Let’s take the frustration expressed my last post about cash registers and change to the
e x t r e m e !

Why do Sydney’s bartenders give me beer change on an dented old aluminium tray?

Every time I go to accept my change in the ’standard’ way,with my hand, a wafer thin silver disk carrying my money is carefully manoeuvred around and under my cupped hand, to rest on the sopping wet bar mat.  As I struggle to pick up the dripping wet coins and notes I think,
‘Who was the ‘tool’ that came up with this idea?’

Does this inane practice generate more tips for staff because poor customers can’t be bothered picking up their coins from the champagne and vodka soaked plate? I’m glad our bank notes are plastic now! Could you image the mess with paper?

This pisses people off and often hear people say, ‘I’d tip them if I really wanted to anyway, but I’m not going to now!’

This morning I was at the bakery. A woman being served asked the assistant if the pile of change in her was the right amount. ‘Yes’,  the assistant said looking at the register, ‘you gave me a 50 and your change is $35.30.’

This reminded me that every time I go into a shop and buy something for cash I get a little irritated with the customer service in these technological times.

I remember the very first time I served a customer in the fruit shop where I had my first job. I did exactly what the shop assistant I just described did this morning.

However, in my case, an old grey-haired customer saw me do this and gave me my first lesson in customer service. He said, ‘Don’t do it like that! Do this:

1) Take the customer’s money

2) Put it in the drawer

3) To work out the change start with the total of the bill and put coins into your hand smallest to largest each time bringing the amount in your hand closer to the Total.

4) When you get to a round 5 dollar amount do the same with the notes.

5) Hand the money back to the customer in the same order - coins then notes. You can count them or not, it doesn’t matter because the customer will know how much you’ve given them.

Since the invent of cash registers that do the sums for you, people have forgotten how to do the simple arithmetic and clearly show you the amount of change you have in your hand. And, as a bonus, if the coins are given back first then they don’t slip off the notes onto the ground!

This a good example of how a technology that should be more reliable and consistent in calculating the correct change, may not be in practice, because it removes an important error checking process. 

Maybe when I have [more] grey hairs I’ll give assistants, like the one this morning, a little lesson.

At university I did two Theses. I remember feeling zero guilt for using someone else’s ideas, so long as I gave them due reference. I do that online now, it’s called a link.

Thanks for linking

It’s interesting how software can completely change your daily habits. Sometimes for the worse!

When I got my new Mac recently, I installed session manager for Firefox. Yesterday, at the AIMIA Experience Web3 - Embracing the Semantic Web function, I realised that one decision during the session manager install (with just one click of the mouse) had changed my daily behaviour dramatically.

I was chatting to a friend about how I had stopped using Netvibes.  He asked ‘why? It’s so cool!’ And I said, ‘well it’s not set as my homepage any more.’  ‘Yeh, but you’re missing out James’, he said.

Then I realised that I had set Firefox to recover my previous browsing session upon start up. See below:

This meant that I had :

• Stopped using Netvibes
• Stopped reading my RSS feeds
• Stopped reading the daily news

And most importantly:

• I was stuck in my yesterday. Forever looking back at what I was doing when I last shut down. 

In fact, every now and then I accidentally closed off the previous days efforts and thought to myself ‘Mmm - what am I missing out on?’

‘Nothing you idiot! That was yesterday.’

This morning I changed it back to this.

And set my homepage tabs to:

The untitled one on the right makes it easy to open a new url quickly.

My digestion (of information) has already improved and I am living more in the moment.

Are you ’stuck’ in a place your shouldn’t be with any of your apps?

P.S. I love Skitch for Mac… How easy is it to upload retouched images to ur blog! Thanks Mick!

‘With the varied fields in technology, as we strive to look forward into the future - our minds are still attempting to literally un-boggle themselves simultaneously - while somehow keeping up with the future advancements in technologies that are being introduced into our lives endlessly… right now.’ Write on - Hubpages‘.

I found this quote on mmajers hubpage.

Mike Kuniavsky, a website usability expert, said:

“Your customers are not you. They don’t look like you, they don’t think like you, they don’t do the things that you do, they don’t have your expectations or assumptions. If they did, they wouldn’t be your customers; they’d be your competitors.”

Technology is a fantastic enabler.  Look at how much it has improved communication and access to services, especially for people who are disabled. But how much time do you waste with technology everyday?

Across the world it is millions of lives worth of time,

everyday.

On a transactional website it is just the same! If things don’t happen in the ORDER that people expect, and WHEN they expect it, then they will get frustrated, leave, not recommend it to their friends and not return.

Common processes, like that of a restaurant experience, form in society and are know as Social Scripts. Vgotsky (1963) suggests that they are a form of higher mental function that help us to create meaning from social interactions. And Ratner (1996) adds to social script theory and suggests that these social scripts are motivated.

Activity Theory describes expected social interactions at a finer level of detail, in a specific context and can be is used to inform artificial intelligence systems. It also notes that some aspects of the social interaction may go completely unnoticed by the people in it.  For example, you may not see the chefs in a restaurant who are preparing your meal, but without them you would have no meal!

When building technology interfaces we must understand the Social Script that already exists in a particular context of use. For example, if you are building an Internet Banking website for the first time, you must understand the Social Script that already exists in a bank and all the things that contribute to a successful banking outcome. Remember, we used to do it face-to-face!

Have you experienced any ‘broken’ Social Scripts online lately?

References and example scripts of dining in other contexts are listed in this article

Check out this YouTube clip of some guys using a Tobii x50 eye tracker in a panoramic set up for all kinds of fun immersive applications.

I found this post through Google Alerts

Christina Laun from virtualhosting.com has pulled together some facts about design that are directly observable from eyetracking studies.

1. Text attracts attention before graphics. Make sure your website is designed so that the most important parts of your text are what is most prominent.
2. Initial eye movement focuses on the upper left corner of the page. Keep the habits of your readers in mind if you want your site to be successful.
3. Users initially look at the top left and upper portion of the page before moving down and to the right. Users generally scan webpages in the shape of an ‘F’. Make sure the important elements of your content are located in these key areas to keep readers engaged. 
4. Readers ignore banners. 
5. Fancy formatting and fonts are ignored.
6. Show numbers as numerals. Readers will find it much easier to find factual information on your site if you use numerals instead of writing out numbers.
7. Type size influences viewing behavior. Want to change how people look at your page? Change the size of your font. Smaller fonts increase focused viewing behavior while larger fonts encourage scanning. 
8. Users only look at a sub headline if it interests them. Don’t put in subheadlines just to stick to a particular format–make sure that they are relevant and interesting. You can also help yourself out by making sure they include keywords that will bring search engines to your site.
9. People generally scan lower portions of the page. Highlight certain sections or create bulleted lists so information is easy to find and read on your page.
10. Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones. Keep paragraphs and sentences short unless context mandates otherwise.
11. One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi-column formats.
12. Ads in the top and left portions of a page will receive the most eye fixation. Ads placed next to the best content are seen more often. 
13. Text ads were viewed mostly intently of all types tested. 
14. Bigger images get more attention.
15. Clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixation.
16. Headings draw the eye.
    
17. Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons and menus. Because of this, you’ll want to put in some extra time making sure that yours are well-designed.
18. Lists hold reader attention longer. Use numbers or bullet points to highlight important information within your content. 
19. Large blocks of text are avoided.
    
20. White space is good.
    
21. Navigation tools work better when placed at the top of the page.