Does Tully's Want Customers?

Suppose you want to go to Tully's. You know how this works. You just go to tullys.com and type in your zip code, perhaps your address, and you'll get a list of nearby Tully's. Or at least that's how it's supposed to work. Give it a try.

Can't figure it out? Neither could I. It turns out that there is an entirely separate web site, tullyscoffeeshops.com for that purpose. And tullys.com does not contain a link anywhere to that site. Do they want customers?

This is a surprisingly common problem. Usually, it's just sites trying to be too subtle, favoring conforming to some style sheet over actually being usable. Look at bestbuy.com, for example, where Store Locator is mixed in with the non-parallel Weekly Ad, Outlet Center, Services, and Gifts. or costco.com, where it's even smaller and in an even bigger list.

But Tully's has taken it to a new level by removing the link completely!

Update: Yes, Tully's does want customers. Read what happened.

Android Annoyances, Yet ...

I had the opportunity to use a Google I/O phone for about a week. I found a lot of things not to like about Android, but I'm getting an Android phone anyway.

The I/O phone is the same HTC phone that is supposedly shipping later this month as the T-Mobile myTouch and is also known as the HTC Ion. It's a great phone -- rock solid hardware, quality touchscreen and buttons, a great shape for my pocket.

Google's Android operating system is pretty good too. I had played with Android briefly before, but this is the first time that I'd spent any significant time with it. Overall, I'd rate Android as comparable to the iPhone. There are some things I like better, some things I don't like as much. Here are some of the big things that I think are wrong with Android:

• To turn the speakerphone on during a call, you have to press the Menu button, then choose speakerphone from the menu which shows 9 items. Since a big reason you might want to turn on the speakerphone is that you're driving, this should be an operation you can perform without looking at the screen. My suggestion: Pressing and holding the Menu button during a call turns on/off the speakerphone.
• To get the numeric touchpad during a call, you have to drag up the touchpad, an awkward action when you're in the midst of a call (or driving). My suggestion: The menu button shows the touchpad. At the bottom of the touchpad is a More button which shows the other, less frequently-used menu items. Or, the menu button could cycle between neither, touchpad, menu, then back to neither.
• The voice dialing is worthless. What's the point of voice dialing, if you have to look at the phone to see whether it recognized the name?
• Did I mention that voice dialing is worthless? To start it, you have to unlock the phone and run an application. Why doesn't the button on my Bluetooth headset work like it does on most phones?
• The messages that appear when you get a second call when you're on a call already don't actually tell you what to do. This is particularly odd since they did such a nice job with the main call UI. I figured out that the green (answer) button switches between calls, but what about the other functions, like hanging up the first call to take the second? There's no need to be subtle.
• You can't put a button on the home screen that makes a phone call -- you can only put a Contact, so making a phone call is a minimum of two steps (after unlocking the phone). Fortunately, the third-party app AnyCut fixes this.
• The Gmail application can't be configured to work with more than one email account. I know I'm far from alone in having multiple email accounts.
• Android does include a separate Email application for other accounts. But, the second application isn't nearly as good, even when using a Gmail account. Setup is far from ideal. Although it automatically configures Gmail and Hotmail accounts, other accounts require you to select either POP3 or IMAP and provide server settings. I was not able to configure a Google Apps account properly, but apparently it does work. Why don't they provide a third option for Google Apps or, better, recognize Google Apps domains automatically?
• When you save bookmarks to the home page, they all look alike. If the site has a large favicon associated with it, why doesn't it use that, like Google Chrome does? Or enlarge the small favicon? Fortunately, the third-party app Bookmark 2 has this one taken care of. It's not very elegant, but, for the most part, setting up home page bookmarks is something one does infrequently.
• Why are the backgrounds of all the home screens the same? It would be great to be able to make them different as a means of instant orientation. Also, why are there only three home screens?
• Android has a very nice predictive text feature while you're typing. It makes the touchscreen keyboard bearable. But, it doesn't work everywhere -- like when you're typing an email message.
• When you swipe, sometimes things stay selected afterwards. I think they're not really selected -- it just looks like it. This one's just a bug.

