Sunday morning in Rouen

Men carrying flowers
Queues in front of boulangeries
Food markets
People walking with their dogs
Brasseries with red awning
“Patisserie en vacance”

Not to mention the cuisine, patisserie, croissant, films, the music, the sound of the language…

J’adore la culture française.

Good example of user interaction on a phone call

I recently had a good user experience when I called for a cab. The call was through an answering machine and because of that I was surprised it actually worked. And it worked well.

The call started like this:

Welcome from [Company name] taxis.
To be picked up from [my address], press 1
To be picked up from [another address I use often], press 2
Or please hold to talk to an operator.

I pressed 1.

To confirm your booking from [my address] for as soon as possible, press 1
To book a taxi for later today, press 2
To book a taxi for tomorrow, press 3
Or to speak to an operator, press 0

And so on.

Why I think this worked:

  • The service learned my behaviour
    The service learned where I like to be collected from. By not having to type or say anything, it made it easier, quicker and convenient for me.
  • It reassured me along the way
    During the call, I was constantly reassured that what I chose was understood correctly by the machine. At various points in the call, it repeated my choices. When it ended they repeated and asked me to confirm. After the call they sent me a detailed text message. Feedback and reassurance are important for users to feel they are on the right path.
  • Concise text
    The machine only says what is necessary. By doing that, it saves users’ time and make it simpler for them to make the right decisions. User’s time is precious, especially in services like this one when users might be in a hurry.
  • Tasks were broken down into small simple tasks
    It made it easier to make the right decisions when the tasks were broken down into a small number of tasks and decisions points.
  • Simple steps for basic users. Elaborate tasks for advanced ones.
    Users who want the basic features, in this case, to book a taxi for now from their address, will accomplish the task very quickly in just a few presses away. Users who wants more advanced features will need to go a bit further. Their tasks are a bit more complex, therefore requires more exploration.
  • At any point I could talk with the operator.
    I could choose the way I want to interact with the service, either by talking with an operator or by following the steps, whatever I feel more comfortable with.

I found this a good example of user experience. The part that most got my attention was the fact that the service learnt users behaviour and by doing that it improved an ordinary activity which made it stand out from the crowd.

What kind of websites do you design?

I don’t know if you ever came across this question, but I think this is harder to answer than the classic “What do you do?” for designers, as mentioned by Dan Mall in last week’s talk at the New Adventures in web design conference. I have come across this question a few times and every time by the same “person”.

Whenever I pass through passport control, I need to answer a few questions from the officials. The questions are usually very obvious and require quick answers as they are just checking if I am who I say I am. Cool with me, apart from one question that follows my statement “I’m a web designer”.

“What kind of websites do you design?”
I could answer this question in many ways, as broad as saying “All kinds of websites.” (which means “you have no idea the variety of kinds of websites I design for, can be anything, believe me.”) or as detailed as “At the company I work for, we design more web applications than websites as such. By that I mean, they are not static marketing websites but they are most of the time user-generated content websites that has a large amount of functionality and interaction. In some of the projects, we also design the CMS (the backend) of the app for the client to interact with.”. Another option is to list the clients, but would this answer the question? Or maybe list the sectors?

In any case, I haven’t come up with an answer to this question yet, but it would be good so I don’t need to think too much next time I come from an 11-hour flight.