Pleasure and Pain » Humor

Nationwide Insurance demonstrates user research with NationPam

whitney — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:00:03 +0000

As an independent consultant, I pitch my services a lot. I consider myself fortunate that I get the opportunity to chat with so many great companies (okay, and some not-so-great ones) about what user experience is and what value it could provide to their businesses.

Without a doubt, the most difficult service for me to sell in to a new client is user research — and not only is it my favorite part of the process, I also think it’s the most crucial part. Most companies don’t fail because they chose a checkbox when they should have used a radio button; they fail because they didn’t take the time to listen to their customers.

The other day I caught the Nationwide Insurance commercial in which “The World’s Greatest Spokesperson in the World!” visits the home of a prospective customer, Pam, and interviews her on her porch about her experiences buying insurance.

Take a moment to watch it now:

Spokesperson: “Nationwide Insurance, I’m all ears.”

Pam: “I bought my policy online, and I haven’t heard from the company since.”

Spokesperson into his company telephone: “When Pam switches to Nationwide Insurance, we’re not going to treat her like Policy 413. We’re going to treat her like Pam — get to know her, be proactive. Oh, and rename the company NationPam.”

Pam [Cooing]: “Ooh.”

Spokesperson: “Done. [Singing] ‘NationPam is on your…Sam…’ We’ll make that work.”

Fine, it’s a silly commercial, over the top. But there’s a significance to its message: they want to show that they recognize the value of listening — understanding their customers’ frustrations — and care about making the customer experience more pleasurable.

Here are my takeaways:

He goes to her house to talk to her — on her turf, not in some sterile focus group
His posture, tone and word choice demonstrate his eagerness to listen
He reports back to the company both the problem statement and the intended solution
He goes beyond the call of duty to make her feel special and appreciated
He demonstrates that maintaining a long-standing brand identity while adjusting to meet customers’ needs isn’t always a graceful process, and it takes iteration (“We’ll make that work.”)

Does your company make the effort to listen to your customers? Do you approach prospective customers to understand their frustrations and devise ways to alleviate their pain? Is an image of caring part of your company’s brand promise?

What are you personally doing to help your company better meet people’s needs?

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Bill Maher makes fun of Captcha’s poor usability

whitney — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:55:57 +0000

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’m in love with Bill Maher. You might not agree with his politics, his ideology, or his bad language, but you’ve gotta admit that he has a knack for putting people in their place.

At the end of each episode, Bill Maher gives his New Rules — an editorial monologue on current events and pop culture. On April 30th, he targeted a bane of many in the user experience profession — CAPTCHA (“Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”).

Captcha is a method for websites to verify that the user is in fact a human and not a malicious computer program. Coincidentally it was invented at my alma mater Carnegie Mellon University, so my apologies for bashing it. From a technical perspective it’s great, but from a usability perspective it can be a total dead end. It completely interrupts a user’s interaction with the site (as well as their train of thought), challenging them to correctly enter the distorted letters and numbers displayed before them, which are quite often impossible to decipher.

Captcha got on Bill Maher’s radar. Watch what he had to say (it’s brief):

What do you think of CAPTCHA? What alternatives have you seen or implemented that accomplish the necessary safety precautions, but are still natural and easy for people to use?

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What the customer actually wanted

whitney — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:58:25 +0000

A few weeks ago Orian sent me a hilarious but sad cartoon on the all-too-familiar process of cumulative error and product dilution during a project life cycle: customer request -> finance -> engineering -> manufacturing -> marketing -> delivery. Not only do we fail to deliver on what was proposed, but what the customer said they wanted and what they actually wanted were two very different things.

The one panel that I think is missing from the cartoon is What the User Experience Designer Wireframed — wings.

There’s an awesome site called Project Cartoon that lets you create your own version of how projects really work.

Have fun playing around! Then go print a dozen copies of the cartoon and hand it out to everyone on your team. Whoever doesn’t get it is the weak link.

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Photo of the day: No Yes No No

whitney — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:15:49 +0000

That’s her response to the question, “Can I take you home?”

Found in the ladies’ room at Clery’s Bar in Boston, where the An Event Apart after party was held.

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In case of fire: Do Not Use Twitter

whitney — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:42:59 +0000

Last week this photo was posted to BuzzFeed and made the rounds on Twitter. It’s originally from johnpiercy on Flickr.