Despite these complaints (and there are additional, less important ones), I'm planning to get a myTouch. For my purposes, it's better than the iPhone. I don't care about the iPhone's big advantages, like handling music really well. I have an iPod Touch for iPhone games (including the ones I'm writing). And, I think the myTouch is a better phone, though I know in these days of text messaging, actual phone usage seems to get short shrift.

Google has a good track record of updating their products and they already shipped one major upgrade in the first six months. I have confidence they'll fix these problems and, unlike older phones, I'll get the fixes and new features automatically. And, the fact is that my list of annoyances for the iPhone is just as long.

The final trump card is that the T-Mobile rate plan is $30 a month cheaper than the equivalent plan on AT&T. And that's not counting the fact that calls to my family are free on T-Mobile, so the AT&T plan might well turn out to be $40 or $50 a month higher. Over two years, that's an extra $720+ for the iPhone.

But, all this brings up the biggest issue that irks me about this phone: I can't buy one yet.

Updated: I had said that the Email application didn't work with Google Apps accounts. Apparently, it does, but the setup could be improved.

Why I'm Switching From Chrome To Firefox

When Google Chrome came out of Beta, I switched to it as my primary browser. I like Chrome very much, but now I'm switching back to Firefox. There are a couple of reasons. The biggest pain is that I see this message a lot:

There are a lot of sites that routinely use forms as you navigate through them. Amazon, one of the biggest sites on the internet, is one of them, but they are hardly alone. When you go Back in Chrome, you frequently see this page. I never want to see this message again. I don't want Chrome resubmitting the form for me. It's almost always the wrong thing to do and that politely worded message is almost always incorrect. I want it just to show me what was on my screen 3 seconds ago. For example: when I add something to my wish list on Amazon, Amazon adds the item to the wish list and shows me a bunch of suggestions. If I click on something that looks interesting, then go Back, Chrome wants to resubmit the form that I didn't even know existed. If I don't, I can't see the suggestions again. But, if I do, Amazon tells me that the item is already on my Wish List and still doesn't show me the suggestions. How about this instead: a message that says "This page may be out of date."

But, wait, there's more.

I was in the midst of giving a demo of Groupthink using Chrome and a page simply didn't work. It loaded, but nothing was live in the page. What's going on? It turned out that one of the JavaScript files I needed wasn't loading because I didn't have a network connection (everything else was loaded from the server I was running locally). Had I been using Firefox, I would have seen a note about errors in the lower right corner of the window. But Chrome showed me nothing -- it just made me look bad.

I use Faves for permanent bookmarking (if you haven't tried it, it's the best bookmarking service out there, bar none). This means that I don't have very many browser bookmarks. But, I do have about a dozen that I use all the time. One obvious one is the Fave It! bookmarklet, but I also have a bunch that I use every day (Puzzazz, draft.blogger.com, App Engine Local Admin and App Engine Server Admin are my top bookmarks). In Firefox, these are easily accessible from the Bookmarks menu. In Chrome, I have two choices -- permanently give up screen real estate for an ugly bookmarks bar, or use the bookmarks dialog. How about a Bookmarks menu?

Those are the biggest items, but there are other nits:

• I run Chrome in full screen mode. When I drag out a tab, I'm doing it because I want to see it, not because I want most of it to be off-screen.
• When I don't have very many tabs, how come they're not wider? It's not uncommon for me to have five tabs that are all named "Amazon.c..." and, of course, I can't tell the difference between them. Even better, provide a way to show little thumbnails underneath all the tabs, either as an option or as a temporary state.
• Chrome conveniently will only auto-enter addresses that I've actually typed. I like that. But, it will also auto-enter incorrect addresses that I've typed and there doesn't seem to be a way to get it to stop doing that.
• Why doesn't the History show me the URLs of the pages? There are lots of sites out there on which every page has the same name. And why can't I right-click on an item in the History to open it in a new tab?
• If the cursor is positioned over a Flash control (which I have never clicked in), Backspace doesn't work to go back. If the cursor is positioned over an image which has been opened, Backspace doesn't work to go back.
• When I open a link from another application (like Outlook), Chrome opens a new window instead of a new tab. That is, unless it's already done that once, in which case it uses that window. But, in either case, I still end up with two Chrome windows instead of one.
  
