iPhones in the wild

I’ve recently noticed a new trend: wilderness-iPhone usage.  Even a few years ago it would have been unseemly to be caught fiddling with that type of advanced technology while simultaneously enjoying nature’s bounty; but I believe we are now more willing to pair diverse leisure activities like hiking + twittering.  (Tweeting)

Case study 1: iPod in the Tent

A few weeks ago I crossed the country via automobile with my significant other, and we found ourselves in a tent in the gorgeous Moonflower canyon campground in Moab, UT.  The canyon walls were a palette of browns and reds at sunset, the wind rustled lightly in the trees, and various canyon insects chirped intermittantly.  But we’ve slept with a fan in the room for the last 4 years…how would we ever fall asleep without the comforting fan whirring in the corner?  Luckily we had the White Noise iPhone app installed on my iPod, so we set it to the ‘Stream Water Flowing’ noise and turned the sound all the way up.  Ironic!  It’s like nature squared!

Case study 2: iPhone hiking

Last weekend I hiked with my roommate at Mount Diablo, and he couldn’t stop pulling out his iPhone.  He’d get a text from some friend and feel compelled to read it, chuckle to himself, and respond while walking and falling behind.  I couldn’t decide if it was rude or not…what exactly is the etiquette for simulatenous hiking and wikipedia reading?  For hiking + yelping?  For hiking + facebook?  My intuition is that it’s not only rude, but extremely maladaptive; placing so much of your attention on such a device leaves you vulnerable to calamities like bear maulings, wildcat attacks, tripping over roots or rocks, and getting clotheslined by a well-placed branch.  I’m just saying.

5 reasons I loved Mozilla’s design challenge

I was able to participate in Mozilla’s ‘Spring Design Challenge‘ along with my regular schoolwork this past semester, and it was definitely worth the effort.  The challenge consisted of addressing the following question: “What would a browser look like if the Web was all there was? No windows, no unnecessary trappings. Just the Web.”

Participants submitted mock-ups of their ideas, attended 11 tutoring sessions over a 3-week period, and then submitted interactive prototypes to be judged.  My prototype didn’t make it through the final judging round, but I finished the experience with a working prototype/portfolio piece, direct and detailed feedback from the fellas at Mozilla, a summer internship, and a warm and fuzzy feeling.  

Here are five reasons you should take part in the next design challenge Mozilla offers.

1. Visual communication and prototyping practice.  While taking classes it’s difficult to find the time to create visual artifacts and work on prototyping skills; but this challenge provided both a compelling  purpose (create the browser of the future!) and strict deadlines (always a plus).  The process of creating the mock-up and prototype helped me think about how to visually communicate my idea (who wants to read a bunch of text?). It also gave my portfolio a visual component that was previously lacking.  I love practicing solving problems visually, so this project was also really satisfying and fun.
   

   A piece of the mock-up

   

