Aron 2 Blue

School communications are frustrating. I often find them incomplete or confusing, and I think the schools are tired of hearing parent complaints about communication, too. As a parent, I don't know what technology support the schools have for their communications, so I feel like I might be unfair expecting a bunch from them. On the other hand, I think there are some low hanging fruit the schools could fix. My thoughts: Don't make me click through Shocker, I know, but school emails are not on my must read list. I want something quick and easy to scan, with critical dates and action items front and center. If I get an email like this (links removed): In this week’s issue of  The Weekly SPARK : DPS  Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month DPS  Heroes Celebrated at Duke Football Game Morrison-Danner Named Vice President of National Association … and much more ! I'm probably not going to click. Looking at that summary, maybe that's OK. Communication hub I would love to know what s

I've posted a couple UX observations recently, and they've been examples of a poor experience with a website - widgets or inputs not behaving the most convenient way for me. I started by labeling them as "UX fail", which was blunt, true, and pretty unkind. I realized that I also want to highlight good UX when I encounter it - although one of the functions of good UX is to make you not notice it! It gets out of the way and let's you quickly and efficiently accomplish the task you set out to do, without fuss. A "UX trip" has a double meaning - either the site tripped and stumbled, and possibly fell flat on its face, or I'm highlighting an interesting UX journey, with potentially excellent UX. I hope I find some of those positive examples to share soon. My next post is probably going to pick on Tesla. 0_o (=_=)

I encountered this annoyance registering my child for a class. First, the form asked for birthday and age, and both were required fields. I was tempted to be inconsistent. The real annoyance was the birthday field. It used a pop-up calendar widget, and did not allow me to type in the field. It started with today's date. To select my child's birthday, I had to navigate back through multiple years of months using arrows, which didn't stay in the same place on the screen because different months have different numbers of weeks (rows), so the widget got taller and shorter. If I missed a button, the widget would go away without changing the date. It would be so much easier to just type the date. Even with a required MM/DD/YYYY format, I'd still be happier.

I'm doing the Google UX design course on Coursera, so I've resolved to post UX I notice as a result. Seems fitting to start with a Google product -  Contacts . When I'm looking at a contact, all the phone numbers, email addresses, and even physical addresses are links. The most common reason for me to look up a contact is when I'm filling in a form. I don't want a link to send email or start a phone call - I want to copy to the clip board. Because it's a link, it's hard to select. Try it out - tell me if any of your normal habits for selecting text work. I nearly always have to close a mistakenly opened tab before I get the info I want selected and copied. How to fix? Either make the link separate - like a -> icon next to the text, or add a copy icon next to each of these entries. Still not ideal for the physical multi-line address, because I often need to select one line at a time.  Seems like a good UX workshop topic!

These two books follow the same characters, but have completely different plotlines and focus. They are both excellent for different reasons. Reamde  is a thriller. It takes place over a short span of time, only a few weeks, and has computer viruses and Russian crime lords, leading to international terrorists and spies, with gun battles and noble sacrifices. Fall, or Dodge in Hell  still follows Dodge and Zulu Forthrast, but spans a (very long) lifetime, and explores a radical transformation of all of humanity.  I wanted to write a summary of the major plot points and themes of each book since this was my second read of each, so I wouldn't forget as much as I did the first time. Just notes, really. *** Lots and lots of spoilers follow *** Reamde starts with Zulu and Peter getting mixed up with a crime - Peter sells some hacked accounts to XX, and then XX comes back when his computer is infected with the Reamde virus, and the hacked accounts are encrypted and inaccessible. Zulu trie

 Some stuff I've read: Fall, or Dodge in Hell, by Neal Stephenson Reamde, by Neal Stephenson The Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman I got the humble bundle with all the Discworld e-books, so I read these: The Witches series from Discworld by Terry Pratchett First books of Nightwatch series from Discworld Starter Villain by John Scalzi Ash by Malinda Lo, a Cinderella retelling with a Fae male fairy godmother and a lesbian love interest.