I think it looks doctored, but John isn’t sure. It’s just too hilarious to be real!

What do you think?

P.S. If I was caught in or near a fire, I definitely WOULD use Twitter. My followers would help save my life.

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Photo of the day: No breastfeeding

whitney — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:15:56 +0000

Mike Dizon and I went out for lunch around New Work City one day. We walked past Pepe Rosso, a pasta take-out joint on Sullivan St. that Mike insists is the best around. So I poked my head in to take a look, and saw this sign hanging in the entrance:

No
breastfeeding
in Pepe Rosso
of children over
12 years of age

I had to do a double-take. Certainly breastfeeding isn’t allowed in a small restaurant, but wait what?! Over 12 years of age?! That’s just gross. And hilarious.

Of course my first thought was that it would be a great photo for my blog, so I had Mike snap a pic with his phone. The sign is behind glass so we got the best shot we could.

Watch out for those breastfeeding teenagers!

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Digital Conversion PSA

whitney — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:39:46 +0000

On June 12, 2009, analog will die.

The Digital TV Transition (DTV) website has everything you need to know about making the switch. There are no less than 50 pages of full text explaining how to painlessly prepare. A variety of downloadable PDFs are available to guide you through the converter box installation process. There’s also a DIY Guide, a Troubleshooting Guide and a PDF from the FCC titled “DTV Made Easy.”

It’s the biggest sham I’ve ever seen.

In October, CollegeHumor released “an educational public service announcement to prepare you and your grandmother for the 2009 digital switch.” This comes via Orian‘s mom. Hit play to find out everything you need to know to get ready for this momentous event.

Watch Digital Conversion PSA and more funny videos on CollegeHumor

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April Fools jokes around the web — causing user pain?

whitney — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:38:55 +0000

Shockingly, a bunch of people really believed that I was putting my career as a user experience designer on hold in order to become a motivational speaker.

But there have been much bigger jokes floating around the web today in honor of April Fools’ Day, some of which are cute and silly, and others of which aren’t going over very well.

SlideShare

SlideShare multiplied everyone’s view count by 100 (and really pissed some people off).

Google went all out…

Google announced CADIE

CADIE’s homepage

Google Maps offers CADIE’s Favorite Places

Google Image Search

Gmail now has autopilot

Reddit becomes Reddigg

Looks like Digg

Gizmodo put a bunch of garbage stories up

Aviary launches Crane Paper Editor

Whole Foods sells Organic Air

Qualcomm announces Wireless Convergence

Wolfpidgeon

Sharkfalcon

Crocodeagle

New Work City becomes New Wok City

Expedia now offers Flights to Mars

YouTube turns upside-down

Your New Viewing Experience

Woot sells Random Crap bag

Guardian newspaper to be published exclusively via Twitter

Toshiba sells laptops for dogs a.k.a. Petbooks

And many, many more that I’m sure will surface throughout the day.

I can’t help but think about how pranks effect the overall user experience and people’s affiliation with a brand, particularly when it isn’t clearly a joke and people mistake it for reality. If the backlash against SlideShare is any indication, let’s just draw the line here: don’t fuck with your users’ info. Making fun of yourself (Reddit, Woot), or offering new products/services (Toshiba, Expedia, Whole Foods) that don’t detract from the ones you actually sell is the smart way to go. But causing pain that can’t be undone, even for a day, could end up hurting yourself in the long run.

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My favorite terms from The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit 2008 — Part 1

whitney — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:23:48 +0000

Today as I was cleaning up my desk, I found my old 2008 Page-A-Day Calendar of The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit. I used to have it on my desk at Liquidnet and got a huge kick out of lamenting a new bullshit term every day. The definitions are hilarious and merciless. Sometimes the terms were so apropos that I’d give them out to my coworkers as a token of solidarity. I even gave a few to my boss.

I guess you could say that I was never really meant for the workplace. My tolerance for bullshit is legendarily low.

I saved some of my favorite pages from the first half of the year; since I quit my job in August, about 150 days were never pulled off the calendar. I’ll go through those soon and offer a follow-up post with any new gems that I find.