   The prototype

2. Tutoring sessions. As part of the design challenge, participants were able to virtually attend 11 tutoring sessions on prototyping, design, creating extensions, and more.  I was able to make about five sessions live, and I watched most of the others on video (you can find links to the vimeo vids at the bottom of the spring design challenge page.) These sessions were all excellent!  I encourage anyone to check them out.  My favorites were Open Source Design by John Slater, Mozilla’s Creative Director, and Designing for Mobile byMadhava Enros.  By the way, I like to remind myself that these are all free.  Free!  Free advice from awesome experts.  
3. Feedback y sombreros.  There were two main opportunities to receive feedback on our ideas during this contest; first we were able to call in to Mozilla Labs Night and discuss our idea with a few of the Labs people.  I called in with my friend Maureen Hanratty from school, and we went over our ideas with the Labs guys – one of which was apparently wearing a sombrero.  Then, just today I received detailed and helpful feedback on my prototype from four panelists who judged the final prototypes.  I really appreciated this; they had a lot of questions about things I didn’t really have the time to work through in my prototype (such as “what happens to tabs and the URL bar under this interface?” or “the “exploding” gesture is cool, but how would you do this if you’re not on a touch screen?”).  I’d love to work through these questions…maybe if someone gives me a deadline I’ll get around to it.
4. Pascal.  Pascal Finette is the superhuman who helped coordinate the challenge, coach and encourage participants, patiently answer questions, and generally curate the entire process.  He seemed to be always online, responding to participant queries almost immediately even though he’s across the pond in London and 5 time zones away (from me, anyway).  Pascal helped create a supportive and open environment and should take a lot of credit for this challenge’s success!
5. Helped me land my summer internship.  No lie!  While I was interviewing for summer internships in Interaction Design, interviewers repeatedly asked me to talk about and show them design work that I’d produced – me, not with a team of people.  Since nearly all my school projects have been group-produced, I showed my Design Challenge mock-up; at least two interviewers said they were happy I had chosen to show them this example, and one  said the mock-up addressed the types of design and context problems that he deals with frequently.  Being able to show off the mock-up gave me some street-cred, and it helped initiate some interesting design discussions during my interviews.  Ultimately I got an Interaction Design internship at VMware in San Fran, so I’ll probably crash one of the Mozilla Labs nights while I’m out there (clad in a sombrero and/or cavewoman outfit, undoubtedly).

A final shout out to all of the other participants in the challenge.  They ranged in age from high school to probably 30s and 40s, and they represented countries from all over the world.  I was impressed with their high level of engagement in and excitement about the challenge; the community really solidified during the challenge.  

Overall, it was a great experience and I’m glad I had the time and effort to participate!  Merci, Mozilla!

 

And a great logo!

Information visualization projects so awesome they’ll turn your hair gray overnight

I had the distinct pleasure and honor of taking the Information Visualization class this semester at the University of Michigan’s School of Information (where I’m completing a Masters of Info, specializing in HCI).  For the class each project team created a visualization to help aid user comprehension of a large data set.  The very talented students in the class showcased their impressive final projects last week…and here they are (in the order they were presented), projects so extraordinary they’ll make you cry for mercy.
*****

Where The Money Goes
wherethemoneygoes.org

Where the Money Goes

 This political visualization, according to its website, “makes it easier to visualize the contributions that political action committees (PACs) make to your members of Congress, and to each other. With this application you can explore contributions made from PACs-to-Congress and PAC-to-PAC at the same time. You can also view contributions received by a Congress member and the Congress member’s PAC together, making it clear exactly how much they received. It allows you to find interesting insights, such as how the Freedom Fund PAC receives donations from hundreds of diverse PACs and also donates to only Republican candidates.”  
Team: Noah Liebman, Mike Harmala, Mark Goetz, Debra Lauterbach
*****
 

Tacoma Crime Visualization
tacomacrime.org
Project blog

Tacoma Crime Visualization

To visualize crime in the city of Tacoma, WA the Tacoma Crime team used a map-based interface and represented crime levels in different police districts using color saturation. Users can drag a time slider to see the crime levels change, and they can click in districts for more information. The team has presented its working prototype to the city planning office, who will show it at the 2009 Tacoma ‘Safe and Clean’ summit.  This was actually my project, and I have to say our team was so great to work with, it’s criminal.
Team: Jeremy Canfield, Taeho Ko, Sang Koh, and Katie McCurdy
*****
 

ARMuseum
leannagingras.com/ARMuseum/

ARMuseum

ARMuseum stands for augmented reality museum – this iphone application allows visitors to place a virtual sticky note on museum exhibit items. Visitors can make comments, ask and answer questions using these notes. This app also tracks users’ paths through the museum.  Watch their rotating dinosaur head demo!
Team: Leanna Gingras, Andrea McVittie, and Amy Kuo
*****
 

