I wrote an article called “Preparing for Widescreen” for Digital-Web. Please read it!

One thing to note – the D-W staff accidentally published an outdated version of my JavaScript, so the code referenced in my article is not the same script I used in my demo. I’ve outlined the differences on below, so come back here and read the details after you get through the article.

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“Customer loyalty” is a big buzz-term in the industry, but how important is it to “customers”? Case in point: I love Circuit City — they have a great website, the stores are nice, and the employees are usually very helpful. I feel quite differently, on the other hand, about Best Buy — the stores are impersonal, the employees indifferent, and the website clunky and difficult to use. (Although, to be fair, I did have a great night at Tommy Doyle’s in Cambridge with the BB web folks during UI9…)

That being said, I was just shopping for a new DVD player and, upon making a decision, found that BB had it for $15 less than CC. So, I bought it at BestBuy. Would I have preferred to interact with Circuit City? Definitely. But, when dealing with two known commodities (as opposed to Abe’s of Maine, for example), for me price trumps loyalty every time. What’s important to you?

Edit: The experience of picking up a product at Best Buy is quite frustrating, as you have to wait in long lines and deal with indifferent employees. Perhaps I need to up my $$$ threshold to settle for an inferior company.

They gave away free HFI calendars at World Usability Day back in November, and I was quite excited to replace the cookie-cutter scenery calendar on my cube wall with a new one filled with geeky goodness. However, the darn thing is so heavy that it keeps falling off my cubicle wall! I did try removing the thick cardboard that was perhaps inserted for stability (which, in reality, had no purpose), but that had no effect. The pin holding this thing up just gives in each and every time I put it up! The irony here, of course, is that the usabilty calendar is not usable. Who would have thunk it?

While we’re at it, the dates on this calendar are extremely small. In fact the current month takes up just a small corner of the large calendar page. Now, certainly, as a user interface professional I am interested in things like “Studying User Population” (February’s topic), but I also use a calendar as a, well, calendar. Relegating that information to such a small portion of the page doesn’t exactly make it easy to use. Additionally, there is no last month/next month display, so I have to reach up to turn the page (and in the process yank this bohemoth off my wall) just to see the next month. Again, difficult to perform basic calendar functions.

Bottom line here is that I’ve replaced my HFI calendar with an ugly free one I got from some vendor. Its not cool to look at, but it is easy to use!

… just like Hasselhoff and The Hooters.

Ok, just kidding, but it is fun to see someone across the pond give me a shout.