• It seems to me that Chrome expires cookies early sometimes. As a result, I'm logged out of sites that I expect to still be logged into. I've had Chrome suddenly stop accepting cookies, for no apparent reason (fixed by quitting and relaunching).
  
• Pages that look like they're complete sometimes continue to have a spinning disk indicating the page hasn't loaded.
  
• What was the idea behind not having visible buttons for the prev/next menus? I will say this is better than the brain-dead single history menu that Firefox 3 introduced, but is it really necessary to be so minimalist that there isn't even an affordance for a common action?
  

There are also a few features that I'd love for Chrome to have:

• Narrower window mode -- unfortunately, there are still lots of web sites that stretch all the text to full-width on my 24" monitor, making it harder to read. Amazon, one of the most popular sites on the Internet, is one of these sites. I'd like to be able to tell Chrome that certain web sites should be given a narrower window width. Yes, I can drag the tab out and shrink it, but it would be great if it could be done automatically whenever I visit the site.
• A real debugger. I'll settle for having Firebug work, but I think the devs at Google can do a lot better.
  
• Support for the Web Developer toolbar, or something like it. I'm not a big fan of the Web Developer toolbar (it's pretty clunky), but I use it in Firefox because there are a bunch of really useful features. The ones I use most often: Disable Cache, Disable JavaScript, control over cookies, form overrides, and View Generated Source.
• I'd like a master password like Firefox has and I'd like the saved passwords actually encrypted with that master passwod. Instead, I tell Chrome to not remember passwords.
  

If it weren't for the problems, I actually prefer Chrome over Firefox. It's faster and it's less cluttered. It's elegant. I like how it automatically updates. But problems like this make Chrome look a lot like a Beta product, despite the fact that Google pulled off the Beta label.

I look forward to switching to Chrome again when it really launches.

Stupid Password Policies

I have a friend who has a whole bunch of passwords written down, on a whole bunch of Post-It notes, right next to her computer. Why on earth would she do that? Well, it's not her fault. It's the fault of overzealous web sites that not only force her to have complex passwords, but have conflicting rules. She can't make up one password that she uses everywhere.I frequently recommend that people make up a rule for their passwords -- for example, name of their dog and a number, followed by something they can associate with the web site. This way they only have to remember a single, simple password but have a more complex password. This way, they might have passwords like spot3nile for Amazon, spot3junk for Ebay, spot3green for American Express, etc. But even this fails miserably because there are so many different conflicting standards. It's all part of the fake security that so many web sites have.Here are some of the password policies that I've seen recently:

• no restrictions at all
• 6 or more characters, no restrictions
• 6-8 characters, at least one non-letter, symbols are recommended
• 6-8 characters, at least 1 letter and at least 1 number, and at least 1 symbol
• 6-8 characters, at least 1 letter and at least 1 number, and at least 1 symbol
• 6-8 characters, at least 1 letter and at least 1 number, no symbols allowed
• 8-12 characters, at least 1 uppercase, 1 lowercase, 1 number, no symbols allowed
• 6-8 digits

I'm sure the list could be much larger if I did some research. In addition to this, there are case-sensitive and case-insensitive passwords. The thing I hate the most is the insistence on an upper case letter (the USPS web site is one of the sites that does this). I invariably forget the requirement and can't log in. Maybe if their web site said "don't forget: our stupid password policy means that your password has an uppercase letter in it" it would help me. I even use one web site where they use a Flash object that times inter-character intervals to see if it's really you typing your password. If you don't type your password in the same way, they ask you one of three random follow-up questions to make sure it's you. Without fail, every single time I have logged in, I have been asked one of the follow-up questions. Why not just ask it in the first place?!To make the whole situation even stranger, many sites provide a password reset mechanism which is incredibly easy to break. All you need is my zip code and my mother's maiden name, or some nonsense like that. I don't think I've ever seen a question that my brother and my wife wouldn't know the answer to. Hell, my kids know most of the answers!Who exactly are these password policies helping? 

