BLOG by zaiss

I walked by a vending machine today, and saw a dollar sticking out of the dollar slot with no one in sight. I left it there, but I’m kind of curious what my readers would do. Take it and leave a note? Leave it like I did? Get a snack? This seems to be an uncommon predicament… who leaves a dollar bill sticking out of a vending machine, anyway?

Yeah, what’s with that title anyway?

With a new wave of MHCI students moving to Pittsburgh in the next month, I’ve been trying to think whether I should recommend Comcast or Verizon for internet service. The truth is, I hate them both for different reasons, so if you’re asking, I recommend Choice C, whatever that may be.

The current issue with Verizon is their online bill paying system. I didn’t get an email saying I had a Verizon Phone Bill this month, but I had a hunch that I still had to pay the bill, so I went to pay it today. I’ve made a couple of unnecessary payments in the past, and I think you’ll see why as I walk through my current predicament.

First of all, the webpage is hopelessly cluttered, but near the top of the page, I see a table that discusses my current balance. I’ve recreated it here because an image wouldn’t work (the text would be too small):

Um…

What does that mean?!?! Do I owe money or not? If I don’t owe money, why is there a due date? I know I need to pay monthly for phone service, and I know I haven’t paid this month. So what is going on!

The problem is exacerbated by the poor payment amount options. On all of the other online bill pay sites I frequent, they have an option to pay the amount of the recent bill, the total current amount, a minimum payment, or a specified amount. Here at Verizon, though, you have to choose how much you want to pay – even if you want to pay your full bill amount every time.

The process for deciding what to pay and paying it quite simple at first look. Yet Verizon’s design seems to make the process far more complicated than it needs to be, violating a ton of Nielsen’s heuristics in the process:

• Consistency and Standards: The most common way to indicate that a balance is due is to have it prominently displayed on the page. It’s not an official standard, but one Verizon ought to follow.
• Recognition Rather Than Recall: Don’t make the users recall whether there is a payment that covers a cost on the statement - list it so that they can see it.
• Error Prevention: Support a design that prevents users from making an error (and paying unnecessarily)! Clearly demonstrate the current status of the account.
• Flexibility and Efficiency of Use: Allow the users to pay the full bill amount as quickly as possible. That means not forcing the user to enter their own payment amount.

By the way… if you’re curious, I did have an outstanding balance of $22.68 for this month. You wouldn’t think that by the big ol’ bold $0.00 at the top there, would ya?

For the past few months, I’ve been afraid to go into places like Barnes & Noble, Target, and the CMU Bookstore. What’s the common element? Well, yes, they all sell books, but that’s not what I’m getting at. The issue is that their theft deterrent gates always go off because of something in my wallet.

Over the past month, I’ve been playing a game that consists of leaving things out of my wallet and walking through the gates, in the hopes that one day, I would walk through beep free. Alas, my efforts seemed to be in vain; another gate, another beep.. Such was the case today. I went ot the CMU bookstore, closed my eyes, said a prayer, and walked through the theft deterrent gates. Beep.

Fed up, I asked the employee if he would mind if I sat there and tested stuff in my wallet to see what the culprit was. Working a hunch, I took everything out of my wallet and put the wallet through. Beep. So it wasn’t the cards, it was my wallet! What a devious little accessory. The employee asked to see it and, as if he put it there (maybe…), he pulled out a theft deterrent device from a pocket that I wasn’t using.

How perplexing. First of all, I don’t recall my wallet setting off the theft alarm at Target when I bought it there. And if it did, why didn’t security at Target stop me and figure out what was going on? Isn’t it their job to stop people who set off the alarm when they leave a store? It appears that security in a number of stores (not just Target) has decided that the gates are broken, or more trouble than they’re worth, and just decide to ignore them all together.

So what purposes are these gates serving? I assume they cost a fair amount of money, and they’re really loud and obnoxious. To some extent, they might be a deterrent themselves (I know I was deterred from shopping at these establishments because of my wallet… but that’s probably not the desired effect). But even a deterrent won’t stop every thief. Nor will the sounding of the alarm. Without a person there to hold a shoplifter accountable, they get away with it. And if you happen to walk through at the same time as 5 other people (I’ve done that before with my wallet… hehehe), it seems like they’re less likely to bother. Who would they stop?

If you’re going to put the effort in, I think the Best Buy approach is good. Sit someone at the door so they can greet people and check things when they set off the alarm. That way the gates aren’t just for show - they’re serving a purpose. And if there’s one thing an HCIer hates to see… it’s wasted technology.

It’s 7:00 AM, and I’m awake and blogging. This is the earliest I’ve woken up in the past few weeks, which is ironic, because my alarm didn’t go off this morning. Nor was it going to go off eventually. I just happened to wake myself up, which is a first and likely the last occurrence I’ll see before August 2nd.

Backing up a little… I have my alarm clock on my computer. I made this transition a few years ago when my old alarm clock (one of those that sets itself from some control tower in the middle of Colorado) kept losing it’s signal and reseting to midnight while I was asleep. I was late a lot that semester. This alarm pulls music from my computer AND pulls up news websites. I mean, I wouldn’t do it on my own that early in the morning. Are you kidding?

Right, sorry for rambling… 7am and all. I woke up this morning to find that my computer had restarted itself. Despite my groggy state, I still could recall quite clearly that I hadn’t done this myself. Power outage? No… none of my clocks were flashing. So I logged in, and found that Windows had installed a security update on my behalf. They even went so far as to restart my computer on my behalf too.

Traditionally, Windows has (1) asked you to confirm that an update should be installed, and (2) asked you if you were ready to restart your computer afterwards. And unless I’m sleepwalking (which I’ve never been told that I do… sleeptalking sure, and occasionally sleeping with my eyes open, but certainly never sleep-installing-Windows-updates), I’m assuming that Microsoft made these changes automatic.

Was this security update so critical that it required immediate action? If so, I think a little user communication would be nice. All I know is that an update was installed, but I have no idea what it was for. Admittedly, the only detriment to me was that my alarm was turned off. It turned out to not be that big of a deal, I guess. But you know that someone was rendering some complex graphic that took 5 days, and this morning they were going to get to look at their result, but sorry — the work was lost because Windows had to restart.

I also wondered if this is a move on Microsoft’s part to make it easier to install security updates. I certainly didn’t have to do as much work this time around. If this assumption is correct, it seems a bit drastic to go directly from “users can’t install updates currently” to “we’ll just install them automatically!” If it happens again, maybe I’ll do a little usability analysis. You’ll see my work in action - it’ll be grand. But for now, I need to apply my talents to HCI Project.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been working on my online portfolio. I kicked it into gear last weekend, and therefore haven’t had a lot of time to post on here lately.

One of the tricky things about creating a website is choosing a color pallet, as my fellow HCIers well know. So why did I go with green? I’ve been asking myself that ever since I realized how difficult it was to work with. But at the same time, if you can’t experiment with your own stuff, then when can you really experiment?

I’ve made quite a bit of progress; you might say, “It is almost ready. For… a diet.” (Sorry, Big Bunny reference.) Anyway, please check it out! It’s at zszaiss.com. I of course welcome any comments you have (just leave a comment here).

Last night, i was watching What Not To Wear on TLC (yes, a guilty pleasure of mine…) and they were showing video of a bunch of people who were trying to convince the hosts that they needed a style makeover. And I swear that one of them was wearing the yellow CMU HCII shirt from last year!! Can anyone verify? Is there an HCIer out there in need of some fashion advice? I thought we were all so stylish!