ExperienceLab

Parking by phone

Over the weekend I drove out with my girlfriend to wilds of the North Downs near Dorking. I parked up in a car park at the foot of Box Hill, looking forward to the climb to the top. As I went to pay for the parking, I stopped short when I noticed that there was no payment machine. The only option was to pay by phone. This is something I've never done before, but was keen to try out to see how it compared to a regular coin payment machine - plus I didn't have much in the way of choice to pay any other way!

The stepping stones near the Car Park of Doom

The sign at the car park gave a phone number, and a location number - presumably so they knew what car park I'd parked in. I called the number, and was immediately connected to an automated voice recognition system. My heart sank as these are usually fine at recognising that there's a voice speaking to them, but not so great at figuring out what words the voice is saying...

Guardian iPad App: a sign of things to come?

Along with the new Newsstand feature in Apple's latest iOS 5, the Guardian has launched its iPad version of the paper. We've spent the last few weeks using it and thought it's about time we shared our opinion with the world.

OnLive: the future of gaming?

Thursday 22 September saw the UK launch of revolutionary new gaming service: OnLive. 

OnLive is essentially games in the cloud. The advantage being that you don't need an expensive games console to play the games - you can stream them via your computer, and you don't need the latest, more expensive 25-core processor to run the games: if you can watch fullscreen YouTube videos on your computer, then chances are that you can also use OnLive.

So, we decided to give it a go…. 

Dark Patterns

Usability is most associated with helping improve the user experience of a product - making users' lives easier. However, as with all things there is a light and a dark side. In the field of usability this comes in the form of 'dark patterns' - interface quirks that are designed to trick the user into doing something they don't want to do.

I came across a minor, but annoying dark pattern today while booking a business trip on the East Coast Trains site. One of the options during payment is the standard newsletter/promotion tie-in:

What makes a good camera?

I'm a keen amateur photographer. As such, I of course own a digital SLR. I love using it and doing so has taught me a lot about the science and pragmatics of photography.

However, it's not the camera I use the most. So what is? My iPhone 4. And I'm not the only one - the iPhone 4 has now become the most popular camera on Flickr - shown by the yellow line in the chart below.

Trying to cancel

I recently discovered an annoying UI quirk in iCal on my Mac. I had been invited to an event via Exchange. Over email, the attendees had discussed moving the meeting, so decided to drag the event on iCal from one day to the new date. 

As soon as I did it, I saw the following message pop up:

 

Now, I only wanted to move the date on *my* calendar - I didn't want any one else to see the changes, but there seems to be no option to allow me to do this. I only have 2 options to Send the message (presumably to the other attendees) and one to Edit - which gives me no option to avoid sending the message.

The message text itself is quite unclear, and I'm used to seeing a Cancel message on these modal dialog boxes. There's nothing else I can do in iCal until I've dealt with this message, so I ended up Force Quitting the application to avoid sending an update to all the other recipients. 

Simply adding a Cancel button would have solved all my problems.

Of Mice and Men: iPad Scrabble

So I went on holiday to Rhodes with a group of friends in July this year. Late one evening we decided to head to a beach bar and do what any self-respecting group of single guys on holiday should do…we hit the Scrabble board.

But not just any Scrabble board. We played the iPad version. We formed two teams of two, and just to add that extra piece of mojo to attract the attention of any passing Greek goddesses (as if iPad scrabble wasn’t enough), we hooked up our iPhones to the iPad via Bluetooth to use as tile boards. 

This blog post is a summary of the ensuing 2 hours of gritty Scrabble action.  

Enamoured with Inamo?

After a hard week of testing Mark and I decided to get something to eat at Inamo. Inamo is a restaurant where “the control of the dining experience” is placed in the diners’ hands. Instead of customers being given a traditional paper menu and ordering with a waiter or waitress, they use an “interactive ordering system” to browse and select what they want to eat.

  

Manufacturers charging twice for games

There has been a reasonable amount of press in games publications recently about game publishers introducing a fee to purchasers of second hand games. EA is doing it with their "Online Pass" feature" and recently THQ have announced a similar system with their latest UFC game. Andrew Oliver from Blitz games has described the used game market as "a much bigger problem than piracy" on consoles.

It seems perverse that used games are considered a problem. It might be a great business model for game publishers, but for consumers it stinks - I struggle to think of another industry where manufacturers charge for a second-hand product. For example, I'm pretty sure car manufacturers don't see their second hand market this way. They make their money from second hand buyers through selling parts and servicing vehicles. Game makers could do the same via downloadable content. Carrot vs. stick.

I wouldn't be surprised if a gamer who buys a used copy of, say, FIFA09 is more likely to buy FIFA10 brand new because they liked 09 so much. Also kids can buy used games at a cheaper price when they have little disposable income and then invest in full-fat brand new games once they get jobs and have money to spend.

I wonder if this practice could end up encouraging piracy? Then the publishers might need to refocus on a new problem.

Using games to make up for bad UI?

 

Microsoft have introduced a game called Ribbon Hero that helps teach people to use their new interface for Office effectively. An attempt at fixing a bad UI or an innovative way of teaching how to use new software...? Let us know what you think!