Update: Serendipity! Just saw a New York Times Bits posting on pretty much this same topic: Falling Over Fallback Password Questions. An extra point from a comment that I wish I'd remembered -- how many sites are there that, after requiring you to use a ridiculously long and complex password, that you may well be using on other sites, simply email it to you in plain text when you go through the reset mechanism? What are they thinking?

Form Over Function

I recently bought a Jawbone Noise Assassin Bluetooth headset. The Jawbone, in many ways, is a designer's dream, starting with the packaging, which is incredibly elegant -- a clear plastic shell that contains black, folded paper boxes, a delight to open and explore. The headset itself is gorgeous. It's small, lightweight (about 1/3 oz), and comfortable. It comes with leather-wrapped earloops in two sizes, plus two more thin ones designed for use with eyeglasses, and three sizes of earbuds. It comes in black, silver, and gold.

There are a lot of nice touches to the design. One example: the first time you turn it on, it automatically starts in pairing mode so you can connect it to your phone. And, of course, it has the main selling point -- world-class background noise elimination which uses a combination of a patented voice-activity sensor and "advanced DSP algorithms," which have been improved singe the original model (the Jawbone Noise Shield). It may well be the best Bluetooth headset on the market. But, despite all this, there are a couple of significant missteps -- in which the designers have gone for form over function.

Buttons Aren't Bad 

First, for some reason, the designers seem to think that buttons are bad and they tout the fact that there are no visible buttons. Here's what they say:

No Visible Buttons
The "invisible button" policy at Jawbone accomplishes a clutter-free look. Touch-surface technology allows the user to operate switches by lightly pressing the outside shield.

I don't object to invisible buttons per se, but it seems the desire to hide the buttons has overridden the usability of the design. Take a look at the position of the Talk button:

How do you press this button? Well, basically, you press the whole headset into your ear. I don't know about you, but pressing a headset into my ear isn't comfortable, even with a super lightweight headset like this. To turn the headset on or off, you have to press that button for 2 seconds. I will note that this is an improvement from the first Jawbone, where both buttons required pushing the headset into your ear and they took noticeably more pressure to activate. Next time around, how about positioning the buttons so that you press them by grasping the top and bottom of the headset?

Standards Aren't Bad

Second, for some inexplicable reason, the Jawbone uses a completely non-standard power adapter. It has an elegant connector -- small, shaped to fit the Jawbone, and it attaches with magnets. It's a huge improvement from the very wacky, hard-to-fit adapter from the first Jawbone. But, why does it exist? Most small devices like this use a mini-USB connector and there is a new, smaller micro-USB connector standard. I have half a dozen devices in my house that all use a mini-USB connector. Why doesn't the Jawbone use a standard connector?

I could excuse it if they were trying to create a new standard -- perhaps a magnetically attached USB connector that others could use. But they're not -- their connector will never fit anything else because it is shaped to fit the headset. Sure, it's elegant. But, it's not elegant enough to override the pain of the extra cable. I have chargers for my cell phone at home, in my office, and in my car. But I have to carry the cable for the Jawbone around if I want to be able to charge it with me wherever I go. When I travel, I'll have to take an extra cable just to charge my Jawbone -- and, if I forget the cable, I'm screwed.

Documentation Isn't Bad

It's minor compared with the other problems, but the folded, white-on-black documentation, while gorgeous, is inadequate. How many volume levels are there? (Since the volume cycles only one way with a button press, you need to know this -- it's 5.) What is the funny sound I hear sometimes when I'm wondering around my house? (I think it's an out-of-range indicator.) How do I end a call? (Press the Talk button.) Is there anything else I need to know? How about a little table?

The Jawbone Isn't Bad

There are some other nits. For example, the LED indicator light, which lights in both red and white to indicate different things is underneath my finger when I'm pressing the Talk button. The LED lights up to confirm that 2 seconds has elapsed when I'm turning the Jawbone on or off, but I can't see it. Maybe I just have big fingers.

