DfC Cologne - the tale of the roadtrip, the conference and winning a mug

A couple of weeks ago my fellow UX specialist Miranda de Groot and I visited Design for Conversion in Köln. Since we had already blown through the funds allocated for conferences this year we wanted to keep it as cheap as possible so we booked rooms at a F1 hotel in Frechen and went by car.

I thought F1 would be bad but I had no idea how bad. Especially since other colleagues who had stayed in a F1 during their studies said things like "het valt best wel mee, hoor!" (trans. it's really not that bad). But man! it was bad. The interior decorators must have been inspired by cruise ships from the Soviet era and cleaning certainly wasn't high on the priority list.

So after a night of of uneasy sleep in Frechen we packed our things and headed into Köln and the conference. Funnily enough: the same truckers that sat outside de entrance when we had arrived where (still?) sitting there when we left.

The venue was really cool, it was located under the main railway line and reminded me a lot about the clubs I used to frequent when I lived in Berlin.

The conference itself was an "unconference" which in this case meant that there was a mix of presentations and team based work. We were divided up into nine teams to work on cases for either Xing, Greenpeace or Coop (three teams per case). Miranda got to work on a sign in form for Green Peace and I got to work on how Coop Switzerland could improve the communication of their corporate sustainability.

Here are our take aways from the conference part:

Kath Straub (Usability.gov) - Persuasive technology, design beyond the task
Twitter: @kas

• The car sales man is a good intuitive psychologist in that he/she will try to find your trigger points by asking the right questions.
• Persuasion is often about finding an emotional hook like Coco pops saying that they help your child's immune system.
• Use a conversational tone of voice because it simulates an authentic conversation (like a time keeping system that says you have done good when you fill in your report).
• Persuasion and usability can be conflicting for instance a lotterty ticket is an example of a persuasive but hardly usable design. But it doesn't mean that usability doesn't matter.
• We need to make sure that we integrate our different communication channels such as email, web and twitter. Kath uses the example of an airline that emails you asking if you want them to check you in for a small fee.
• Through the social media space we have access to "similiar strangers" which are people that we don't know but have the same experience or same problems and we will use their experience when making our choices.
• Don't forget about usability! If they can't use the product than persuasion doesn't matter.

Peter van der Putten (PegaSystems) - Authenticity a left brain approach
Slides: Authenticity a left brain approach

• Be authentic. If you have have a system with a greeting when the user logs in then make sure you get the name right (reminds me about the rule about not breaking the fourth wall).
• Be one. Make sure you have control over the user experience across your different channels.
• Authenticity is about being reliable and trustworthy like when the neighborhood butcher would remind you if you forgot to by eggs that day.
• Avoid the uncanny valley (odd use of the term, normally it's used about humanoids) but what Peter meant was that you don't want to get to personal and exoid because it's experienced as uncomfortable.

Nicholas Mohr (Sapient Nitro) - Using data to improve online experiences
Slides: Using data to improve online experiences

• Web Analytics is hot with Coremetrics and Unica being bought by IBM and Omniture being bought by Adobe.
• Web analytics is about getting a competitive advantage by looking at what has happened, why it has happened and what is going to happen.
• Web analytics should drive strategy by helping you to understand customers, get business intelligence, uncover gems, drive/help marketing efforts and innovation.
• Web analytics needs to be used with methodology otherwise you will only be able to figure out what has happened but never why.
• A/B-testing is a good start is not enough. Nicholas compares it to sandpaper, it smoothes out small bumps.
• User experience is about observation, understanding modeling and innovation and in the understanding phase web analytics data should play a major role.
• Web analytics needs to be used for continuos improvement of existing web sites by measuring performance based on the KPIs.
• To improve the online user experience you need to use web analytics to identify issues, use usability testing to understand why, validate the fixes by e.g. multi-variate testing and use web analytics to optimize.

Paul Hughes (Lava Design)

Twitter:@paulbhughes

Paul easily held the coolest presentation. He did not use PowerPoint but instead he drew his presentation on a roll of butcher paper. The drawing was filmed an projected on a screen behind him.

Much of what Paul said falls into the category inspirational but here where some concrete tips such as that there are three levels of design: components - the form and function, connections - the system and the processes and context - the strategy and the policy surrounding it. He used Apples media strategy and Philips work on hospitals to exemplify. In Apples case the iPod is the component, iTunes the connection and redefining personal music the context. Good design should be about all three.

However I have my doubts about his examples. Much of the innovation that we see around us are driven by chance and not by strategic thinking (Apple bought SoundJam years before they released the iPod). In the medicinal world Viagra and Rogaine are examples of successes that came to light by chance. Both where developed for the treatment of heart disease but alternative uses came to light when patients refused to hand in their left over pills when the clinical trials ended. But regardless of the serendipity factor he has a point about looking at the broader context and not just the function of a product.

