I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
Follow @roddrury
This old chestnut. Sometimes it just stuns me how companies don’t look at what their customers do next to see if they can easily create value that would create a passionate user. Very often, when the suppliers workflow ends, the customers work flow keeps going.
Buying tickets online is a classic. The Qantas site is actually pretty good. They remember most of my details. That’s great. But as soon as passengers have booked their flight they then have to manually type all the details into their calendar. Why not provide a simple iCal link?
If the airline asked me for a simple feature that would create loyalty just watch what happens at expense claim time. I need to try and remember what flight was for what. What was personal, what was bizdev, what was on-chargeable. Wouldn’t it be great if you could enter in a reference that made its way to the eTicket. The trip would then always be tagged and easy to match up.
Interaction Design facilitates the discovery of these opportunities. Forget about the system, ask the users to explain what they do. You’ll easily uncover these gems.
It’s amazing how much is still broken. Just like Seth says.
blog
Loved the “This sign has sharp edges” and the tablet based winelist.
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Imagine if you had 1,000s of people telling you it was broken and you still didn’t now
This is a very strategic moment for the talented Mr. Zuckerberg. The community ably demonstrated the passion it has for Facebook but in the bigger picture, it was an awesome demonstration of organizational power. The community claimed ownership of Facebook. It was a Holy Grail moment. It’s what some brand managers, product developers, service companies and an array of grassroots-minded organizations pray for. It was a powerful Web 2.0 moment, too, illustrating how quickly a connected membership base can mobilize and take action.
[...] there’s the Web2.0 factor – the penny has dropped for the likes of Rod Dury who (based from what I’ve read on his blog) “gets” what User Experience [...]