But there are other times when you should really sit down and listen to what your customers are telling you.  Recently someone decided to take the time to create an entire website dedicated to identifying problems with a product they USE. Dear Adobe collects peoples grips about any and all adobe products then lets other people vote for how important the problems is to them.

After skimming through the top 50 items you can see that Adobe’s Update process for Acrobat is a sore spot for a lot of people.  If Adobe is smart they would try and react swiftly to this by LISTENING to what the users are saying and resoliving their problems.  Sure not everything in the list can be corrected(pricing) but a lot of the ideas are common sense items that Adobe has lost site of.

One of the flaws that has been plaguing me is a missing artist on my play list.  This sounds stupid but I thought I was loosing my mind because I could swear that it was there and that I have heard it play when I was using it as background music.  I finally have conclusive proof that it is there and in fact, there is an odd bug that plagues the iPhone.

Basically I can look the song up by its name but when trying to find it by artist there is no listing.  The really odd part is that for this given artist (Pepper) it occurs on my wife’s iPhone as well.

Is Apple trying to boycott this particular artists? (joking)

The comments section was of course filled with numerous suggestions of how the developers should have spent the money.  One theme that stood out to me was to spend the money on hiring a graphic designer to come in and update the look of their site or perhaps a marketing firm to help them get the word out.

This really resonated with me as I have been contemplating why so few designers donate their time and energy to free products.  It is intriguing that so many great developers are willing to give up their free time to create amazing products while there appears to be a dramatic shortage of designers, marketers, technical writing, and other “support”(for lack of better term) personnel willing to donate their time.

Is it because only developers are using the products?  This certainly isn’t the case considering some of the greatest applications out there are open source.  Perhaps instead it is because the products these professionals are currently using are not opens source.

Perhaps more important than dwelling on why there is a shortage we should be looking for a solution.  I have on many occasions made comments to friends and colleagues about perhaps supporting an open source product by creating a comp, or giving them usability advice.

With that in mind I am guilty of not contributing as much as I should.  Most of my digital exsitence is now dependent on open source products and as of late I have not been contributing.

I recently got an iPhone and in true geek fashion I have been excitedly showing some of its fun features to anyone that will listen.  The one feature that seems to get a lot of reaction from people is the AppStore.  People love how you can simply select something and next thing you know it is installed and ready to go.  No download and unzip, no double click the icon, no restarting, no fuss.

None of them realize that there is an entire operating system that generally functions the same way albeit a lot less flashy.  The package managers in most modern Linux distributions work on the exact same principals.  Simply select an application you wish to install and it will take care of the rest.  Some distributions go even farther and have a bit friendlier interface to their repository such as Ubuntu’s Add/Remove programs.

Perhaps Ubuntu should take a few ques from Apple on this and improve the experience a bit more.  First of all the naming convention is boring and could easily be confused with the traditional Windows area which no one used.  Second they should provide screen shots of the applications. Generally before I install an application I want to know what the interface looks like.  Finally they should try and integrate some social capabilities.  This would allow users to read reviews from other users who may be like them.

These few changes could greatly improve the experience of adding applications.  It could also become a major “selling” point of the OS.

I have returned safely from my first trip to the east coast/south.  It was a trip filled with firsts; first time I have been to the east coast, first time I have ridden on a subway (it didn’t go so well), first time to experience a vastly different culture in my own country, first time seeing a true “uptown”, first time I have used navigation to save a life.

All in all the trip was amazing.  There was a bit of everything and as usual I didn’t take enough pictures.  To check out those that I did take view my flickr map or if you preferr you can just view the regular flickr.

It appears that I am not the only one who thought of this and in fact, someone acted upon it.  Take a look at OurMemoryOf.com.  This is a great idea and I believe it can bring some joy to people in their darkest hours as well as be profitable.  Beyond that they have a great design.

They did take a little different approach than I would have.  They are going to charge for their services where as I would have tried to go a different route for funding the service.  Either way I think it is a great idea and look forward to seeing how well it works.

Just goes to show that when you get a great idea you need to act on it fast

Lately I have been spending a lot of time reading documentation for PHP, MySQL, JQuery, and Adobe AIR.  As I have been pouring over pages and pages of information I have started thinking about documentation’s place in the user experience.

Documentation’s impact on the user experience is often not directly talked about.  When asked, most UX practitioners would probably agree that it is part of the almighty user experience but if pushed further I think you might find that they rarely consider it (assuming they aren’t directly responsible for it).

The problem with this is that when a user turns to documentation for help, the experience has already been compromised.  This means that documentation is the last line of defense, a last opportunity to save the user experience and ultimately save a customer.

So what makes good documentation? Unfortunately I am not qualified to give a complete answer of what “good” documentation is.  I do know that documentation that is incorrect is probably the worst thing that can happen.  If a user is told to do something it better work for them.  If there is a possibility that it won’t work, they should be notified of why it won’t work and more importantly how they can tell if they fall into the “won’t work” category.

One feature I have found to be “good” is user comments presented with the article.  Often I read an article and miss some key component or have questions of how it applies to my situation.  If it is a popular documentation center it isn’t uncommon to find someone else answering my question somewhere in the comments.  A great example of this can be found all over the PHP documentation.

There is a lot more to documentation than meets the eye and its impact on the user expeirence is probably more substantial than most UX practitioners believe.  I have heard things like “If I do my job they(documentation team) will be out of a job”.  This is a foolish and dangerous view.  Even in the best scenario some users will need to read about it to understand it.

This is an amazing step for a web site.  To my knowledge no other popular site has opened their codebase on this level.  Sure there are lots that have open API’s but this is a very very different thing than letting someone access your data through a cloaked application layer.

Instantly closed source proponents have deemed this an ill fated move on the basis that anyone can now read the rating algorithm and there by diminish the sites value by “gaming” the system.  I disagree whole heartedly with this idea.  Sure people will try to deconstruct the algorithm and utilize it for their nefarious agendas but the community will respond quickly by writing a better algorithm.

A great example of this principal can be seen with Linux.  Every piece of code in the operating system is available to anyone who wants it yet it continues to be the most secure operating system out there.  Perhaps Firefox is a better example as it hits close to home and has a large user base(according to the W3schools.com it has almost 40% market share ).  Again anyone can review the code and find exploits.  This happens all the time but because there are 100’s of eyes reviewing the code these exploits are fixed almost immediately by the community.

Overall I think this is a great move on Reddit’s part.  I also believe we will continue to see a large increase in the number of organizations deciding that Open Source is a viable business model.

This one came across my reader today and is definitely worth sharing. If anyone is feeling particularly generous don’t hesitate to drop ship a set to me to match my logo.

The one commercial that I remember being most impressed by showed two children selecting a movie from their TV.  Once the movie was selected it instantly started playing.  At the time (guessing 1996-8) there was nothing like this.  There was no Youtube or iTunes.  There was really no media streaming to speak of.  The average home was just starting to get online.

Fast-forward to present time and it appears AT&T’s commercial is now a reality.  Cox Communications recently launched an on demand service.  This is true on demand television. Simply pick out the show you wish to watch and hit play.  The show starts instantly.  From here you can fast-forward, rewind and even pause.

The system works pretty smooth overall.  This is not to say that there isn’t room for improvement.  There is no search functionality and the navigation is slow and ugly(8 bit).  Both of these could easily be resolved and may be related to my older cable box.  It would also be nice if the shows would remain available for an indefinite amount of time.  Currently they are available for a set period and after that they are replaced by newer programming.

Even with its short commings it is definetly worth a try.  If you are a Cox digital tv subscriber simply turn to channel 01 and enjoy.