Start With Needs

[startwithneeds]

Earlier Benedict Evans tweeted this.

And I replied.

Here's what I mean. When you book a train ticket online this is what happens. This example is with Virgin Trains but it's the same with others including the Trainline.

Finish booking and you get a screen with a nice big booking ref. The number you have to input to collect your tickets. So far so good.

You are offered the option of adding to your calendar. This is useful.

Adds to calendar, looks like this.

The vital booking ref is now buried in the description. Which is obscured when you look at the calendar. This is especially annoying when you're trying to collect your tickets at 7am and you have your phone in one hand and your credit card, needed for verification, in the other.

So I always replace the word train with the booking ref. Instead of saying "Train to Manchester Piccadilly" I put "4CK7JLL2 to Manchester Piccadilly".

Looks like this in my calendar.

Why can't the booking site do that for me?

[startwithneeds]

People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes.

Professor Theodore Levitt

[startwithneeds]

Cash machine at Heathrow

Amounts in GBP. Interesting choice of suggested amounts. I wonder if this is designed with data which shows that most people either want £100+ for a cab into London, or are tourists wishing to use a cashpoint only once in their stay, to avoid machine fees. Is it data or hunch? And if you were a tourist would this make you think you had got the exchange rate wrong, because the amounts are so large? If we were to Do less should cashpoints only display the most popular choice and an 'other amount' option. (If, say, the popular choice was 80% of users.)

[startwithneeds]

Can a double-decker bus fit down your road?

Nice way of B&Q working out how suitable your address is for delivery. Good human language, used lightly. Reminds me of the debates we have over 'should only take 10 minutes'. Is it better to say 'you can do this over a cup of tea' or 'you could do this in your lunch break'?

[startwithneeds]

Peter Palchinsky was the foremost engineering mind of the early Soviet Union.  The Head of the Russian Technical Society, he was also highly critical of the direction of Soviet industrialization:

Top-down planning was too rigid. No allowance was made for local conditions.

There was too much emphasis on large systems and large results. Although there are economies of scale in factories, it is also possible for small enterprises to efficiently exploit small markets.

Not enough attention was paid to the overall system.

Palchinsky’s suggestion for dealing with these problems could be summarized as three principles: 

first, seek out new ideas and try new things [the evolutionary concept of ‘variation’]

second, when trying something new do it on a scale where failure is survivable [‘selection’]

third, seek out feedback and learn from your mistakes as you go along [‘survival / adaptation’]

Palchinsky was not rewarded for these observations, he was executed in May 1929.

(From our friend David Thorpe)

[startwithneeds]

I explained that great design alone wouldn’t get him to that number

If you can get past the Fast Companyness and the usual Apple caveats this is an interesting article. Worth reading for stuff like this, "The company’s previous CEO, Michael Scott, had created different “business divisions” for each product line, including accessories such as monitors and memory drives. Each division had its own head of design and developed its product line any way it wanted to. As a result, Apple’s products shared little in the way of a common design language or overall synthesis. In essence, bad design was both the symptom and a contributing cause of Apple’s corporate disease. Steve’s desire to end this disjointed approach..." And this about how Jobs changed the organisation, "...Neither Apple’s division managers nor its designers would accept this restructuring without a fight. Steve said, “That’s your task, now.” And so, my work began." I'm not summarising it very well here, so go read it. But ignore the Fast Companyness.

[startwithneeds]

Transformation Design

The best name I've found yet for what we're doing - colliding digital, service design, public service and organisational change - is Transformation Design. It's not perfect, it's a bit anodyne. But it's (so far) better than all the alternatives.

The Design Council did some thinking about it, even wrote a paper, back in the noughties, but then let it wither. Shame, if they'd persisted something useful might have emerged by now.

[startwithneeds]

Sugru payment summary

Nice. Well spotted by Iain.

[startwithneeds]

To avoid melting, pay before taking ice creams

I love this. Rather, I love the idea of someone thinking like that. Especially in this cafe which always has a huge queue. Would it be better if they put the ice creams after the till? And some form of board / menu behind the counter, so people didn't need to pick up the actual ice cream until after they've paid. Do people feel uncomfortable paying for something like an ice cream before they've picked it up?

[startwithneeds]

Google search for time

[startwithneeds]

Pleasantly surprised at the cashpoint

I used a cashpoint today, I entered my PIN I pressed the button to withdraw £40 I had entered my PIN incorrectly, so I entered it again It then took me straight back to the correct place in the "journey". I was thinking it wouldn't do this and I'd have to choose to withdraw £40 again. I was pleasantly surprised

[startwithneeds]

I want the service not the product

I was buying Christmas gifts for my niece in America on amazon.com the other day. I wanted a bunch of stuff for a Hello Kitty school house, they had a library, an art class, a science class, that kind of thing. I wanted a couple bits but I wasn't that fussed which one. Art class, science class, didn't really matter. What I did care about was that it came gift wrapped. That's why I was using Amazon to buy the presents. You know how Amazon sells some stuff from different suppliers. Some suppliers don't gift wrap. In the small picture above you can just see that two of the purchases were able to be gift wrapped, one wasn't. So I deleted the gift that couldn't be wrapped and chose a different one. As a customer I was more interested in the service than the product.

[startwithneeds]

TNT bicycles

I have seen a lot of these around town in the last month or so. Obviously cycle couriers aren't that unusual or new, but these seem a little different. They're high profile for a start. Heavily branded. And they don't seem that bothered about locking them up. I wonder if it's a 'thing' or just that TNT have discovered it's more efficient to deliver this way. Or maybe I've just not noticed them before.

[startwithneeds]

Google mobile search result

Here's the search result for 'Evans the cut' on Saturday afternoon. It shows me the map of the cycle shop, and crucially shows me the opening hours which is what i wanted the website for. I'm guessing they have data that shows most people are looking for the address, the phone no and / or the opening hours. Interesting also that it shows the opening hours for Saturday (today) only.

[startwithneeds]

Amazon lockers

I'm not sure how long they've been around, they seem to be relatively new to the UK. You order stuff from Amazon and select the locker as the delivery address. "Once your order is delivered to the Amazon Locker, you'll receive an e-mail with instructions and a unique pick-up code. When you go to the Amazon Locker, enter your pick-up code and the locker with your parcel will open." You can add the locker to your Amazon address book for extra ease. Particularly handy if you live in a block of flats or work at an office that doesn't have a post room. Even better if you have to walk past a locker every day. They appear to be in shopping malls, train stations and Co-ops. Oh, and they have names. A correspondent has written in about Amazon lockers, "[Amazon lockers] are cracking. There's one in the Co-Op on Lordship Lane; I frequently get stuff Primed there. It solves the problem of: I want it asap, but I don't want to have to wait for the postman. I can get something delivered on a Saturday, regardless of where I am, pick it up on Sunday am, as it were. Also, people in the shops find them ALIEN. You walk up to a machine, type in six characters, and a door magically opens. And then you walk off with an envelope. And people in the co-op stare at you like you stole something. It is a weird interaction, that they could probably soften a bit more. Alternatively: make it sound like you'd won on a slot machine." UPDATE: "They are a great idea, unless you happen to be in the same building as one, like my brother is in his office. He struggles to persuade amazon that he wants it delivered to his office and not the locker. It's like Mrs Doyle - use the locker, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan...."