Paul also talked about branding and how it is important that actions and communication happens in parallel in order to establish trust.

Cases, competition and Coop Switzerland

Each of the three sponsors had brought a case and we got divided up into nine teams to work on them, three teams per case. At the end of the day there was a presentation round and a semi-finalist was chosen per case. Those three teams then went to the finals where a winner was chosen by the sponsors. My team won and I we each got a mug with "member of the winning team" printed on it.

My team worked on a case about how to improve communication about corporate sustainability at Coop Switzerland (funnily enough their representative was a Swede who had grown up in Switzerland). Their problem was that there was a myriad of certifications and marketing campaigns but they where unsure about how they where perceived as a brand and they did not have any marketing research data (at least not with them).

We developed a concept where consumers could earn points and badges through making sustainable choices when they shopped. All of this was backed up by a status transition system, tracking and the ability to cash in the points earned. We began with a brainstorming session where we wrote concepts down on post its. The post its where then clustered and we choose a cluster of post its as basis for our concept which we then worked out on paper.

Sadly, Miranda wasn't so lucky when it came to the cases. She got to work on how to persuade people to sign a multi-page form for Green Peace. That wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for that one of the constraints was that they weren't able to change the form, only the surrounding pages.

Check out videos of the speakers and the case presentations.

UX Lisbon day 3

Last day of the conference featured a different setup than the previous two. Instead of smaller workshops there was a series of short lectures for all the attendees in the main auditorium.

Dan Saffer - Designing for (and with) New Technologies

#odannyboy Slides: -

Dan held a presentation about the progress of technology and how the need for it comes later and how the designer is being tasked with bringing meaning to the technology. He used touch screens as an example of a technology that has been around for almost 30 years but is just now seeing mainstream use. Though I agree with Dan and found his talk interesting I think that this is an oversimplification since it is not only about inventing the need but also about bringing down the cost of the technology so that consumers can afford it. I still remember going with my dad to his work to look at their company's only CD-ROM equipped PC. It was so expensive that only a trained librarian was allowed to use it.

I found it interesting that apparently Jonathan Ives started out designing kitchen appliances and that some of the design language in that field was transplanted into the computer field with his designs for the iMac. But then Jonathan Ives has been accused of copying Braun to.

Donna Spencer - Design Games

#maadonna Slides

Donna's presentation was about different games (techniques) for idea generation and problem solving. The games she presented included Design the Box, a game where the team gets tasked with designing the box for the new product and Divide the dollar, an exercise in prioritizing by dividing a set amount of money to the various functionalities. She also talked about metadata games for sorting out terminology such as asking all the members of a team to name something or writing down all things they can think of in a certain category.

More information at: designgames.com.au/

Luke Wroblewski - First-Person User Interfaces

#lukewdesign Slides

Luke talked about, you guessed it: first-person user interfaces. He explained how we have gone to increasing levels of abstraction in the interfaces that we use to interact with computers, beginning with with circuit boards to punched cards to CLIs to WIMP to Natural User Interfaces finally arriving at the 1st Person UI. Luke showed some applications sporting a 1st person UI such as Layar and presented a list of features he considered signifying for the new UI paradigm:

• The possibility to navigate the space around you like with Google Maps Navigation.
• The augmentation of the immediate surroundings like with the Layar Browser.
• The interaction with nearby object like the various barcode scanner applications for mobile devices.

Lukes touch interface reference guide

Steve Krug -The Lazy Person’s Guide to a Better World: Advantages of Doing The Least You Can Do™

#skrug Slides: -

Steve talked about the benefits of discount usability testing: testing frequently with few participants. He warned about the lure of fixing the low hanging fruit first because it leads to the more serious problems never being fixed. Like he pointed out in his most recent book he pointed out that you must "focus ruthlessly on the most serious problems".

Eric Reiss - Killer Content or Content that Kills?

#elreiss Slides: -

According to Eric there is only one reason to innovate: to solve a problem. Innovation simply for the sake of it or to satisfy one's ego is counter-productive. Inspired by his friend Lars von Trier he wrote the web dogma 06 which just like Triers dogma manifesto is a reaction against what he perceived as bloat (in Trier's case it was Hollywood over-the-top mega-budget products). Funilly enough one of the thinks Reiss talked about was that the "About us" section is a construct of internal politics and therefore should be removed, but I have found on one of the sites I tested that it was one of the most visited sections (but on the other hand that could have been a result of other bigger problems on the page).

Susan Weinschenk - Neuro Web Design: What Makes them Click?