In the meantime, here are the ones that I saved from January through July. They still make me chuckle, and I hope they strike a cord with you, too.

glass ceiling

The concept that women or minorities in the workplace are unable to achieve high-ranking positions due to unacknowledged discrimination, which, despite recent lip service in our progressive age, is still pretty much true; the reason why women who do manage to rise to positions of considerable authority are more likely to be found in “female-friendly” disciplines, such as Human Resources, Marketing, and PR; those who make repeated efforts to break the glass ceiling may become women who behave like men.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

rigorous

Intimidating or impressive way of saying “difficult” or “thorough,” enlisted to indicate the hard-coreness of what is being described and may be used in hopes it will scare weak people away (e.g., rigorous training period) by implying that participants won’t have time to sleep or eat, when in reality it’s only being described as rigorous because someone in marketing learned a new word.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

whiteboard

A large white board present in many conference rooms, and often used for brainstorming sessions, that is there chiefly for the purpose of making the person writing on it feel important; the canvas for the chaotic display of information scrawled in illegible handwriting; a word whose most annoying use is in the verb form, e.g., “Let’s whiteboard this out,” which means “Let’s talk about this while writing our ideas down on a whiteboard as we do it”; to make matters worse, whiteboards outnumber the special “dry-erase” markers manufactured to be used with them by about 10:1.

Friday, April 18, 2008

solution

A vague, generic, and slightly mysterious term used to describe products, of all things, particularly software; so overused it has lost all meaning, except in that calling something a “solution” is really just a way of saying that it might have “added value.”

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

fired

What you are when your ass is canned; much different from getting laid off, because you screwed up so bad they are ejecting you from the company (what the hell did you do? because the reality is, it’s actually really kind of hard to get fired; things can get explosive and lawsuits may crop up); when possible, many companies will buy out employees who have a history of issues at the organization (read: pay them for their silence) or just make their lives so uncomfortable that they leave on their own.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

customercentric

A perspective companies declare they possess now, as if they didn’t have to in the past to survive; a label that is applied with zero effort and that needs zero follow-up, as long as the marketing and corporate communications departments are any good; not unlike the term “best of breed,” in that no company is going to claim they are not customercentric.

Friday, May 23, 2008

leadership

Guidance provided to a large group by a person or small group of people; an act that requires decisiveness, vision, the ability to be articulate, and, in an ideal world, integrity–which explains why it is virtually nonexistent in corporate America; often confused with yelling or being completely impossible to get an answer out of.

Monday, June 9, 2008

at Stanford/Wharton/Princeton/Harvard…

A conversational reference to where the speaker went to school used by major elitist tools who in reality probably aren’t that smart, because if they were, they wouldn’t need to mention their Ivy League credentials when recommending a good burger joint; the major irony is that many titans of the corporate world went to Joe Blow University, really don’t give a shit where people went to school, and in fact may regard highly credentialed colleagues as nancy boys.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Myers-Briggs

A diagnostic test one may encounter in a workshop or management training seminar, used to assess an individual’s personality and behavioral preferences; involves answering a billion questions and ultimately brands you with a four-letter “type” that is supposed to enlighten you about how you deal with other people and the world; if you’ve never done this, you feel that by taking it you will unlock the mysteries of your personality and why life sucks for you; that doesn’t happen, but you will gain an immediate affinity for people who are similarly classified, feeling as if you are of the same “tribe” and everyone else is an asshole.

Monday, June 16, 2008

network

To pursue and create business contacts with the hope that someone you meet will hook you up with a job someday; employees who network can be identified by their fascination with anyone who has a better job; those who network will get the job you want, the promotion you deserve, regardless of his or her qualifications; get used to it, or start doing it yourself.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Do you have any Corporate Bullshit terms and definitions of your own? Give it a try!

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User Centered Design is now closed

whitney — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:32:52 +0000

Last year at IA Summit 2008, Jared Spool declared that it was time for us to retire the dogma of user-centered design, citing that the most effective design teams don’t follow a specific methodology, but instead have a whole toolbox of techniques and tricks to use when the time is right.

Flip through his slides and listen to Jared’s audio below:

Journey To The Center Of Design

View more presentations from Jared Spool. (tags: paradigms design)

This morning I got quite a chuckle when I logged into Facebook to find a new message from the User-Centred Design group:

I guess it took them 10 months to get the memo. It’s unfortunate that Luke Perman chose to close it when there were 2,400+ members. The group could have been re-purposed for something, no?

Luke, willing to hand over the rights?

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