January 19, 2006
Why my participation on this site, and mailing lists, and other places, is currently light
I have my fingers in many pies.
For Adaptive Path
For the IA Institute
Other things
Things I'm not doing
January 17, 2006
Genres drive web users "blink"
The jounral Nature reports on research that shows that web site users make snap decisions about the quality of a web page. While such early research requires being taken with a grain of salt, it's definitely clear the first impressions are crucial.
My guess is that these first impressions are very much a product of what Andrew Dillon calls the "shape of information." We engage with information not just semantically, but physically. The shape, structure, and form of information drives our initial impressions of the meaning and quality of information.
I dealt with this issue in my explorations of document genres. (That link leads to a Google search that turns up articles from this site.) Users use genre to quickly identify the kind of information they'll find, so genres allow people to seek information that will allow them to satisfy a particular purpose at hand. Genres are very much about the form/shape of information -- for example, when looking at a menu, it's is the structure and layout of the information that first cues people into it's menu-ness. The actual content of the menu registers later.
With the research proposed in Nature, I suspect we're seeing a visceral impact of genre on web design.
January 16, 2006
Does anyone *like* renting a car?
This article on Hertz' change in insurance policies to have drivers responsible for acts of god just adds yet another log to the "rental cars hate their customers" fire.
My experience with Budget after my accident is seemingly typical -- even though I was not at fault, Budget was still hostile toward me, sending terse threatening letters about how I owed them money.
Or the car I rented this past weekend from Avis -- the Lost Damage Waiver was $23.99 a DAY, which is more than the car cost. I declined, trusting the gold card to cover it. But, I mean, come ON.
Does anyone have satisfactory rental car experiences? Even Enterprise, whom I had trusted, gouged me on both the additional driver fee as well as an underhanded upgrade that caught us off-guard until we realized what had happened. Why do I have to be "on my guard" when renting a car? Why do I have to assume they are out to get me? How does that build customer loyalty and trust?
Where is the JetBlue of the car rental industry? Hell, why isn't JetBlue in the car rental industry? It is so clearly an industry in need of some form of disruptive competition, because the current set of companies are simply racing to the bottom.