Tabvis
tabviz.org

An early tabvis prototype

The tabvis team created an innovative new way for users to visualize their tab hierarchy and history; tabs are radially displayed in the bottom left side of the browser, and ‘child’ tabs radiate out from ‘parent’ tabs. The team has turned their idea into a firefox extension which they plan to release once it’s ready for public consumption.
Team: Jakob Hilden, Liz Blankenship, and Kerry Kao
*****

 

VIEWconomy
VIEWconomy project website

the VIEWconomy interface

 VIEWconomy offers a means of visualizing plant shutdowns in Michigan, and it helps users understand how automotive plant closures affect communities. The visualization prototype allows users to obtain information by hovering and clicking into map areas like states and counties. Unemployment rates are represented using a yellow to red color scale (red being high unemployment), and counties can be exploded and regrouped into bubbles that represent counties with various levels of closures.
Team: Mohammad Hadhrawi and Urmula Kashyap
*****
 

GreenBox
GreenBox project website

GreenBox's interactive carbon usage panel

By utilizing interactive multi-touch screen to visualize information about global warming, team GreenBox aims to encourage group experience and acknowledgment in a public setting, specifically in the airports. Check out Eunice and Yesook’s great mock-ups!
Team: Eunice Shin and Yesook Im
*****
 

GiantBomb (CVGA Project)
GiantBomb Project Website

GiantBomb mockup

 This team’s goal is to “goal is to provide a visual path of engagement within the physical space of the Computer Video Game Archive. If successful, patrons should be motivated to explore and learn about the evolution of concepts employed in video games over time and across genres.” The team created many interesting visualization modes, including a fan and spiral view, and they also incorporated lots of interesting sorting options (like by game genre, history, gaming platform, etc).
Team: Anna Jonsson, Ke Sun, Matt Rubinstein, Michael Nagara
*****

 

 
CCEL
CCEL Project Website

 

The beautiful CCEL display

Team CCEL (Jim) created an interesting visualization of the collection of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL). Biblical books are represented across the bottom timeline, and texts are represented as higher or lower in the visualization according to the number of scripture references. He also created an author timeline to visualize author lifespans mapped to the biblical timeline, and also to dynamically view writings by author. Check out his neat prototype!

Creator: Jim Laing
*****

Movie Signature – a.k.a. ‘Buckets of Rain’
Project Website

"Buckets of Rain"

Mouly created a tranquil ‘field of grass’ visualization to represent a user’s Netflix movie ratings. Stalks represent movies, the length of the stalk (or ’stem’) represents the user’s rating (tallest=highest rating), and if you mouse over them they sway slightly. If the user rated a movie lower than the average rating, the stalk leans to the left; if the user rated it better than average, the stalk leans to the right.  Check out the prototype - mouse over the stalks and they sway in the breeze.
Creator: Mouly Kumaraswamy
*****
 

Web Visibility
Project Website

Web Visibility prototype

Li and Jasper worked with local Ann Arbor company Pure Visibility to create a visualization to help create SEO ‘visibility’ in various search engines. In their visualization, different sized bubbles represent keywords – click them to get a breakdown of keyword options. The goal is to find a keyword with low competition and high traffic. Safe keywords to a sidebar list as ‘aggressive’ or ’safe’. Check out the hi-fi prototype.
Team: Li Li and Jasper Liu
*****

Social Comparisons @ Grad School

For my Online Communities class we read an interesting article by Joanne Wood about social comparisons.  Wood discusses and expands upon the original social comparison theory by Festinger (1954), part of which predicts that “individuals prefer to compare themselves with similar others” (231).  Those comparisons can be upward (comparing yourself to those who are better or better off than you) or downward (worse/worse off), and they can be made on a single focal dimension (who is better at math) or multiple peripheral dimensions (who is better at math, who went to a the best school, and who is the best-looking).  

This article struck me because I have been noticing a fair amount of social comparison happening around me at school …it’s inevitable.  Below is a deconstruction of my experience of social comparison at the U of Michigan School of Information, as posted on the course’s internal discussion forum.

