The pulse of Alexander Interactive

I am an unabashed fan of 37 Signals’ Highrise contact management tool. For concentrated, straightforward sales and CRM, it’s an ideal web app. Between notes, contact information and useful task reminders, it’s a key part of how Canopy does business, and by and large it’s a delight to use.

Today Highrise rolled out LinkedIn profile integration, a nice idea that they say has been regularly requested. But the implementation is cumbersome and disappointing to the point where I’m probably not going to use it.

Here’s why:

It’s reactive. LinkedIn profiles are only added to Highrise profiles once the user has pasted the appropriate link from LinkedIn into a text field in the contact’s edit screen. There’s no dynamic list generation, no scanning the LinkedIn database, and more importantly, no recognition of post-login URLs. Which means…

It’s cumbersome. For each contact, I have to go to linkedin.com, find the right individual, click through to his or her full profile page, and copy the public link off the web page to add to Highrise. Grabbing URLs out of my status bar won’t work, because Highrise can’t reconcile them. (I suppose one could just find public profiles via Google, but that doesn’t seem practical at all.)

It’s account-reliant. Despite the need to use public profile links, Highrise and LinkedIn require users to log into both systems to coordinate data. But:

It’s not relational. Highrise doesn’t care if you have connected with the people whom you access on LinkedIn-via-Highrise. It also doesn’t care about your accuracy. I had no problem, for example, dropping LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman’s LinkedIn profile onto my own Highrise contact page. This doesn’t much matter when it’s being manually updated, assuming the user is careful, but it’d sure be nice to hit the right David Wertheimer by cross-referencing company, title and location data between the two services.

This seems like a great idea missing some key integration points that would make it as practical and useful as the rest of the system.

Ai took its second team business trip by train this week and came away completely satisfied with the experience.

We took the Acela from New York to Washington, D.C., a strikingly fast ride (2:40) compared with driving (4:15) and even Acela’s own New York-Boston line (12 miles shorter yet an hour longer). Our entire trip was downright pleasant.

What makes the Acela so great?

1. Convenience. Train stations in the northeast are located downtown with ample taxi and subway access. (Compare with air travel: no hour-long $40 cab rides out of town.)
2. Hassle. Or, rather, the lack of it: no security checks, no traffic, no boarding by zone. Just a queue to get onto the train, and the odd requirement that we sign our tickets for the conductor. 
3. Comfort. The Acela is roomy: tall ceilings, wide aisles, lots of places to stand and stretch. The snack car is a pleasant walk and is staffed by inviting attendants. We grabbed four-seat work areas with fold-out tables, which allowed us to collaborate, and hang out, as a group. A beverage cart brought us sodas and Entenmann’s cookies (!). The Acela’s seats are on par with most airlines, but with better legroom.
4. Access. For three hours, we had respectable connections to the rest of the world via Verizon and AT&T cell phones. Acelas don’t have wifi yet, but we tethered a laptop to an bluetooth EVDO connection and were able to email and share files comfortably.
5. Time. Going to the airport for a shuttle flight would have taken roughly the same amount of time as our train ride. But instead of spending most of that time in transit–driving to the airport, waiting on security lines, sitting without electronic equipment before takeoff, taxiing to a gate, taking another car into town–our three hours were spent comfortably, in a single seat, with laptops and phones fully operational.

Which is not to say rail travel is perfect. The Acela is far from its high-speed potential, and suffers from Amtrak’s notorious reliability problems: on our Boston trip our train completely died in Rhode Island, then began running smoothly 15 minutes later. But at least there we were on the ground, looking at foliage, enjoying our comfy cabin.

Our trip was a success, and so was the commute. Here’s to hoping President Obama’s high-speed rail concept actually goes somewhere.

By
Michael Piastro, Senior IA/UXD

Jakob
Nielsen recently featured Ai client Action Envelope in his Alertbox article
“Mega Drop-Down Navigation Menus Work Well.” The
usability guru is a fan of what he is calling “Mega Drop-Down
Menus,” as opposed to traditional DHTML dropdown menus, which
he warns against using. Here is a screen shot featuring the
actionenvelope.com Mega Drop-Down from the article:

So: usability guru Jakob Nielsen , whose books, articles, and reports
I’ve read, whose evidence I’ve cited to clients,
and whose influence is hard to miss in the IA/UXD usability pond,
likes the mega dropdown Ai implemented for Action Envelope in our
last site redesign. By extension, he likes me. He really, really
likes me.

