At the Hand Wash

A well designed wash area will not leave you wet. But many patron bathrooms (I use this term instead of public restrooms, which are usually larger, and free to non-customers and customers alike), even when amply supplied with drying devices, cause an irreversible water flow ("Water Trickle") onto the arm.

Here’s how:

1. Wash area is in small 'one man' bathroom, as you might find in a restaurant.
2. Wash area uses paper towel dispenser (it is irrelevant how the sheets are dispensed).
3. Dispenser sits on the wall next to sink, about shoulder to head high.
4. User is wearing a long sleeved Oxford shirt.
5. After washing, user raises arms to retrieve paper sheets.
6. Position of arms (vertical) causes water from hands and wrists to trickle down, under the sleeves of shirt.

The problem is the location of the paper towel supply. It is too high. A smart user knows to arrange drying material before starting the wash. That is, to pre-pull or pre-prompt (depending on manual or automatic). The effect is to minimize the post-wash 'wetfetch' period.

But despite this planning, the user is penalized because the very act of collecting the pre-pulled towels causes the Water Trickle. A user can get around this, if there is a place BELOW chest-level to place the towels. If a restroom is small, of the restaurant one-shooter variety described above, then it should:

1. Set some loose (freed) towels on a low-level, near the sink.

If such a bathroom neither has a ready supply at low-level, nor has ample space on or near sink for the user to place pre-collected towels, then the user may avoid Water Trickle:

1. Manually or auto ready a good stretch of sheets.
2. After washing, reach for the towels avoiding raising arms.
3. Tack horizontally, hands first.
4. OR: One efficient maneuver is to press hands together as in prayer--ELBOWS OUT.
5. Then raise hands toward towels, like a pincer.

Good luck.

Home bathrooms have it right regarding the level of the towel. The rack is positioned at just the right height, allowing for a quick dry-off....so long as there is a clean towel to which the user believes he is entitled to use.

Craigs List: Red Marker in hand, where do I circle?

It's not easy to criticize Craig's List. Most everyone wants to meet Craig, lock his head endearingly, and order him rounds of Brooklyn Lager. And his list? Oh gosh... the original copy should be under glass alongside the Constituion. Three Cheers for CL! Buyers love it. Sellers adore it. Designers cite it as an example of 'what works'... made by people 'who get it.' Get what? Clean, simple, oh so elegant design. Outkast perhaps had CL in mind when writing"So fresh and so clean clean." But there is room for improvement.

Users who want to save a Posting to read later have only one choice: "Email this Posting to a Friend." Savvy users know that they can Email themselves. But what a chore! It's a 6 step process::
1. Click link "Email Posting to Friend."
2. Input Friend address,
3. Input Your address.
4. Click Submit button.
5. View Confirm page.
6. Click to return to listing (or use Back button 2 steps).

What a drag. After doing that for each Posting, you can then log into your email, and check out the posts. And what if you seek to view the postings offline? Often when reading posts, I like to make a copy for my Desktop, to view in Word. How do I accomplish that? Well, by Copying and Pasting of course. And yes, there is room for error! Often I forget to grab the headline, or contact info. My bad, right?

Or, maybe it's Craig's bad. Maybe his list is not perfect. Perhaps endless rounds of free beer are not the best medicine for designing user interfaces. Welp, Craig. Let me be give it to you straight (as unpopular as that term may be among your list's social set):: it is high time you make it easy to SAVE POSTINGS.

When scanning Print ads, users circle ads. We should be able to do so here too. Here's what I suggest:

1. The mouse is a Red Marker. (This is easy to accomplish. Yes, it is a graphical enhancement, but it doesn't affect load time or screen appearance, just the mouse).
2. To 'circle' an ad, the user can 'make a circle' (in practice, click anywhere on the headline) or click a "save post" link atop and below the posting.
3. A right column on Screen: displays saved ads.
4. Right column contains links:
Send saved ads to Email.
Save to Desktop (Word or Text Doc)
Delete (checked) listings.

Oh, Craig. You can get this right. Hasn't EBay given you any advice? No. Just a lot of beer. What?! You prefer Anchor Steamer?! I, I didn't know. I just assumed you dug Booklyn Beh. I forgot you're from San Fran. Well, you've got kindred spirits out in Booklyn. Make it easier to save posts, and you will be all the more loved!

Pandora: How Long Can We Sing this Song?