**************************************************************************

I’m going to bring it right home and talk about comparisons with our SI peers. This might be a touchy-feely Breakfast Club moment, be warned.

This is my first year in grad school, and so throughout the year I’ve been subconsciously trying to figure out how I stack up compared to the other students around me.  What am I good at?  Do I do things the ‘right’ way?  Am I trying hard enough?  This response is natural, according to Festinger’s social comparison theory: “humans have a drive to evaluate their opinions and abilities…they need to know their own capacities and limitations and they must be accurate in their opinions of…other people” (Wood, 231).

So how do I figure out which ’similar others’ (231) to compare myself to?  I look to my specialization first, and see a group of very talented, technically-oriented high-achievers.  Which makes me wonder – should I be more techy?  Do I need to learn more software tools or programming languages?  It’s a continuous internal dialogue of self-doubt that can be difficult to suppress.  And then there are the awards, scholarships, contests, internships and jobs – all of those benchmarks by which we compare ourselves to others.  Who got the hot internship this summer?  Who won start-up funding? Who’s going to make huge bank at their pimped-out job?  

I subscribe to the similarity hypothesis – I have found myself quite happy for those whose achievements are either out of my realm of interest or way beyond my own ability level…but truth be told, I’ve been slightly envious of those who, given a background and ability similar to my own, have achieved more than me.  The reason I feel this way is because it makes me think that I have not put in enough time or effort…I should just try harder. The trick is to take this sense of inadequacy and turn it into motivation.  Wood says, “one risk of upward comparisons as a vehicle for self-improvement is that they may be demoralizing, because one is forced to face one’s own inferiority” (239).  If you are highly motivated, says Wood, you might be spared these feelings because you feel that you are similar to the successful person, and you might one day achieve similar success.  Therefore you can turn inferiority into inspiration.

What is the effect of social comparison on our community?  I believe it can cause an aura of secrecy and silence around people’s major accomplishments.   I’ve observed that when people are interviewing with a well-known company, they keep it quiet.  That’s understandable I guess – in case you don’t get the job, you don’t want to widely publicize your unsuccessful attempt.  But even when people get the big name job, they seem hesitant to talk about it.  I believe this is a result of others’ comparisons and insecurities.  

For example, let’s say I was just hired at Google (I wasn’t, but let’s just say I was). What will happen if I tell my peers?  According to the similarity hypothesis, some of my peers will be very excited for me, but some others – those to whom I am most similar – will have a hard time controlling their feelings of jealousy.  I have suddenly, by announcing my new position, imposed a comparison on them (as mentioned in the article, ‘environment imposes comparisons on people’) How will they react?  Will they respond with a snide comment?  Will people start treating me differently?  Perhaps I’m silenced by experience with similar situations in the past, or perhaps I’m just unsure of how my peers will react in this context.  The result is that I keep mum about the new job, only letting the news leak to people who I believe will be supportive.  So this is a great example of the way “individuals’ reactions to comparisons are a critical component of comparison processes” (Wood 233)…the community members’ reactions to social comparisons begin to inform the comparison process itself.  

Just a note…I’ve described social comparison here as having a somewhat negative effect on community openness and sharing, but I don’t think comparisons and competition are necessarily bad. Healthy competition raises the bar for everyone, so that the entire community begins to produce higher quality output.  

Wood, Joanne V (1989).  Theory and Research Concerning Social Comparisons of Personal Attributes.  Psychological Bulletin Vol. 106, No. 2.

Hey, don’t put that picture on Facebook

Last night I attended a ‘prom’ party that my school put on.  They rented out a bar, and everyone was in costumes for the 80’s & Space theme; there was a Richard Simmons, a Robert Palmer dancing lady, lots of giant prom dresses with hideous bows and lace, and even a pair of moon boots.  When you’re dressed up like the 80’s version of a future space traveler at the prom, the inhibitions are out the door.  

