Steely Dan Left Bank Holiday tour and "Heinken Music Hall fun bills"

Me and my dad went to see Steely Dan in Heineken Music Hall. The concert was good especially after a couple of caipirinhas.

Steely Dan playing

On a sour note there is a quite strange monetary system that you need to adhere to when buying stuff in Heineken Music Hall. Normal Euros don't work instead you need to exchange them for Heinken Music Hall coins. These coins are non-refundable and since you I didn't want to be running back and forth to the exchange booth I turned 40 € into 30 Heinken Music Hall "fun bills".

Batavia and Bataviawerf

This weekend my dad came to visit and we went to Bataviawerf outside Lelystad in Flevoland to look at the boat Batavia; or rather a reconstruction since the original grounded near Western Australia.

I've read Batavia's Graveyard by Mike Dash about a year ago and really liked it and since then I wanted to go see the replica. So now I have one more Dutch cultural site that I can tick of my todo list.

It's pretty cool to see a big sailing ship especially one that has been the centre for a bloody mutiny. It's probably not as big as the ship Vasa but it was well worth the trip. Especially since it is pretty cool to travel across fake land imagining that you are five meters under water.

The ever diminishing refresh/reload button in browsers, part II

After searching various forums I came across a plausible answer:

Most people don't use the refresh button. They might visit the site once and later go back at a later point. Since I am doing development and prototyping work I frequently reload the site many times to check the changes. I thought that users would use the refresh the site if it got stalled during load. That is probably to advanced for many of them.

However I stand by my first blog entry, what harm could that button possibly have done when it was big and accessible. Why hide it?

But bottom line, know your users and you are not a user.

The ever diminishing refresh/reload button in browsers

I was ticked off that the resize button in Internet Explorer 7 had gotten so small that a lot of precision is needed to click on it. Instead of the full size toolbar button in IE 6 there is a tiny little button that not only was smaller but also further away from the rest of the navigation buttons. So instead of moving the mouse to the top left corner of the screen and being able to move back and forth and resize there was now a need to move the mouse to the other size of the address field.

Since I use Mac OS X for my daily work and only use Windows for testing I shrugged and got on. But now Apple has made the same design flaw in Safari 4.

Is it just me who finds it annoying and what ever happened to Fitts's law?

I am well aware that there are keyboard combinations available but I wonder what user testing and thinking might lay behind this change. Funnily instead of Microsoft borrowing good ideas from Apple, Apple is suddenly borrowing bad ideas from Microsoft. Luckily, Firefox has kept it's refresh/reload button same size and accessible.

UI specification template

Looking around for some information about standardised UI/Interaction design templates I came across this interesting discussion on IxDa:

http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=32403

Nice.

Öresundstågen, never ever ever on time

I am really fed up with Öresundstågen.

The company Öresundståg is a joint venture between Danish Trafikstyrelsen and several smaller regional public transport authorities including Skånetrafiken, which runs the trains in the province of Skåne (the southmost part of Sweden).

I frequently travel back and forth between Schiphol and Sweden. The quickest route (very questionable) is to take the flight to Copenhagen Airport Kastrup and take the train across the bridge.

From the horse's mouth: First train cancelled, second train 27 minutes late,

third train cancelled and forth train 12 minutes late

The train ride should come to 30-40 minutes but there is a problem. There is always delays. I am not kidding, since I moved to Holland there has perhaps been two occasions when the train has departed from Kastrup on time. Öresundståg has the courtesy to announce why they are delayed so by now I have heard them all: "The conductor didn't show up", "We have engine failure", "There is a problem with the wiring" and "Bla bla bla bla bling bling bla".

Delayed in March

Delayed in May

So after god knows how many delayed trips I wrote a letter to Öresundståg with a business proposal:

Händelsedatum: 2009-05-29

Händelsetid: 20:00

Åkte med: Tåg

Plats: Kastrup

Hej, jag reser med Öresundståget frekvent till och från Kastrup. De senaste 10 gånger har tåget varit föresenat. Nu senast med nästan 40 minuter.

Jag undrar varför ni bemödar er med att ge ut en tidtabell eftersom den inte verkar ha någon som helst inverkan på de egentliga avgångstiderna?

Jag har därför ett besparingsförslag. Jag kan ge ut en tidtabell med en rad randomiserade avgångstider (jag är grafiker och programmerare). Då behöver ni endast betala min lön och kan avskeda all personal som är involverad i ert planeringsarbete. Tågen kan ni fortsätta skicka ut som ni gör nu (tillsynes slumpvis).

Om ni inte godtar mitt förslag vill jag ha en förklaring till varför ni inte klarar av att följa er tidtabell. Utifrån den hätska stämning som uppstår på era tåg när ni är försenade kan det skönjas att fler än jag skulle vilja få en förklaring. Varför inte publicera det på er hemsida och i er tidning ombord på tåget?

Jag bifogar gladeligen en lista med mina flygturer och era förseningar om så önskas.

Translation:

Hello, I travel frequently to and from Kastrup. On the last ten occasions there has been delays. Last time there was a delay of 40 minutes.

I am wondering why you as a company bother with printing schedules since it doesn't seem to have any influence what so ever on the actual arrival and departure times.

Therefore I have a business proposal that I which you would consider. I can make a schedule for you with randomised departure times (I am graphical designer and programmer). You would then only have to pay my salary and can fire all personnel involved with the planning. The trains can continue arriving and departing apparently randomised.

If you do not accept my proposal I would like to have an explanation as to why you are not able to follow the schedule. From the atmosphere among my fellow passengers it is quite obvious that there are more people then me who would like to have an explanation. Why not publish it on you web site or the magazine on board.

I can gladly send you a list of my flights and the delays.

On the sixteenth of June I got the following reply:

Hej,

Tackar så mycket för ditt förslag, men det måste vi tyvärr avböja.

När det gäller trafiken, jobbar vi hela tiden på att bli bättre. Dock är det många aktörer som skall samsas om resuserna, och när något går fel får det ofta följder för alla aktörer. Detta kan vi bara beklaga.

Med vänlig hälsning

Translation:

Hello, thank you very much for your proposal but we have to decline.

We are constantly working on improving our service. There are many actors involved that have to share the resources and when something goes wrong it impacts all parties involved. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Best Regards

So I guess they didn't see the huge amounts of saving my proposal would deliver. Their loss I suppose.

CHI Nederland 2009: Change!

I was sponsored by my work to attend CHI Nederland 2009: Change!.

It was great fun. Check out the photostream (not courtesy of me).

I think that the most valuable lesson that I got from the conference was that multichannel business solutions not only requires the information to be consistent across all channels but also the user experience (Geke van Dijk, STBY). It's quite obvious but has some real design implications that are not solved during a coffee break.

Me and a fellow HCI enthousiast during lunch

Here are some pictures that I took (not very good quality):

Hiroshi Ishiguro,

Professor at Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, Osaka, Japan

Globe 4D - Who needs a regular globe when they have one of these?

Gilbert Cockton,

Research Chair in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), University of Sunderland