ExperienceLab

Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrison's, they all have them: Are self-service checkouts really the future of shopping?

Sometimes it feels like an insult; we to stand in a queue that does not seem any shorter than it was before the manned tills were replaced, and we have to scan them ourselves, only to be told there is an “unexpected item in the bagging area”, which is an item that we scanned just seconds ago...

Smoke signals

For me a hospital environment isn't usually a happy place. I imagine dreary walls, a quiet, dull, sterile environment, strange smells, boredom of waiting, and more waiting, pain... or is that just me?

However, I recently visited the nicest hospital I've ever been to and for someone like me, who's often waiting whilst another person has treatment, I found enough to do to keep me occupied and remove my worries!

An un-SIGHT-ly check up!

I visited the opticians for a regular sight check up and found myself in an awkward situation!

As the optometrist needed to examine my eyes, I was instructed to place my chin on the rest and put my forehead against another. No problem. Now it just so happened the device required a height adjustment so that I was sitting comfortably and in the correct position for the optometrist to look in to my eyes...sounds romantic doesn't it...but let's take a closer look at the device:

Mobile gaming downloads...weird wap connection!

I downloaded Tetris on my mobile over the weekend, it's one of my favourite games. I love playing it when I am out and about, on the tube, on the bus, waiting for others ... to pass the time.

So I downloaded the game and got ready to play, except each time I select the option to play Tetris it comes up with a weird message telling me that the phone needs to make a connection. It's FREE when in the UK but still, its an annoying extra step before playing my game and it doesn't give me a reason for making the connection. This is what the message looks like:

Dyson instructions not a design strong point

Trying to hurry up and finish household chores over a weekend isn't much fun, especially if your  tools aren't working as they should. In our case we noticed our Dyson hoover was not cleaning properly. We contacted Dyson, who identified the problem over the phone and sent us the necessary replacement parts. We were assured the parts would be easy to replace ourselves.

The parts arrived boxed up but with no instructions, except this:

   So we were presented with the task of working out how to detach the current hoover parts and replace them with new ones.  There were three parts we needed to fix to the bottom of the hoover.

Could property websites do more to improve the house hunting experience?

So, I’ve been house hunting recently and have to say that property websites have progressed a lot since the last time I was looking, but I am surprised at how limited they still are. 

It’s great that several of them now summarise the available properties in a map – a quick way to rule out those ones that look surprisingly good value until you realise they are positioned actually on the M25! Also, several of the sites now let you save properties you are interested in too and send you alerts, but a few extra personalisation features would be a huge help.

Please don't stop the music!

This video blog tells the tale of a keen Bhangra and Bollywood listening driver on a desperate journey to save the world from usability problems.... As she drives from location to location her journey is ruined as the music wouldn't play. This tale wouldn't be complete without the other major stars - the car, the iPod, and my MP3 adapter.

A special thanks to Alessandra Millar for producing the video. I owe you chocolate :)

Updates from Hell...

It's Thursday night and I want to shoot some people. There I've said it, although its only by playing MAG Sony's new uber online shooter. However I can't and do you know why? Because Sony has decided to punish me because of where I live.

Now Sony is not normally known to decide who can and can't play their games dependent on where they live but I'm being punished as I only live close enough to a telephone exchange to get a 1MB broadband connection.

When you can't judge a book by it's cover

Whilst on holiday last week I came across Mokoto Rich’s NY Times article In E-Book Era, You Can’t Even Judge a Cover. Rich discusses how changing reading habits since the advent of Kindles and iPads begin to make the book cover obsolete, making it less easy to learn from what others are reading and demonstrate your own reading tastes.

Corsa know how to use it!

My colleague Anna and I recently hired a car for client research we were conducting in the Midlands. We decided drive up, so we wouldn’t have to lug loads of cables, cameras and computers on the train. Plus we thought we could have a relaxed journey listening to some tunes on the way… most importantly, some Bhangra and Bollywood.

Our car happened to be a Vauxhall Corsa, which was OK - any car with a media player would have been fine. It was the radio we particularly wanted access to… but could we work it? No, not immediately and definitely not without endangering that relaxed journey we envisaged.