I took some interesting and somewhat damning pictures thoughout the night, and at least three people approached me to ask me not to put certain incriminating, embarassing, or unbecoming pictures of them on Facebook.  This seems like a trend.  But it’s just not reasonable at events like these to go around to everyone who took pictures and ask them not to put embarassing pictures of you up on Facebook.  There’s got to be another way!  

So here’s the solution that I worked out this morning (with the help of Nick Perez).  Facebook will someday develop the capability to be able to recognize the faces of all of your friends.  It will know who is who and tag them automatically.  Now if you had a wild party night, you can instruct Facebook to wait before posting the pictures that include you  - you can screen the pictures and approve or deny them.  Denied pictures wouldn’t be posted at all.  

I’m wondering if this process would have any negative social repercussions.  If someone denied your picture, could you just blur out their face and trick the face recognition feature?  Would denying others’ pictures create hostility?

 

Walk like an Egypt-SHUNNN

 

miles in the middle!

 

it's all about the music

Enjoyable User Interface Heuristics

I just finished reading Thomas Malone’s 1982 paper “Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces: Lessons from Computer Games.” At just 6 pages, it’s a mere rowboat floating on the sea of my semester’s reading; but I found it exceedingly interesting and helpful. I’ll summarize just a few of his main points, and then include an outline of his interface heuristics.

Malone’s paper explains how we might create enjoyable, engaging ‘tool’ interfaces using principles from game interface design.  Tools, according to Malone, are systems that are used as a means to achieve an external goal; while ‘toys’ (or games) are used for their own sake.  One of Malone’s big points is that toy-like features can help motivate people to do boring tasks.

An important distinction between games and tools lies in difficulty level and mastery levels.  While games should be easy to learn and difficult to master, tools should be easy to learn and master (p.66).  Because the outcome of the external goal is already uncertain (for example “will this letter be well-written enough to land me an interview?”), tools should be as easy to use as possible; they should not get in the way.

So, here are the heuristics; I really recommend the paper in its entirety as well, if you have the time.

Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces

I. Challenge

A. Goal. Is there a clear goal in the activity? Does the interface provide performance feedback about how close the user is to achieving the goal?

B. Uncertain outcome. Is the outcome of reaching the goal uncertain?
1. Does the activity have a variable difficulty level? For example, does the interface have successive layers of complexity?
2. Does the activity have multiple level goals? For example, does the interface include scorekeeping?

II. Fantasy

A. Does the interface embody emotionally appealling fantasies?
B. Does the interface embody metaphors with physical or other systems that the user already understands?

III. Curiosity

A. Does the activity provide an optimal level of informational complexity?
1. Does the interface use audio and visual effects: (a) as decoration, (b) to enhance fantasy, and (c) as a representation system?
2. Does the interface use randomness in a way that adds variety without making tools unreliable?
3. Does the interface use humor appropriately?

B. Does the interface capitalize on the users’ desire to have “well-formed” knowledge structures? Does it introduce new information when users see that their existing knowledge is: (1) incomplete, (2) inconsistent, or (3) unparsimonious?

Drama & ducks at the IA Summit

I’ve just returned from a whirlwind trip to Memphis, TN for this year’s Information Architecture Summit (aka, IA Summit).  What a time!  I saw some Memphis, visited Graceland, saw the Peabody Ducks who live inside the Peabody Hotel…and experienced the IA Summit for the 1st time.   It was an action-packed weekend full of great presentations, awesome food (most of it in the shape of ducks), some good people-meeting, and lots of awesometime hanging out with my classmate Lee Gingras and IA prof Dan Klyn.

Ducks

peabody duck, at rest

At 11AM every day at the Peabody Hotel, where the conference was held, a conductor in a fancy costume leads a set of ducks from the Duck Palace on the roof of the hotel into the elevator, down many floors, and across the hotel lobby into a beautiful fountain.  The ducks then swim around in the fountain (instinctively diving for make-believe minnows) until 5PM every day, when the genteel ducks exit the fountain and ascend to their comfortable Duck Palace again.   The whole spectacle draws quite a crowd.

