Aron 2 Blue

Babel, An Arcane History, by R. F. Kuang Alternate history Oxford, England, 1830s, where the mismatches in translation between languages powers magic. The total obsession with language is a central theme.  It was a hard book to read. The very likable main characters always seemed on the brink of a happy resolution, until crushing twists and turns dragged them to a darker place. It can be taken as a parable on the modern techno-state, and the absolute reliance we have on all forms of technology. What happens when the modern support structure breaks down? Well, New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, for example. The people at the top of the pyramid only care about ordinary people as pawns, laborers, inputs to the system, to be exploited. I was shocked at how easy it was for the British noble class to dismiss and minimize the value of all other people and cultures. I was wishing for some happier resolution for Robin and his best friend Ramy, but I think that I knew it would not have bee...

The town Chapel Hill now uses three separate charging station types at town facilities, which means three separate apps. A user thinks: how annoying. A UX designer thinks: opportunity! The ChargeUp app had me swearing at it this morning. I had used it once before, and remembered scanning a QR code on the station to get started. I open the app and click the big "Charge" button at the top right: This dumps me to a screen "We notice you haven't added a vehicle yet" - what? I didn't have to last time? The add vehicle screen has a list of every car company that has made a chargeable vehicle. Why can't I type so I don't have to scroll to "T"? OK, now I have a vehicle, can I charge? I can't click the vehicle to charge. If I hit the back arrow, I'm adding a vehicle again. I click "add" and now I have a second vehicle? What? **swearing commences** Are there other buttons I can click? Oh, there's navigation at the bottom of the...

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!