In the end, I still recommend the Jawbone Noise Assassin, but not by much (and I also recommend it over it's predecessor, the Noise Shield). It's a good headset, but it would be a home run if they fixed these flaws. For me, the advantages of their design, including the noise elimination, just barely outweigh these disadvantages.

Netflix Listened

This just in:

Wow. This is, unfortunately, a rare event. Netflix was adamant that the Profiles feature was going away, but they heard their users and reversed course.

"Because of an ongoing desire to make our website easier to use, we believed taking a feature away that is only used by a very small minority would help us improve the site for everyone. Listening to our members, we realized that users of this feature often describe it as an essential part of their Netflix experience. Simplicity is only one virtue and it can certainly be outweighed by utility." (from the Netflix blog: Profiles feature NOT going away)

My kids, who told me that the Netflix explanation made "absolutely no sense," will be quite happy. I still don't buy their explanation, but I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Now I can start thinking about that Roku box again. Bravo!

NetFlix is a Service, Not a Web Site

Just got this email from NetFlix:


The "helpful" FAQ page says nothing that isn't said or implied in the email. In short: Profiles are going away, yes, they're going away, yes, all the features of Profiles will be gone, yes, you're screwed if you rely on Profiles. Of course, they took a little longer to say that, but you get the idea.

I don't know about the average NetFlix customer, but Profiles (multiple queues) are an essential part of the way I use NetFlix. I have four queues -- the "family" queue, which has movies for my wife and I and the family, my "workout" queue which contains movies that I think are good for workouts (and that nobody else in my family wants to see -- alternated with MacGyver), plus each of my kids have their own queue. They're responsible for their queues, including returning movies after they've watched them.

But, NetFlix has decided to kill the feature in order to "improve the NetFlix website for all our customers." How exactly does that work? You take away a feature that I rely upon and somehow that makes the website better? And I love that amorphous "better" -- trust us, it will be "better" in some unspecified way. What feature will they give me to replace it?

Will they provide a quick way to reorder my movies, because it sure seems to me that, without queues, I'm going to be constantly reordering movies in order to make sure I get an appropriate replacement movie whenever one gets returned.

Are they going to provide a feature that allows me to give my kids access to the queue, without letting them remove movies I've added or view R-rated movies? Or am I just screwed?

Or have they just decided that I'm not their target customer and I don't matter enough? Is it a tiny percentage of customers who were using queues? That won't make me happy, but, if that's the case, at least they could be honest about it.

Underneath all this, I'm really annoyed by the statement that they're improving the "NetFlix website." It makes me think that, after all this time, they don't really understand their own product. I could care less about the NetFlix web site and I bet that's true of 99% of their customers. I use the NetFlix service. The web site is just the way to get to the service and that's true whether the service is DVDs by mail or movies delivered over the Internet. To me, an important part of the service is a slightly better version of what we had at the video store -- the person who returns a video gets to pick a new one. For people like me, the removal of multiple queues makes the NetFlix service worse than the video store. I don't think that's what they want.

I've really been quite happy with NetFlix. I was just about to buy a NetFlix box for my TV, despite the limited number of available movies. Now I'm going to rethink that.

Final thought: It's possible that NetFlix has some amazing new design that will give me all of the benefits of Profiles in a different way. And that's what I care about -- the benefits, not the feature. But, given their messaging, I doubt that's the case.

NetFlix, care to enlighten us?

Update: Here's a post about this on the NetFlix blog, with almost a 1,000 responses already:
http://blog.netflix.com/2008/06/profiles-feature-going-away.html

Why is Blogger Hiding Things?

Blogger just introduced a new Dashboard in Blogger in Draft. Here's the main part of it.

And, to compare, here's the old dashboard:


I went to the Blogger in Draft blog to post a complaint but saw that plenty of people had beaten me to it. And what are we all complaining about?