Drama

This post will be mostly about airing the drama, but I’m going to follow up with posts on the talks I attended and the peeps I talked with.   So apparently there is a great divide, a war even, between two factions: IA and Interaction Design.  IxD practitioners compete with the IA field for attention, conference attendees, jobs, and more – at least according to some. Eric Reiss, my FatDUX benefactor who covered my conference fees, also gave a talk called A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand: Why Big IAs and Little IAs Will Prevent Us From Holding the 20th Annual Summit.  From the talk description:

‘Definitions (”the damned thing”) and distinctions (”Big IA”, “Little IA”) will ultimately relegate information architects to the ranks of lower-middle management. This was a problem several years ago and is an even greater problem today as thought leaders and visionaries continue to gravitate to other fields and more senior positions where “knowledge of IA” is sufficient and “practice of IA” is sent downstream to junior staffers.

So his talk wasn’t directly about the IA/IxD war (or was it?), but it’s all part of the bigger division theme.  I caught the end of this talk, during which the mic was passed around the room as folks gave their personal anecdotes and feelings about what was going on with IA.  To me this felt like a town meeting (Vermont-style), and it seemed therapeutic – a type of community catharsis. But apparently I missed some of the more controversial moments when certain people were singled out for contributing to the great divide.  

Really it seems like the community is looking for leadership, trying to coalesce into something tangible, and simply struggling with an identity crisis.  Comments and questions came up at this conference and the IDEA conference, which I attended last fall, like the following:

“I’m an Information Architect…I’m here to try to figure out what I should be doing”

What tools do IAs use?  What strategies?  What makes an IA differnet from an IxD practitioner? What additional skills does an IA bring to the table?  And maybe most importantly, does the job title ‘IA’ still need to exist, or is IA a skillset that one can bring to a variety of User Experience roles?  

Ultra Drama!

JJG dispenses wisdom

 

Here’s where JJG, Jesse James Garrett, enters the scene (dressed in his typical attire – black jeans, black shoes, black leather jacket and thick black glasses) to give the ‘plenary’ (who thinks of these words?) talk in a large, high-ceilinged hotel conference room.  JJG begins walking slowly and deliberately down a narrow isle that leads from the front of the room to the back of the room, reading his talk from the iPhone in his hand.  The 300+ people gathered are hushed and captivated as JJG eloquently speaks about banding together, that we need to move past the cult of personality that’s characterized this field and unify under one job role: User Experience Design.  

{claps and cheers erupted at this, along with 100 simultaneous tweets}

This session had the feel of a locker room at halftime.  JJG, the coach, vacillated between sternly lecturing and inspiring the crowd.  The result was a well-crafted message of the need for evolution and unity.  I liked this passage from Cennydd’s blog:

A similar sentiment was picked up by Jesse James Garrett in his closing plenary, in which he sounded the overdue death knell of division by job title. The information architect and the interaction designer are no more: we are all user experience designers, and we always have been. Amen.

JJG also called us out on our flimsy cult of celebrity. We have practitioners famous for what they say, rather than what they do. What great works of user experience have there been? Who made them? How have they made a difference?

Last thought – I have to mention that in talking to some seasoned IA people about this unifying around the UXD role, I heard some misgivings – would rolling these titles together dilute IA skills?  I think it’s a fair question.

graceland, baby!

 

But I saw Elvis’s ‘white tiger’ suit, rar!  That’s what really counts.

Epilogue

The discussion lists and blogosphere are humming with comments about this topic.  Lou Rosenfeld just a post up on his blog today (march 30th) called ‘Stop Listening to People Like Me.’  A quote:

“So, to my old friends, time to let go. We’re not being put out to pasture—we’re just moving on to other things, as is our true nature, and creating new paths. The homesteaders have taken over—as they should, given that they’re the huge majority—and their needs will define our fields and settle these debates. Thank goodness. Let them design incredible experiences. And let us keep doing what we’re best at—instigating new things.”

