Hope to see you there: book now for the earlybird price.

Paying your tax as a self-employed person is never fun. Some years ago I switched to a stricter accounting regime in order to ensure I was saving the correct amount of tax in advance into a separate account.

I submit my UK tax return once a year, which tells me what I should pay at the end. There’s a lot of things about accounting, tax, and the process that I am prone to forget (once a year only!), so there’s an additional burden on this interface to guide me through this complicated task successfully, without having to remember lots of little details.

Clearly I got it wrong this year: I’ve just received a letter informing me that I’d underpaid my tax, by a not insignificant amount. I won’t go into the boring details of tax, but the problem is caused at the end of the process:

1. they shock a user by incorrectly asking for a very large payment that is two tax years added together – no idea why they even show this (see ‘WHAT THE HELL??’ in my screenshot)
2. they don’t calculate and display the figure you should pay, even though the numbers needed for calculation are displayed right there. In fact, you’re mislead by a different figure. (see ‘OK, will pay right away’ in my screenshot)

Do they have any idea how error-prone this screen turns out to be?  Once again, I wonder if this is a page with an initially poor design, that’s resulted in a lot of expensive, labour-making mistakes. A few questions then…

• Are they unaware?
• What are the bureaucratic/cultural/cost barriers to fixing it?
• Is there some technicality that means they can’t show the correct calculation?
• Is it deliberate? Are they profiting from the resulting mistake?

Here’s my guess: there’s a stakeholder somewhere in the chain who believes that its the user’s job to know all of the little details about tax, including how to calculate. But here’s the rub: this screen actively misleads a user, as opposed to just leaving them to calculate on their own.

It would be better to show less, or nothing, forcing a user to to check with their accountant, or perhaps re-read how to do the calculation. But I’d prefer it if they showed the right number!

Perhaps you’re trying to save money and just put something out there quickly, especially if the scope is fairly limited. To quote a startup guy I know: “I generally introduce (visual) designers to a new project pretty late, they cause big delays if they’re involved too early”. I have experienced this phenomenon: it wasn’t that design was unhelpful, we just did too much of it for an untested idea.

However, there’s a big risk involved that I’ve seen play out a number of times. Perhaps fundamental design flaws were built into the project, and it grew before anyone had a chance to ask critical questions. The structure of the product might be inappropriate, or the interface lacks consistency. In the race to get something working, the focus on actual use has been lost.

Suddenly a user base has grown around something that is broken. Perhaps the design inhibits growth. Redesigning is expensive (i.e. the problem is not just cosmetic) and may present the users with a pretty big change in design (never a happy event, even when the new design is better).

Its also clear that a certain level of design can be important when you’re looking to sell or advocate an early idea. I enjoyed Aza Raskin’s talk about rapid prototyping which touches on this.

In the corporate world UX designers are pushing to be involved earlier in the process, at a strategic level. I can’t disagree with that effort: I’ve seen plenty of projects that needed a smart design head much earlier in decision making (this is what makes Apple so successful: designers have the most revered role in the organisation, ahead of management). Often, too many assumptions about how people will behave were made by non-designers. The entire project might have been based on wishful thinking.

To solve this dilemma, I’d like to propose a framework for thinking about whether you need more ‘design thinking’. By design thinking, I don’t mean a visual designer, I mean someone who considers the *actual* use of a product, and understands the value of observing users, regardless of method (that isn’t limited to UX people, many others get this too).

Its just a first stab, so I welcome any feedback.

To involve a design thinker or not, that is the question (png).

credit: Patrick Hoesly

As I’m pretty close to getting one of these (I’ll admit that the new pricing pushed me over the edge), I thought I’d make some notes about the experience of reading books, and review after a few months of getting a Kindle.

