For those of you that don’t know, you can follow this blog on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/usabilitycounts (@usabilitycounts). I also have a couple more twitter feeds at http://www.twitter.com/cooltechjobs (@cooltechjobs) for job listings and http://www.twitter.com/uxlosangeles (@uxlosangeles) for events happening in Los Angeles.
I have started a LinkedIn group called User Experience Los Angeles. If you live in Los Angeles, and want to join, go ahead — it’s an open group. You can also find me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/usabilitycounts.
Brad, otherwise known as @bradezone on Twitter, was the 1,000 follower of @UsabilityCounts. As promised, I’m shipping out the George Foreman grill, as we speak. It’s going to get there by snail mail, because I’m a cheap bastard.
The grill details:
Sporting a sleek, contemporary design in durable housing, this electric grill features 120 square inches of cooking surface and a floating hinge to accommodate thick sandwiches, steaks, and more. For added convenience, the thermostat-controlled ready light indicates when the appliance has reached an ideal grilling temperature. The appliance’s appeal lies in its simplicity and countertop convenience–not to mention its fat-fighting ability. Its design channels fat away from food and into its large grease tray. Even more, an exclusive George Tough nonstick coating protects the grill plates, providing the option for low-fat cooking and ensuring easy food release. With its extended cool-touch handle, the grill measures approximately 17 by 18 by 8 inches and carries a one-year limited warranty.
I was tempted to publish this for Silly Saturdays, but this so accurately describes the Vendor Client relationship I moved it to this category.
I’m a sucker for print, and the New York Times is one of the best journalism web properties. They released a photo viewer of their best photojournalism work, and it’s very, very cool.
Email me directly at jobs@usabilitycounts.com if you’re interested.
The Product Analyst is involved primarily in the pre-development phase of the product development lifecycle. Product vision, work initiation, prioritization, product scope, requirements management, product sponsor management, business value and approvals are among the areas of action for this position. During the development phase, they are primarily concerned with making sure the product under development matches the vision requirements by working with all areas of software development including artists, designers, engineers, managers and quality assurance teams. This position requires business knowledge, organization, independence and good communication.
Duties and responsibilities may include, but are not limited to the following:
This position requires a minimum of four years product management and requirements analysis experience in an information technology environment, as well as proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite and Visio. Additional software tools, if required, need to be learned quickly.
Additional requirements include:
I’ve been playing a bit with a BuddyPress installation, the new social networking application for WordPress. It requires WordPress MU as the platform. I really like it — it’s like they say, the basic features of Facebook in a box, plus you get to add blogs and other functionality that some sites don’t have.
BuddyPress is an uber-set of WordPress Plugins that add a lot of structure and functionality to WordPress, but even with that, the installation isn’t as tough as you would think.
Business owners always ask: How can I market my business? Well, depending on the nature of your business and your budget, the possibilities are endless. Here, in no particular order, are 25 options:
There’s a few people that are more adamant than me about their dislike for Basecamp, but I finally decided to take a taste of the Basecamp Koolaid. It’s been a quick and dirty lifesaver, because it’s something I don’t have to maintain, and if something goes wrong, I would hope file recovery would by their responsibility.
It’s one of those tools that I wish did more, and while it’s simple, it’s too simple. By the time you figure that out, you’re kind of stuck, because migrating files is a pain in the neck.
Look, you can drag and drop!
Look at the nifty hover-overs!
Look, wiki’s, but not really!
It’s cool for us web types that love that kind of stuff, but have you ever tried watching a corporate user use BaseCamp? It’s painful. They don’t get most of those little features and touches because 1) they aren’t Web 2.0 experts, and 2) the features aren’t documented in a way that any user would really know how to use them. It would be nicer if they spent some of that time on the next point…
This is a discussion that a friend of mine and I have about the product. We’re using it, and it’s a nice little file sharing tool, but there’s a lot of features we wish it had. Like…
…and the list goes on.
Seriously, a few of these features would be really, really easy to implement, and wouldn’t take a full feature release.
Simplicity is one thing. Limiting your feature set and telling the users it’s good for them is another.
I’m using Basecamp on a few projects, and am paying the $24.95 a month. That might not seem like much, but hosted, that’s roughly $300 a year. I can write that off (and I do) as part of running a business as a consultant, but still, that seems like a lot, and I’m using it on really small projects.
For example, here are some prices for SharePoint (which is the same pricing plans with more features as BaseCamp). Outside of some configuration issues, is a much superior product, and is gaining more acceptance in the corporate community. There’s some great templates to get you started, and quite frankly, I could set up a template in a week that replicates much of the functionality of BaseCamp. I’m lazy because I have more important things to do (like bill clients), and MOSS doesn’t have very good Apple support.
That said, if I were working in an environment that was mostly Microsoft, and had time to setup a SharePoint instance, I’d be all over it in a heartbeat.
Sometimes marketing and a cult takes over. Good examples of this are Apple and eBay. Apple products are wonderful (I own enough of them), but they aren’t the most usable in the world. Same with eBay. eBay’s gotten much better over the years about user experience, but the reason it’s big is that they provided a marketplace, had that cult factor and marketed effectively, not because it ws the best product on the market.
The same goes here. If you tell the right people how good you are, and you have the right public relations professionals, you’ll get sales. It’s about the cult, sometimes, especially in the Web space.
This post is kind of old, but still, why did they publish this?
I’ve been a product manager, and laughing at your customer base was something that you did over a couple of beers with your customer service representives, not in a blog post. We all agree users in the end are stupid, but you aren’t supposed to make them feel that way.
I remember the days of the users doing something stupid, and then correcting the issue through a better feature development or more help text. This is like airing your dirty laundry, and what’s a bit more troubling about this is that it’s not like this is a free service — users are paying for this product.
They don’t hesitate to take shots at other sites — and yet seems reticient to deal with listening to their users. Let’s face it, the only person that can get away with that is Steve Jobs, and I don’t see him working anytime soon at 37signals.
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting platform and runs both the UX Drinking Game and Startup Drinking Game | More | Contact
If you're a UX Designer in San Francisco, ping me at Twitter. I want to add you to a list I have there.