Open Source Design at Mozilla

Today I attended a web-based lecture by John Slater (MozCreative on twitter), creative director at Mozilla, on the open source visual design process. This was part of Mozilla’s spring design challenge lecture series.  Mozilla has used a participatory design process in their recent logo and web redesigns; they’ll often solicit designs from the community, post them publicly, and then refine them by getting feedback on their blog/website. It’s a really interesting method – check out this example of the Mozilla Mexico logo that came out of this process.

John also showed some iterations of the beautiful mozilla.com website as they were in the middle of refining the designs; and right now, Mozilla is working with an outside company on the redesign of mozilla.org (which is aimed at the mozilla developer community). The company who is managing the redesign, happy cog, has created a website about this redesign project – redesignmozilla.org. Here you can see current design ideas and make comments on them.  This community feedback is at the heart of Mozilla’s initiative; they want their design processs to be both transparent and collective.

Mozilla has a few design initiatives that are still in the works but that promise to be exciting for the design community.  They hope to form the “Mozilla Creative Collective,” which will be a central hub for designers; the Creative Collective would give designers more exposure, help them make contacts and improve their skills, and give them access to design challenges.  Basically, said John, it’s an open source approach to visual design that can leverage the power of the design community.

Check out John’s awesome blog: www.intothefuzz.com

Speaking of visual design, another Mozilla designer, Sean Martell, designed the below logo for all of us who are participating in the design challenge:

Neat!

Orbitz’s response to my tweet

So, I’ve had a terrible time getting a refund from an Orbitz flight I booked early last fall.  The refund totals nearly $900, and I’ve now been waiting 4.5 months for the cash.  It’s a slightly confusing situation involving international airlines (Liat), but the bottom line is that Orbitz told me I would see the money in 2-3 months – and then after 3 months had passed, it turned out that the paperwork was ‘lost’ on the international carrier’s end.  Blah blah, it’s a sob story that is seemingly without end, but yesterday I posted the following tweet:

i will think hard before booking with orbitz again. #still_waiting_for_my_refund

Within 3 hours, I received the following from an orbitz rep on twitter:

OrbitzGal @katiemccurdy Hi there, saw your tweet. Have you taken your trip already?

I have to say, it felt good to get some notice in twitterspace; but ultimately, I was still at ground zero with Orbitz’s customer service, which is where I’ve been countless times in the past three months.  They say they keep notes on my account about recent conversations, but it seems to take about 20 minutes of being on hold before I end up talking to the right person. I’m hoping something productive will come of all this, but in the meantime, I want to productively vent by offering suggestions to l’Orbitz.

Suggestions: use phone number recognition to bring up the customer’s profile before you answer the phone.  Don’t repeatedly ask for name and zip code each time a customer is transferred between internal departments.  Put ‘alerts’ on customer accounts, such as ‘transfer to supervisor immediately’ to avoid wasting my time while you (you, orbitz customer service representative) come to the same conclusion on your own.

And finally, Orbitz needs to man-up, front my refund, and put the heat on Liat airlines to pay them back.

My parents now email from their phones

So my dad, who is one of the largest technophobes I know, now reads and sends his emails from his new Blackberry.  My mom, who is an ‘early adopter’ type, has spent the last week configuring her new iPhone, switching from AOL to gmail (praise the lord, hey-oh!) and reading and sending email using her phone.  

I, a lowly, thrifty grad student, still use my phone only for talking.  That’s so ‘last year.’ 

What am I trying to get at?  My parents are ahead of me in the gadget race!  So are all of their friends…it’s typical for any one of their friends (most 60+) to whip out their iPhones at dinner to display pictures, check the weather, or even look up an obscure fact.  They say things like “oh e-mail me and let me know what time to meet for dinner.”  It makes me feel like a wooly cave-girl who has just happened upon a race of technically advanced robot elders. 

But really, I’m proud of them for making the effort to keep up with the times, and hopefully I will someday know the ways of their people.