Seriously though, it’s not all roses and tweets. Mr. Nielsen goes on to
advise us not to put GUI widgets or other interface elements “that
involve more advanced interaction than simply click-to-go.”
Then the pain starts:

Action
Envelope offers a complete login mini-screen within the navbar’s “My
Account” drop-down. It would be better to simply have a
one-click “My Account” link that takes users to a
full-featured page that supports login for existing users. (Better
still: put this link in the utility nav, which is where people
actually look for it according to eyetracking research.)

Ouch. Here is the offending Mega Drop Down, from the Action Envelope site (the same drop down appears if you mouse over Reorder Center):

Mr. Nielsen’s critique sounds like great advice, and problems with mouse over/mouse out scenarios on DHTML menus have bedeviled many a web site user.

But
that’s where the Mega in the Mega Drop Downs helps-by
virtue of size, these dropdowns may be less likely to suffer
than these types of issues. And there may be site-specific
considerations whereby a login form and a little AJAX in a mega
dropdown buys us some functionality that enhances site functionality
in a measurable way (namely, log in success, order conversion, repeat
orders, and AOV). The only way to know for sure is to implement a solution, and test.

Here is what you would see behind the My Account and Reorder Center Mega dropdowns if you were logged in:

In the original design, these logged in dropdowns would have used AJAX to populate the appropriate data without a page reload once the user
logged in (using the same drop down), and keeping the user in context
of the current page. In other words, user gets Mega Drop Down
with login form, user submits form, user gets relevant My
Account/Reorder dashboards in context, in place, and without a page reload.

To understand
why this approach was taken, and why it works so well,
you’d need to understand Action Envelope’s business and
typical usage patterns. Action Envelope is largely a
business-to-business site. Repeat orders are important and common.
Workflow associated with providing artwork for a customized envelope
or paper order is important, and typically a customer has one (or a
very few) orders that they would wish to reorder, or provide artwork
for.

Oftentimes a user will submit an order, receive an email notifying them that they need to provide artwork for their order, and return to
the site within a few days. If they are still logged in, a simple
mouseover action will reveal their recent order that they need to take
action on.

In
the previous incarnation of the Action Envelope site (which Ai also
designed), the my account link was a small link in the utility
navigation, and exhibited a ‘standard’ behavior. Namely, you click it,
you go to a log in screen. Since the redesign, conversion is up,
average order is up, and reorders are up. Login success vs failure rate
doesn’t seem to have changed at all.

While none of these stats can be causally related to our design for the my account and reorder center
Mega Drop Downs (we haven’t A/B tested the simpler implementation in
order to be able to assign causality), our solution is based on the
specific needs of the Action Envelope site and its users. This, in
itself, is certainly a best practice Mr. Nielsen would recommend. So
perhaps Jakob does like Action (Envelope) after all.

I’ve spent much of the week battling a nasty cold. One of the last things I expected when sent to the pharmacy was to think about user experience. Doc said, “Get some Mucinex D,” so off I went.

But what is Mucinex D? I asked for it at my usual pharmacy but they only had plain Mucinex and Mucinex DM. This sent me to the nearby chain pharmacy, where my head began to spin.

Mucinex–a basic guaifenesin expectorant–comes in seven varieties. There’s plain; D, with a decongestant (requiring the pharmacist keep it behind the counter); DM, with cough suppressants; a dedicated cough version; a maximum strength version; a severe-cold formula; and a nasal spray. Each has its own color scheme.

This theme plays out similarly throughout the entire cough-and-cold aisle. Every product has multiple versions that exist in part to satisfy finicky customer demand but mostly to consume shelf space at competitors’ expense. Thus the pharmacy becomes an experiment in patience at the exact point in time when pharmacy customers want speed and efficiency.

I ultimately got my Mucinex D (and a righteous bout of post-nasal drip, thank you very much). But I also got overwhelmed. Is this the best way we’ve found to treat the sick?

Someone at Blockbuster thought it would be great if its movie categories were easily found, perhaps with on-rollover navigation.

Someone else at Blockbuster insisted on preserving the company’s intricate category format.

Which begat this second-level menu item:

Click to zoom, and note the many “See All” links. Even at this level of detail Blockbuster couldn’t fit everything in.

Original is here. Happy browsing.

I had just finished a terrific bowl of Farro Soup at Spiga, a small Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side, when the kitchen runner appeared with the entrees for our table.

