whoisuser

Bad sign

2009-05-05T00:34:00.001+02:00

Is everything allowed here?

Good sign

2009-05-05T00:31:00.002+02:00

Very easy to understand what this is about..

Maintenance sounds like a good word...

2009-05-05T00:27:00.003+02:00

Send an SMS or email from the plane, pay with VISA

2009-04-08T10:55:00.001+02:00

Send an SMS or email from the plane, pay with VISA
Originally uploaded by yennyo

Using a credit card is more related to big expenses, something where you actually need credit for.... I would personally not be comfortable to use it just to send an SMS, but I guess that in case of emergency..

Illustration fail

2009-03-17T01:31:00.003+01:00

Did they really needed to have an illustration for this? If so, at least it should be one in good quality!

Context aware sign

2009-03-08T17:30:00.004+01:00

More signals should be like this, adapting very accurately to the conditions of what it represents :)

Really bad dialog

2009-03-08T16:37:00.002+01:00

When logging in to my work mail with Opera mini, this was the first screen shown. If I would just click "Perform maintenance", it would have deleted my old attachments and other items that I really do not want to lose. The other options are to "Agree" or "disagree" to something undefined and the last is to just "continue"... do I really need to make this decision when I am such in a hurry to access my inbox, that I even accepted the extra effort to do it with my mobile?

The day that google decided "google" may harm your computer...

2009-01-31T16:07:00.003+01:00

... someone introduced a bad bug.

When computers met phones...

2009-01-29T13:28:00.003+01:00

In the old good times, phones where simple to understand. You would just take the speaker, ask the commuter to put you in contact with the person you needed and voila... it just worked. Phones have gradually become more poweful and it is amazing what modern phones can do... and then, we got IP phones. Nowdays you almost needed to be a sysadmin to set up a phone!

At first I saw an iphone!

2009-01-13T02:34:00.002+01:00

I was suprised at first to find it bigger than what i am used to and i wondered for a second if it was just another chinese copy.. It is very interesting to experience the power of a shape making the brand as you end up recognizing the product in unexpected ways.

Big buttons mobile

2009-01-10T14:47:00.001+01:00

Very useful for those with limited visibility.. You cant do advanced stuff with it but at least, my mom could use without running for her glasses.

Your product name does not work in english...

2008-12-31T02:11:00.005+01:00

... or at least it is very funny. This is actually an analgesic cream. Not even in Spanish, I can explain the meaning of "rubefaciente".

What is a CPU quota

2008-12-31T02:04:00.003+01:00

This error message is even more useless than the normal 404..

Hard to give up old keys...

2008-11-30T22:19:00.002+01:00

In the Paris airport, someone tried to use the old hard keys by mapping them to options in a dialog. Not just considering that the mapping was so difficult to understand but that it was a touch screen, why not having made the options as buttons in the screen itself?

Coin teller post-it fix.

2008-11-28T19:16:00.003+01:00

Was the graphic not enough because coins where not easily recognizable from the cluttered label? I guess it becomes a more serious problem when it is supposed to be understood by customers in a hurry to pick their bags and leave...

Which button to press?

2008-11-22T13:43:00.002+01:00

In Oslo, when a bus is reaching a stop, you can press the lower button to make sure the driver would open this door and, in case of having a baby trolley, press the upper one to ask him to wait a bit longer. The equation gets complicated when you realize that there is an additional red button for telling the driver to stop. In some cases there is also a button that tells the driver that an elderly person will leave. I guess that at the begining there was only the red stop button and others where added as an afterthought.

Post-it fix in the cantina

2008-11-11T10:08:00.002+01:00

The cantina is where employees of my company eat lunch. Sometimes, the cooks prepare scrambled eggs with ham or sausages and, as there are some vegetarian employees, the eggs are marked by placing a "with meat" post-it above them. For any visitor out of lunch hours, it must be weird to find peanut butter, jam or butter "with meat" written above :).

Threatening post-it fix

2008-11-06T16:57:00.009+01:00

No please, not the beep!!

Geeky post it fix

2008-11-06T16:32:00.007+01:00

You only understand that you have arrived to the correct floor if you are a geek ;)

Post-it fixed design in the entrance

2008-10-31T01:06:00.002+01:00

The design of this intercom looks simple and aligned with only those arrows.. sadly, nobody remembered to test it in action and the only option was to add the afterthought label.

I think the label has been changed at least 3 times from hand written and tape to the printed current version.

Post-it fixed design

2008-10-25T13:47:00.003+02:00

When a button needs extra explanations to help people understand its function, it is clear there is a problem in the design. Despite how obvious this may be, it is just amazing to find so many of these "post-it fixed" design examples in the every day life.

If we have never seen it, it must be an invention...

2008-10-16T00:22:00.002+02:00

Whoever added the last entry of the "Top 10 Most Brilliant Gadgets of the Year" forgot to review that they were actually new designs ... this type of toilet has been in Japan for decades.... maybe they just forgot to tell us which year they were talking about... ;)

And if it is about japanese toilet inventions, I would prefer to highlight the toilet seat with integrated bidet.... how can we live without those in Europe ?

Gmail account lockdown...

2008-10-11T15:01:00.002+02:00

I am really wondering why this happened, I was just searching for a mail.... unusual activity? Sounds more like a bug to me...

Mobile politeness 001: Dont charge me for the file if you cannot use it

2008-10-09T13:51:00.006+02:00

I have been taking pictures of every day usability problems for a long time but I haven't got around to post them because is just in that moment when I get the inspiration for it. With the promise of allowing me to blog pictures on the move, I got an Ericson Z770i. In the good side is quite simple and has an embedded function to send pictures to my blog... on the not so great side the camera could be better for dark pictures or details (as text), but well...