I have to say I don't have any idea why they made this change. Yes, it looks a little nicer, but I can't figure out who they thought they were going to help by only showing the two most recent blogs. And they used a magic number of two -- where did that number come from? Let's look at potential users:

• Bloggers with 2 blogs or less -- these people won't even notice the change.
• Bloggers with 3 to 5 blogs -- these people probably rotate around their blogs, for a variety of reasons. For none of these people, can I imagine that "most recent 2 blogs" is a good set. For myself, I'm more likely to want the blog I posted on least recently to show up, as a reminder that I've been remiss in posting.
• Bloggers with 6 or more blogs -- these people are power users and probably have a variety of usage patterns, so there may be no way to satisfy all of these people (but we should try).
  

They also removed the total number of posts. I don't get that one either. Sure, it's not important to some people, but there is no other easy way to get that information.

I was initially surprised that, when I clicked Display all 3 blogs, they didn't remember that. In retrospect, however, that's correct. If they're hiding things and the things they're hiding changes over time, then I suppose they shouldn't remember that you hid anything. But that's a big IF and I think it's a flawed assumption.

What's the solution?

Well, there's the obvious one, proposed by a number of people commenting on the blog post about the new feature -- add an option to always show all the blogs. But, I've said before that every option we add to a user interface is a decision that we were unable to make during development. So, can we just do something that is so obviously right that everybody will just think it is the right thing? Sure we can.

First, we need to know what the objective is. I think the goal was to make cleaner, simpler, and smaller for users who have blogs that they're not posting to. I think they forgot easier to use, which should always be a goal because, if we forget that, it is way, way too easy to add features that actually make our products harder to use. And hiding things should never be a goal -- it should only be a way to accomplish a benefit, which it fails to do here.

Here's what I think they should do:

• Keep the new look -- it's fine.
• Show all the blogs, in most-recent-to-least-recent order.
• Collapse all blogs that have not been "touched" in the last month.
• Provide a expand/collapse icon or button to allow the expansion of any blogs that are collapsed. The collapse icon is probably not necessary, but having it there for symmetry is a good idea.

And what's the definition of "touched"? Any blog that has been modified to in the last month in any way (new post, editing of an old post, creation of a draft post, deletion of a post, etc.) or has been expanded in the dashboard is considered to be touched. The result is that active blogs are always available and dormant blogs are a click away. But even that click is improved because the click is on the exact blog the user wants and they know where they controls will be after the click, rather than having to click the expand button and then look through what's appeared.

A change like this would not even be noticed by most users -- it would just feel right. Users with multiple, active blogs will see no change. Users with dormant blogs will have them taking up less space and won't mind that. Even power bloggers with lots of blogs, will get the right behavior for both their active and dormant blogs. It's a win all around.

In short:

• Focus on the real goals of your UI change.
• Make sure that "ease of use" is always (or almost always) part of your goals.
• Aim for a change that just feels right -- that people will just say "that's the way it should have been in the first place"
  

Don't Do Me Any Favors

Netflix did me a favor. Or at least they said they did.


On Friday, I sent a movie back to Netflix. The replacement is arriving on Saturday, more than a week later -- because they did me a favor and sent me the first movie in my queue.

Because of the Memorial Day holiday, Netflix didn't receive my return until Tuesday. Then, they sent me the note above telling me that the top movie in my queue isn't available locally, so they're going to do me the favor of sending it from San Jose instead. But, not only does this movie still show as available "now", but every other movie in my queue also shows as available "now". I'd be perfectly happy with the second movie. Or the third. Or the eighth. But, instead, they did me a favor, so instead of receiving a movie on Wednesday, I'm supposed to get it on Saturday. (But, don't cry for me -- I don't have time to watch it anyway.)

I'm not saying that software designers shouldn't try and figure out what users want and help them out. Of course, they should. But, ask yourself a few questions:

• Are you helping your user? or yourself?
• If you could ask the user what they want, what would they say? And would all users, or even almost all users, want the same thing?
  

For another example, my friend Mike Koss recently pointed out another annoying "favor". It's that wonderful Windows Desktop Clean-up Wizard that helps me out by nagging me that I have unused icons on my desktop. I never want to see it again! When they added the option to turn off the reminder (and buried it), did they consider whether they should just turn it off for everybody? Mike's post also adds his personal taxonomy of software annoyances and delights.