My wife got the orata. Placed in front of me was a large, cheesy, white mass of pasta–not at all what I had expected.

“What’s this?” I asked the runner.

“That’s the lasagna,” he said.

“That’s not fettucine bolognese?”

“No sir, it’s lasagna.”

“But I ordered the fettucine.”

At this my wife piped up. “No you didn’t,” she said. “You ordered lasagna.”

“I did?”

“You totally ordered lasagna.”

“But I hate lasagna.”

“Well, you ordered it.”

“Why would I order lasagna?”

The runner, equal parts confused and amused, asked me if I wanted to exchange dishes.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Can I? I mean, if this is what I ordered–”

“I can check, it’s no problem, if you don’t want this I will see.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling extremely guilty. “Please let the chef know it’s my mistake and not yours. I’ll eat the lasagna if I have to, since I guess I ordered it.”

“Oh, you ordered it,” my wife said.

“I think it’s okay. Let me see,” said the runner. He took the lasagna and disappeared into the kitchen. My wife gave me a who-are-you-and-what-did-you-do-with-my-husband look, and we waited.

Not five minutes later the runner reappeared with a piping hot plate of fettucine bolognese. I thanked him profusely.

“We’re happy to do it,” the runner said. “The chef said if it’s busy, we might not be able to, but since it’s quiet we want you to eat what you like.”

The chef voluntarily took back an $18 entree for no reason other than a customer’s mental error. No allergies, no spoilage, no poor preparation–just “oops, I didn’t want that,” corroborated laughingly, yet replaced at no additional charge, and with a smile. Several smiles, in fact, as our waiter ribbed me good-naturedly after the fettucine arrived.

In exchange, our very good meal became an outstanding one. The flavorful meal was enhanced by the excellent service. We left with a story to tell about our experience, which will encourage friends to try the restaurant for themselves. We will certainly be back.

Does your business dedicate itself to this level of customer satisfaction? What would you gain by doing so? What are you missing by not?

Someone please tell the clever folks at Chase that this whole no-envelope deposit thing is a stroke of genius.

Earlier this week I went to the Chase ATM across the street from Ai HQ to deposit a check. Pen in hand, I headed for the slips-and-envelopes counter. But the slots were all empty. Almost instantly, a Chase employee welcomed me to No-Envelope ATMs and led me through the process.

Here’s how it works:

1. Start your transaction the usual way.
2. Press Deposit, and instead of preparing an envelope, the ATM prompts you to insert your check in a new slot on the upper-left-hand corner of the machine.
3. The ATM scans the check, then presents an image of it on screen. It simultaneously uses OCR to read the amount on the check, and asks for confirmation: “This check appears to be for $5.28. Is that correct?”
4. Confirm the value and the deposit is finished.
5. Ask for a receipt, and the printout now includes a miniature reprint of the check for your records.

This fulfills another piece of the theoretical promise that ATMs bring to banking: speed and simplicity. No more filling out forms; no more stuffing envelopes; no more needing to remember 12-digit account numbers or carry deposit slips. I already see the previous generation of ATMs as hopelessly obsolete.

A side note of praise, too, for Chase’s smooth rollout. The woman in the vestibule intercepted me before I could get confused, and walked me pleasantly through the deposit process without waiting for me to ask for help. She was fully briefed on the nuances of the upgrade and enjoyed the wow factor that came with it. Nice work all around.

Coca-Cola is test marketing new aluminum bottles. I was handed one on Fifth Avenue today by a promo squad.

To Coke, this must be genius: better branding of their iconic bottle, with lower shipping and breakage costs versus glass, and a handsome visual appeal. The majority of the market is already drinking its soda from aluminum cans, anyway.

But to me, it’s the inverse of the ideal: I’m drinking soda with the usual tin-can aftertaste, in a lesser form factor. The aluminum bottle has neither the lightweight flexibility of plastic nor the squat sturdiness of a can.

Curious: am I in the minority on this? Certainly Coke could have a big success on its hands, since people are used to aluminum and the design is a novelty. But I don’t see the long-term advantage.

My wife bought an iPhone 3G on Friday morning. To do so, she had to have a friend sweet-talk her way into cutting a long line at our local AT&T store. My wife then took home a partially activated phone and, like everyone else, waited hours to get it to work.

Much has been written about the botched iPhone activation process surrounding the 3G/2.0 launch this weekend. But the entire experience of buying an iPhone is bordering on broken.