• My feelings about a book are intimately linked to how far through it I am. If something is feeling like a slog, and the bookmark indicates that I’m not very far through it, I’m quite likely to give up. I’f I’m further through it, I may stick with it. I wonder how the Kindle will indicate my progress, and if this affects my determination to finish a book. I have seen the UI (Don Norman showed me his DX at UX London 2009!), but not used it much, or seen the new UI in action.
• Page turning is related to progress. With a 6 inch screen (diagonally) – which I presume will display less content than a typical book page – I wonder about how this will affect my progress through a book. Will ‘flipping pages’ more often make me feel like I’m making more progress through it?
• The visibility of books is important. I’ve had plenty of conversations on trains where a shared interest in a book is the icebreaker. Occasionally, my wife has surreptitiously left books around the house that I would never normally read, but after a couple of pages I’m hooked. This kind of exposure to things not to my taste is enlightening!
  I also worry about this for my daughter’s sake, music just as much as books. I explored my parents’ numerous bookshelves and vinyl extensively as a child: how will she discover things hidden away on memory somewhere? James Bridle touched on this problem at dconstruct from a historiographical perspective: when all your data is hidden in folders on a computer, how do you know if you’ve lost anything?
• Sharing. There’s a whole other discussion about copyright here, but I love giving books away. It occurs to me that perhaps the Kindle may act as a kind of filter for books – I’ll only buy the physical books that I feel are important to keep around or lend (I do this with DVDs).
• I quite like the fact that I may not be able to do much more than read with it. Some may agonise over whether to get a tablet device or an e-reader at this moment in time, but for me there’s no dilemma. When I’m reading a book, I absolutely do not need the distraction of the web (this is why I probably won’t buy the 3G version!).
• Visual content. I read a lot of things with diagrams and illustration, especially books related to my profession: how well will this work on the Kindle?
• Articles. Another thing that pushed me into buying: instapaper can now send articles from your browser to the Kindle (with a single click). So often at work I encounter things that I want to read but don’t have time for, and would rather not read at my desk: this is a potentially great solution.
• Control of content. It was only after I discovered Calibre that I decided to buy one (it’s like an open source iTunes for books). I have no interest in Amazon monopolizing what I can and cannot read, so the freedom to manage the books with Calibre is a big plus.

As I sat waiting for a meeting in reception, I got to overhear some of the phonecalls they get from customers; mostly people needing help with a web-based booking system they’ve implemented (away from the website itself).

Hearing these calls, it became clear that the process of using this system (which is quite time-sensitive for customers) provokes quite a lot of questions for an unfamiliar user: they need to ask a human about specific form fields in the system in order to complete a booking.

An improved user flow + design will reduce these calls (time/cost-save) and instil greater confidence in users (increased customer loyalty).

The lesson here is that I identified a pain-point for users simply by sitting in reception. I didn’t use a computer. I didn’t even talk to anyone.

The website-specific work was unlikely to identify this problem: I got lucky really. However, its a great example of how thinking holistically about the customer experience can produce interesting results.

I just received an email from 38 degrees asking me to vote on which action the government should take to mitigate the effects of deep cuts to public services (see screenshot).

Fair enough… it strikes me as pretty odd that the previous government’s spending policy is being blamed for financial crisis that was really caused by risky financial instruments that don’t add real value(ok ok ok… so the previous government didn’t exactly discourage this sort of thing….).

Back to the matter at hand: in asking for a vote from a user, they’ve presented the voting so far right when you’re standing at the ballot box. I can imagine this does encourage people to vote, but it will also be influencing what they vote for: people naturally go for options that they see other people taking.

You could be swayed away from the issue you felt strongly about just by seeing what everyone else is doing, which isn’t representative of the issues you might care most about.

Very strange. I was trying to register for the London Cycle Hire access scheme, and obviously, I’d rather not have to renew my account every time I use it.

The registration form presented me with the auto-renew option, but greyed-out. I got very confused for a few minutes, and like a typical user, I didn’t bother reading the text underneath it, which points out that you can’t use the option until you’re registered….

So why present the option if you can’t use it?? Lesson: there’s usually something you can remove from a design to make it better.

I saw something in my facebook feed that I hadn’t seen before: a media player for an entire album. I had a quick listen and really liked what I heard. All the links point to bandcamp, where you can purchase the release.

$5? I clicked buy without thinking about it much.

The payment options are good: I can use a card or paypal, thereby avoiding entering my card details. The price is the same regardless of format. Once I had paid, the download started automatically.

If I had one criticism, I’d say that the price should be advertised in the facebook player: that might have tipped the balance for some people.

Well done bandcamp for designing the player, Asthmatic Kitty for the music and the progressive pricing (and I suppose facebook for allowing this kind of media in the news feed!). If only other labels would wake up to these approaches: it really is about the experience.

Can anyone figure out the new pricing without tilting their head? I suppose you could print it… but that rather defeats the point of this whole computer business doesn’t it?

I’ve recommended dropbox to a lot of people, but groups who start using it usually end up wondering if they can really afford to pay quite so much for every single user ($99 p/a).

When exploring the pricing on their site, I came across this voting system. I hope they act on it: its a great way to keep your users happy.