promoted the range of tasks it supported, including some that I wasn’t aware of. I felt like I was getting good value for my money and getting the most out of the product. Well before the trial expired I bought a license key. And no prizes for guessing the program I’d recommend for keeping your computer in tip-top condition. And that’s all it takes. A few simple e-mails. Something to show your users that you’re interested in them; that you’re in it for them as well as yourself. And in today’s competitive software market I can’t think of any company that can afford to ignore its potential customers for the sake of an e-mail or two, can you?
At last, Darkplace on DVD. That Channel 4 never repeated it was a televisual outrage, especially considering the scheduling space available on Friends4, sorry, E4 and now More4. But will it be as funny as I remember?
I mentioned Word buginess in my previous post. In celebration of that, my copy has now developed a fear of flying. Don’t believe me? It crashes whenever I type the word describing a person who flies an aeroplane. P I L O < crash >.
Humanising software is a good thing, but I think this bug is taking things a little too far.
I’ve been trying to move away from using Word for writing my documents for ages. It’s bloated. It’s difficult to do anything other than top down reports. And, if you do attempt anything fancy, it’s buggy as hell! But there are two killer features that ensure no matter how alluring other applications seem, I always come back to Word: live spellchecking and thesaurus. They seem so simple, but I can’t live without them.
Live spellchecking has started to make its way into lots of other products that I would prefer to use. The latest version of InDesign now has the red squiggles. Writely has them (sort of) and so does Semagic (the tool I use for updating this blog). But a thesaurus seems to have gone by the wayside. Perhaps it’s seen as an ‘advanced’ feature. Could be that it’s difficult to implement. Or maybe designers and other such folks don’t need it. That’s wrong. Good software helps you work (and play) better. And if you care about what you say a thesaurus offers you better ways to say it. So developers and interface designers, if your customers are using a product that supports writing they need both, because when you’re working with words, spellchecking is only half the story.
I really like the Design Eye series. It’s great to see worked examples of the design process and it’s very brave to do these kinds of exercises in public (with the payoff of good marketing for those involved, of course), but I have to say that their latest attempt, restyling the community site Craigslist, isn’t my cup of tea. There’s something homey in that jumbled list of links which just hasn’t translated into the redesign.
Craigslist is about things that matter to people: jobs, houses, politics, personals, but I don’t get that from the new site. It feels too corporate and slick to me; those blues and greys aren’t approachable. (The one area where they do score is Cameron Moll’s mobile-friendly version, but on the small screen it’s more about positioning services than look and feel.) Perhaps it’s time someone did a brand eye for the design guy series because if Craigslist does adopt the proposed redesign San Francisco will never have felt colder.
The Social Issues Research Centre’s Passport to the Pub reveals the exotic ritual and tacit knowledge in the everyday acts we pub-loving Brits take for granted.
It’s an amazing and thorough piece of work (the researchers claim observations in 800 pubs, consultations with over 500 publicans and bar staff, and interviews with over 1000 pubgoers), but they missed the most crucial bit of advice for anyone (tourist or otherwise) looking for a decent pub:
if the roof’s flat, don’t go in.
(All I’m saying is I’ve followed this credo, handed down by my forefathers, and I’m still here to tell the tale.)
