Matt Hanley Storytelling » ergo dada

Phone Numbers as Letters: No Qwerty Translation

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:29:00 +0000

Companies enjoy giving out phone numbers in terms of letters, based on the traditional numerical keypad.

However, more and more phones use a Qwerty keyboard. The letters do not match with numbers in the way intended.

I realized this when I joined Sprint’s Boost Mobile and bought a Motorola Clutch i465 with Qwerty. I was given a phone number to start my account. The “number” was : 888 Boost 4 u.

Hmmm. On a normal keypad, that translates to 266-7848. But on a Qwerty there is no possible translation… so maybe numbers should be given out as numbers.

Google Voice Means SMS Means What?

admin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:30:00 +0000

Google Voice is a fine offering which among other things, offers texting. Perhaps “Voice” isn’the best name for this product, but that is not the subject today. I’m worried about icons. In Gmail, the Rich Text Editor offers dozens of colorful emoticons and other icons.

Why can’t at least some of these be available when sending a text?

Even a basic GoPhone has an “Insert Smiley” feature. But this might cost money. SMS is “Short Message Service,” a protocol which apparently does not include graphics. Perhaps Google, so in touch with information if not consumers, could manage the expectations of the latter by providing an explanation of what SMS can and cannot do.

Google Calendar: Time Zone Snag – No Absolute Time

admin — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 03:33:00 +0000

Google Calendar is terrific. But a major problem I’ve found is a Time Zone is set not to the Event, but to the Google Calendar User. Thus, any event that user creates, is set to his user setting timezone.

So, if I live in Los Angeles but schedule an 8pm Monday London event, it will show up as a 3am Tuesday event to Londoners. As long as my user setting is PST, I have to do this: set the event for 1pm. In Google Calendar, a user can have more than one calendar. Each calendar can have its own setting for Time Zone.

Thus, I thought a bad but working solution would be to temporarily set a calendar to time zone London. But, that setting just dictates the Display of the time, not the absolute date time start. The absolute is still based on the user’s time zone.

The issue is all the more confounding because the Calendar gives much weight to an Event’s Location field. It wants specific information so that it can map it and offer directions or other services. Yet it’s not interested in the time?

Here I create a 9am New York City event. But to Google, it’s a 9 am PST start — 12 pm in NYC and 5pm in London.

Here’s how it’s published, in London Time:

The solution is: Google should let viewers / subscribers to a calendar set a timezone for “Viewing”– thus all events are translated into a time relative to that user’s view. In that case, if I’m looking at a 5pm New York event as a Californian (PST) I see it as 2pm.

The absolute time should be defined by the manager per event. When entering the time there should simply be a field to enter the time zone, which Google could ‘predict’ once location is entered (that would also require an alteration in the Form inputs so that Location is entered before Time).

Suggested:

As it is, Google Calendar cannot be accurately deployed by a manager of an entity that crosses time zones (sports teams, performers) or has subscribers across multiple time zones.

Oh Google! Yours is such an awesome, awesome company, and yet snags like these make me think you might spend just a wee bit too much time drinking your own Kool-Aid and not actually engineering for humans.

Google Search: Bottoms Up

admin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:57:00 +0000

I suggest Google put its Page of Results navigation (as seen here)

At both the TOP and the BOTTOM of each result page. Google tends to put such navigation only on the bottom. For example, I was in Google Calendar and chose to view calendar details/settings. Within the setting page, I couldn’t find a way to exit — and return to the calendar. The link “Return to Calendar” is at the bottom.

It would be convenient to have the option of jumping through results pages without having to scroll through each page. It would also give the results pages more consistency:

The text input field resides at both the top and the bottom. Actually, different versions of the search input appear in the top versus the bottom.

The top just has the simple search input field:

The bottom has search tips, filtering options and language tools:

Another issue, which I discussed in an earlier post, is the ambiguity of what the links “Web” “Images” “Maps” do. Are they links to other Google products/services (nouns), or search result filters (i.e. “show me results within Images.”). If you experiment, you will find inconsistent results. For example, if I click “Gmail” it doesn’t search my gmail for “gold” (search term), but if I click “Maps” it does. And how does the set of links above the Google logo differ from the set of links below the logo?

Imported Blogs

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:56:00 +0000

Blogger now allows a blogger to export and import blogs. I exported the posts of my “Ergo Dada” (usability criticism) and “Topical Jokes Daily” into this Freewheeling blog. Whoo.

I appreciate that Blogger enabled that function. It would have been even more convenient if during the import, you could tag all the posts. I would have tagged each Ergo Dada post with “usability” or “ergo dada” and all the TJD posts as “jokes.”

One blog is plenty for one person. I am okay with a single identity but I like the name Ergo Dada. Maybe I’ll write it a song.

So now I have a lot of posts here dating back to late 06. You can use the search tool at top of page to find posts on a LOT of subjects. I look forward to writing about usability as part of my review of the world.

I also added a photo of Bob Dylan’s “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album cover, which lent this blog its name.