Apple generates extreme amounts of hype for its products, and the gotta-have-it nature of its launches creates untenable demand curves. This leads to a scarcity effect that, for Apple, has been hugely beneficial in its promotional efforts, and in its bottom line.

How should the user experience of first-day demand be viewed?

To hard-core fans, buying an iPhone is a singular thrill, complete with risk/reward and time/money trade-offs. Scoring an iPhone on Day One gives a person bragging rights, an invaluable perk atop the value of the phone itself.

The millions of iPhone buyers that don’t want this experience are stuck waiting until the hype dies down. But despite their disinterest in the crowds and lines, they probably don’t want to wait.

The iPhone appeals to Americans’ overwhelming desire to be first to experience something. Movies generate nearly half their box-office sales the first weekend; albums’ biggest sales come the week of their debuts. (Internet geeks know this feeling all too well.) This now applies to, of all things, a cellular phone, as I myself experienced last summer. (Full disclosure: despite my continued criticism of iPhone trends, I remain a satisfied iPhone owner who bought his phone on Day Two last summer.)

But scarcity and “firstness” can combine in ugly ways. To wit, my wife’s friend cutting a long line to get a coveted phone within hours of its release, a scenario which no doubt occurred elsewhere. This leads to even greater frustration for those waiting on line, and whose firstness is being usurped.

Layer onto this the technical problems Apple experienced. How does it feel to purchase a brand new, unusable phone? To be forced to open a sleek device and remove its SIM card just to make phone calls on an old phone? For some the first-day difficulty dissolves into the background as the satisfation of the iPhone UX takes hold, but for others the memory, and dissatisfaction, remains.

And don’t forget the basics. AT&T has not worked out a system for transferring SIM card data into an iPhone, so lengthy address books are obliterated, requiring immediate data entry. And the iTunes paradigm creates multiple payment paths: to AT&T for phone services and to Apple for everything else. Perhaps it has to be this way, but it’s an ungainly system for users who want to analyze their usage patterns and costs.

This is not to say that the iPhone isn’t a masterful device (it is) or that Apple could have done much differently (besides staggering the 2.0 software rollout, not really). It’s simply an observation of the sociological effects of consumer demand, and the potential drawbacks of immersing oneself in said demand.

Remember, when all is said and done, it’s just a phone.

Editor’s note: today marks the first of our UX Critic features, where we’ll be giving rapid-fire critiques of multiple players in a single industry vertical. Today we start with online photo-stamp creation, for soon-to-be obvious reasons….

One of the subtly fun developments of the online era is the introduction of photo stamps, where individual consumers can custom-create official US postage. Having started and stopped a few years ago, the segment has commoditized nicely, with even the US Post Office offering its own online and offline stamp-creation tools.

This writer, having recently had a baby, and having been sent by the new mother to buy stamps at the post office and found a fairly abysmal selection of 42-cent stamps, decided to make his own. (The original image can be viewed here; the stamp snapshots are included below.)

First stop: Zazzle, the popular custom printer. Zazzle’s online tools are easy to use and extremely fast. I was able to upload multiple images, move and size them with ease, and compare multiple images atop each other. Their discount pricing model kept costs reasonable ($12.95 a sheet for 10 sheets of 20 stamps). I liked the 24-hour turnaround time. But the large ZAZZLE.COM imprint on the stamp turned me off, so I kept looking.

I next went to photo.stamps.com, the official outlet of the US Post Office. But their stamp layout, a large square, didn’t serve my image well. (It should be noted that zazzle.com seemed locked into a horizontal layout–not useful for vertical images.) The site required registration for anything beyond basic image positioning, so I was unable to compare pricing without going into the FAQ–they turn out to be $14.95 for my quantity. They also don’t ship for 3-5 days.

Last stop: yourstamps.com. Their site identified my image as horizontal and created a layout that matched–nice! They had custom borders and designs–nice! But they don’t have discount pricing, making my order nearly twice as expensive ($18.95/sheet) as stamps.com and Zazzle. Worse, the site logo switched twice midstream, from Fujifilm to Cooper Imaging and then to Epixel, making me nervous about placing an order there. Finally, the site needs 7-10 days to process orders, even for local pickup. Too many negatives despite the visual appeal.

In the end, despite that ZAZZLE.COM imprint, their site had the most compelling offer. They gave the best price, layout, and turnaround time, and their tool was a cinch to use. Even a few of these would be good differentiators; having them all on one site is a real victory for the Zazzle team.