After extensively using it for a week and realizing I will already have to pay 11 USD for GPRS use, I want to make sure that I dont have to pay for downloading what I do not need. So, I set up a secondary account where to forward mail and set filters for what I need on the move... the problem I discovered today, was that it offers to download files that it does not support and does not say anything until you try to use them... this is lack of politeness from my cute new phone! This may be as well a problem with expectations: last time I went to a concert, I loaded the pdf of the ticket in my ipod touch and, in the entrance of the event, they could read the bar code from the ipod ... expectations are quite high!

Anyway, it is a very nice, simple phone with a long lasting battery (I finally have battery!!!) and I appreciate the possibility of posting to my blog, having opera mini to read feeds on the move and having skype to receive international calls ...

How long will it take until this machine breaks?

2008-10-07T23:36:00.004+02:00

When you are in a hurry for getting yourself a coffee, do you really stop and read these instructions? At least they should be too close to the coffee machine to miss them and look less boring than a text wall..

Feels like India here

2008-10-05T03:53:00.002+02:00

I had the chance to participate in an Indian celebration at Fredrikstad. How refreshing to see so much of dancing, friendlyness and bright colors in this cold dark autumn...

Bad dialogs ask the wrong question

2008-10-05T00:48:00.001+02:00

Whenever possible, its better to get rid of dialogs and only bother the user when it is absolutely needed. Try using all information available and wonder if every dialog included is really useful. Of course, there will be moments when you will not be able to avoid dialogs so, make sure that you ask a clear question that avoids misunderstandings and tells the consecuenses of your actions. The dialog in this picture made us take a road 2 hours longer, just to avoid paying a 4 euro toll...

How did we get stuck with the boring toothbrush?

2008-08-29T21:47:00.001+02:00

When traveling, you discover that there are thousand of new ways to do those tasks you only imagined done in a particular way. When this happens you remember how fixed your own way of doing things and how less creative you become just because you do not feel the need of changing. That is what I felt last time I went to a store in Tokyo and I found a 2 meters long display with all kind of unimaginable toothbrushes and dental cleaning products that I have never seen before.

Thinking about this, I started to wonder how many of the things we use everyday could be improved and I remembered the Ideo interview, when designing that shopping cart and they said "Someone designed everything around you, from your toothbrush to your home town"...　in that moment I really felt the meaning of those words..

It is also important to remember that everything you do as a temporary solution will stay unchanged and you will forget why it was temporary, blending gradually with the context and becoming permanent. It is not until you challenge the everyday concepts that you realize things can be done in a better way.

Mobile :Webpages or applications?

2008-08-20T18:38:00.002+02:00

The value of the web is definitely in the content. People care about certain webpages or services because they bring them closer to something from the real world that they care about.

There has been a couple of in trials to make mobile applications in the last years, one of them is the apple apps store. Checking it out, I found so many useless applications that it almost feels like walking in a "100 yen shop"... lots of cheap bright things but nothing that I could not live without. Especially with those applications that expect to replace web services "while mobile", why would I want to give up so much of functionality just because I have a smaller screen? The goal should be to make applications that interact better in the device but that should not mean to restrict users from the services they are used to.

There are some apps that I consider good (as the wordpress app that I am using now) because it brings the funcitionality i need without the hazzle of entering a web adress but, considering that there is more quantity than quality, I wonder
If in the long run mobile applications will be the prefered interface to most Internet services.

Context of use

2008-08-11T18:16:00.002+02:00

Oslo, Norway, January 22nd, 5 °C and some wind. Waiting 10 minutes in the bus station does not sound so bad when you are all set up: winter jacket, winter boots, hat, scarf, gloves and an iPod touch to kill the time.. but wait, how do I use the touch screen without freezing my hands?

After a couple of attempts I discovered that the only way I could use it was with my nose. Yes, I also tried with my tongue but that sis not work…. I am sure it was not intended to be used that way.

Other unexpected effect is that I usually changed songs until I would find the one I wanted to hear. With this new constraint, I cannot do it anymore but I have to hear all the songs I have, this way, I am discovering a couple of nice songs I did not remembered anymore..

The best mobile device

2008-08-06T21:42:00.001+02:00

The thin line that divides mobile phones, PDAs, other portable devices and laptops is every day smaller. Every day more phones resemble PDAs, more laptops become smaller (even with a keyboard that you can use with one hand) and PDAs are disappearing.

On the other hand, we often consider a phone very different from a laptop when developing software, and we imagine users in quite different contexts and scenarios. How many times do we forget that even we would prefer the simplicity of keeping our information in one place, one interface, one copy, one single version… without the problems of copying or synchronizing or even the hassle of carrying one more charger… without the helplessness of not being able to do something because the mobile interface of what you need is not available.

A mobile experience (as everything else) is better when it’s simpler, but… that should not make it less powerful.

Isnt "whois user" a very geeky name for a blog?

2008-08-02T00:47:00.000+02:00

Well, yes, it is. But it is not just a random boring name.. it has some rational behind:

Trying to find a good name for a place where to organize the thoughts, pictures and ideas that just get lost in my head and my computer, I found myself very disapointed about how the world "user" is treated. It has become a very popular thing to be "user friendly" and it is of high importance to "care for the users"... "User" is just a fancy keyword that is pulled out when trying to describe the mass of people "out there" ... many times we forget that the only way to really satisfy users is by understanding them and, in the special case of Software products, it is impossible to understand people by just using command line..