Its simply amazing how technology has bring such new innovations and good gadgets,which can help to remind every thing.

I stayed in a hotel like that. It was a real pain in the backside - I couldn’t charge my laptop, my mobile or anything else while outside the room.

LSF described something I wondered when I read your post. It’s nice that the lights get turned out, but does it actually cut *all* electricity to other devices in the room? Clock/radio? Mini-bar?

Coupling things in this way needs to be well thought out to avoid annoying side-effects.

Perhaps the hack is to always ask for one extra key.

PS: I had to write this message twice because the message telling me I needed JavaScript turned on in order to post came *after* the form fields for writing the post content.

I suspect there is a poka-yoke opportunity here. :)

The card turned off the lights and television and such, but not the A/C, mini-fridge, or alarm clock. I’m not sure if it turned off power to the outlets charging my various devices or not—I only left my laptop in the room (which maintained a 100% battery charge), and kept my phone with me.

Simple example of applied poka-yoke in web apps:

Remember members when they access your site through an email you’ve sent them, so they don’t have to sign in every time you want them to come back. Would decrease user frustration w/ signing in and increase user activity on the site.

Underlying principle is “use what you know”

Side note: Like LSF, I stayed in a hotel (in Lisbon) that turned off ALL power in the room when I left. It was really annoying. I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t have a clock in the room at first… then I realized that they couldn’t have one because the power was usually off.

Regarding poka yokes, there’s obviously a bunch that already exist for web design - cookies that remember your username and password, personalization, etc. Here’s one that doesn’t exist (as far as I know) that I’d love to see: trust my browser. My computer is secure. No one else can use my browser without my permission. So figure out some way for me to set my identity in my browser so that websites that require usernames and passwords will just ask for it from my browser and receive it so that I don’t need to deal with it at all (other than a confirmation message to verify I trust the website). It’s basically a trust certificate that includes my preferred username and password.

I hate remembering usernames and passwords.

Terry,

There is a lot of work being done to solve the problem of identity online. OpenID (openid.org) and Cardspace (not sure if MS still calls it Cardspace or not) are two examples. The idea behind both would optimally have a user experience similar to what you suggest - seamless sign in. From someone who has worked on OpenID in the very early stages, the problem boils down to a complicated technical problem being solved by brilliant engineers without much help from brilliant interaction designers.