Paul Annett

I’m no political blogger, but I do take a mild interest in the blunderings of George W. Bush for pure entertainment value and just in case he accidentally presses the big red button when he’s meaning to call for a pizza. Today I stumbled upon a Huffington Post article quoting Dubya’s recent speech about the latest developments in Iraq:

War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq, so now they argue the war costs too much.” President Bush - March 19, 2008.

As you can see from the second part of the sentence, Bush is trying to attack the methods of war critics. I include that just for context, but it is of no importance to the following point.

Taking just the first part of the sentence, Bush is clearly saying that up until now there has been credibility to the argument that the US Army is losing in Iraq. Which to me reads as an admission that each time he’s assured the world of their success for the last four years, he knew it was a lie.

The Huffington Post has the man’s incompetence in full.

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I’ve never met anybody who sings the praises of O2, the phone network Apple have disappointingly chosen to exclusively offer the iPhone in the UK. Once upon a time I was an O2 customer, but the experience was so bad that not even the iPhone will tempt me back. I was an ‘online’ customer, which meant suffering their awful, error-riddled website, because no in-store representative could even talk to me about my account, and I refused to call their premium-rate customer support number to talk to an incompetent call centre buffoon.

It doesn’t fill me with confidence that even after the iPhone launch has been announced, O2 have such disregard for Apple’s customers that the left-hand navigation on their website is missing when viewed in Apple’s Safari web browser (the browser built-in to the iPhone). If you do get an iPhone in the UK, don’t expect to use it to check your bill online*.

Even more annoyingly, when I filled in their contact form to report this issue, I received the following email:

Thanks for getting in touch.
We’re really excited about the iPhone - for the most up to date information we recommend you visit www.o2.co.uk/iphone or www.apple.com/ukstore
If your query doesn’t relate to the iPhone, please reply to this email and we’ll help you further.

…so, essentially: “Nobody will read your message. If you really want us to read it then try to remember what you typed in our online form, and type it up again in an email.” - thanks O2, how helpful of you.

* I’ve just installed a beta version of Safari 3, and discovered that the problem doesn’t happen. Safari 3 will only be on a very few web developer’s Macs at the moment, so most of the world still sees the broken site - and it wouldn’t even be a hard thing for O2 to fix.

This year’s dConstruct User Experience Design conference is mere days behind us. Having been inspired to create websites which are easier to use, I am horrified by the lack of thought behind the design of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Amazon’s phenomenal success as a book store has never been attributed to its frankly poor visual design. This week my criticism of it has become quite topical.

Mechanical Turk is currently in the news because it’s being used to help in the search for Steve Fossett, who went missing in his aeroplane in the Nevada desert last week. Mechanical Turk users are reviewing the latest satellite images of the area from Google Earth, looking for anything which resembles a crashed plane.

The problem, I found, is that the process is arduous and the user interface too complicated. For a start you need to be logged in to the site, although this seems pointless given that users are not rewarded for this task and forcing people to register first is a massive deterrent. Once you’re logged in, and in the ‘Find Steve Fossett’ section, you have to accept the project (or the ‘HIT’, as it’s called), then…

1. Scroll down to the photo to review it.
2. Scroll down further to the form.
3. Probably click the radio button for ‘No, this image contains nothing of interest’.
4. Scroll either to the bottom or back up to the top of the page.
5. Make sure ‘Automatically accept next HIT’ is checked.
6. Press the ‘Submit HIT’ button.
7. Repeat.

Given the time-sensitive nature of the task, with a little thought this 7-step process could and should be condensed to just one-click, with an easy to understand user interface and no need to scroll or even move your mouse between each HIT. In my rudimentary test, this reduced Amazon’s 10-second per photo process to just 3-seconds per photo (most of which was just the time taken for the next photo to load).

Providing a better user interface would allow each photo to be checked in about a third of the time, in turn encouraging more people to help in the search. The overall time saving would be immense, and could literally mean the difference between life and death for Fossett.

Compare Amazon’s Mechanical Turk screenshot to my simplified Mechanical Turk screenshot (in this demo, click and hold the mouse to see what would happen if you found Steve’s plane).

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