Pandora is a wonderful service. If you haven't already begun using this nifty Music Genome based personal radio player, you ought to.

Today I point out one glaring problem with the player :: it does not list the running time of the songs it plays. This information could appear within the individual song box which contains the album art, song title, album title and artist. Or it could appear in the Music controller, which is just a Play / Pause toggle button. Since most media players include total time, as well as elapsed AND time remaining, Pandora would be wise to do so. Hec, even to just mimic iTune's interface.


Another omission is Year of Release. It would be nice to know the year when each song was produced or released. For select songs, it appears in a Detail Page. But for some reason it doesn't appear for most songs. And it never appears in the song's box (above). Pandora invites users to "Guide Us." But, Pandora could do a little more guiding itself.

Talkin Wall Street Journal Blues

The WSJ Online has long been cheered for its ability to charge and collect subscription fees, and for its heaps of information. I'm glad to fork over $10 per month. The site refreshes and reloads every few minutes with breaking news that often directly effects my investments in Big Business.
There are a couple Interface Issues to call out::

1. iFrame on homepage doesn't Auto-Reload. While the homepage refreshes itself--and timestamps itself, its right column iFrame, which contains each user's "My Journal," a personalized collection of links and news, does not. My "My Journal", lists certain stock prices. When I see the time stamp on the homepage, and then look at my stock list, I am inclined to assume I have the latest prices. The iFrame should reload. Also, the list of stocks should be Time Stamped as well. No reason this important piece of info should not be included atop EACH quote.
Example: "price as of 3:24pm"
Some other news sources just give the vague, relative "up to 15 minute delay." Useless. Just give me the time at which that info was collected so I can compare it to present:
Example: "Time is 3:24pm EST. Price as of 3:18pm EST"

The WSJ does give the time stamp when you search a company's quote. Just not in the "My Online Journal" portfolios.

**
The second 'issue' regards the online journal using the exact copy as the print version. It is common for the Editorial Board to refer to an accompanying column. They accomplish this, in print, with a parenthetical "See Above" or "See Below." Example: ("for more on why lower taxes are always best, see Mitch Wagner's piece above")

Ummm, hello? On the Internet, that is exactly the kind of reference that could be LINKED. The accompanying piece is not "above" or "below"--it simply is where it is, and can be goten to through a hyper link. By leaving it as is, the Online Journal turns the paper's helpful hint into a confusing challenge. Perhaps the Journal could hire someone to vet the articles for possible hyperlinks.

**

The third problem is a style 'issue.' At the top of each page, there is a link to see a Print Friendly version. This helpful feature is cleverly sponsored by "Toshiba" which apparently is hoping to make inroads in the printing 'space.' (Hey, good for them. Why desert an entire industry to HP just because HP is kicking butt. DONT give up!) Congrats to the WSJ account exec who brought in that deal... Anyhoo: the problem with the Print Version of a Page is that it needlessly includes some Elements that SHOULD NOT PRINT!!

Prime Example: Video Player. Many articles have an embedded Bright Cove video player to play a clip related to the 'piece.' If the user aims to Print the Piece, then she does not need to see a picture of a video player. This element should not be displayed.



Maybe the new owner of the WSJ will demand a new style sheet. Or, maybe the web team will insist on complete Independence from Ownership, as a condition for signing onto any deal. Yeah, that seems fair-- a CSS oversight committee.

Blogger Profiles: Only One per User

Ahh, Blogger. I'm back! I've been away for a week, in Ireland, and in that time I have forgotten one of the things which bugs me about Blogger: it allows just one profile per user, rather than multiple profiles, to be assigned to various Blogs to which the user contributes.

Pretty confounding, the policy. A blog is specialized, geared to a particular interest from a unique point of view. Should not the Profile likewise be customised to fit the blog?

I have a second blog, in which I ramble about most anything, in a 'freewheelin' manner. The blog can be a bit informal and insulting, providing a bulwark against me ever obtaining employment by a company that has U.S. government contracts. Readers of the blog who click "About Me->profile" will see that I'm a "user interface designer." Why? Because that is the profile I created when creating this here blog. When I realized Blogger was all about a UNIFIED BEING, enforcing a one to many relationship among profiles and blogs, I retained the new profile.

Now, I think I'll remove the "modular" altogether, and insert custom HTML in each blog's pane, that identifies a unique profile.

In the meantime, the brains at Google might consider allowing multiple profiles.