#thebrainlady Slides

Susan's talked about how much of good web design speaks to the unconscious part of our mind. We humans are irrational and that is not something that we can change through training or reasoning. Examples of this are all around us such as ads suggesting the possibility to mate, how we are fooled into buying because of scarcity (the lines at the iPhone release being just one example) and the need to be part of the flock (social websites).

Understanding the irrational nature of our mind is important for good design. Susan said the brain consists of three parts (very simplified): the old brain - responsible for identifying objects that we can eat, mate with and avoid, the mid brain - stories, faces and names and the new brain - responsible for conscious processing. All parts of the brain are important when designing websites.

She gave some fun examples of people saying that cookies in the jar with fewer tasting better and how our innate fear of losing makes us spend more when we are tasked with taking away features from a car with all the extras in comparison with when adding features to the same car stripped bare.

Larry Constantine - Designing for User Performance and User Success

Slides: -

Seeing Larry Constantine talk was probably my only OMG moment at the conference due to his book Software for Use being one of the first HCI books that I ever read. The only thing cooler would have been if they had brought Jeff Raskin back to life (The Humane Interface was the first HCI book I read).

As Larry Constantine himself noted he was a bit of an outlier among the presenters since he works in the automotive industry. He talked about how UCD doesn't work in his field and how they employ activity centred design. An example he gave of this distinction was in designing navigation systems in cars where a UCD approach might endanger the user by keeping her from watching the road by introducing functionality that the user wants but is distracting. Focussing on the activities that she needs to perform instead allows Larry and his team to design solutions for users on the road without compromising safety.

Judging from the comments on twitter after the conference I there was a lot of people in the audience who didn't agree.

More information about Larry's thoughts on UCD and activity centered design.

Jared Spool - The Dawning of the Age of Experience

#jmspool Slides

Jared began his talk complaining that all the good subjects had already been taken and proceeded to dance to Beyonce's Single Ladies, generating roars of laughter.

He began his talk with how the success of Apple has put user experience on the agendas in the board rooms around the world. He talked about how Apple's iPod in many ways is an inferior product in comparison with other mp3 players but the total user experience, the combination of design and business stategy, makes up for it's shortcomings.

The increased attention to UX means that there is a greater need for skilled UX designers. He used chicken-sexing as an example of how practise makes perfect and how being a good designer is something you learn but not open to introspection (which was a fun twist: normally chicken-sexing it is used to explain implicit v.s. explicit memory). Jared talked about how the ever decreasing size of design teams requires the team members to be multi-disciplinary and that you there fore need to create teams based on skills and not on what their business cards says.

Jared listed three attributes of successful teams: vision - what will the product be five years from now, feedback - test with users regularly and culture. He talked about the need for allowing people to fail, going so far as giving examples of companies throwing parties for the people responsible for failed projects.

David Gómez-Rosado - Want magazine launch

#dahveedgr

The day ended with the launch of an online magazine about UX.

http://wantmag.com/

UX Lisbon day 2

People mingling and buying books during the coffee break

It just wouldn't be a conference without Microsoft Surface

Jared Spool (UIE) - Designing for content rich sites

Twitter: #jmspool Slides: -

Jared Spool could probably have ended up a stand-up comedian instead of a usability expert

The main theme in Jared's talk was the scent of information: how we humans track information the same way we would track prey in the forest. In Jared's own words: "Good content must suck". He went on to clarify that he meant like a vacuum cleaner. In the studies Jared conducted he compared the behaviour to a fox chasing a rabbit and where there was good scent the user would find what she was looking for. Here are my notes:

• There is absolutely no truth to the "three clicks theory". Where there is scent people will find what they are looking for.
• Provide good trigger words, they help carry the scent.
• Search logs are an excellent way to pick up trigger words and that users that resort to searching first thing is usually telling you that the scent of information on your site is weak. This is a sort of learned helplessness and after enough times trying to navigate through a site not finding what they are looking for the user will reach for the search box.
• Scrolling has limited impact on the ability to find information but a lot of the reason for the "above the fold" design approach is that users thing that the same design fluff that they see above the fold will continue below the fold.
• Blue and underlined is a terrible markup for links (the colour that we have the least receptors for + cutting of the decender) but users have become habituated and it therefore works. Then Jared went on to make fun of Swiss astrophysicists.
• Banner blindness is also the result of habituation to what Jared referred to as "busy crap".
• Start designing bottom up. The home page is the least viewed of all pages.
• Call reps are a great source of trigger words.
• Using back, pogo-sticking and using search are tell-tale signs that the scent is to weak or as Jared made us chant in chorus: "The back button is the button of doom".
• Users don't want to navigate globally if you spend to much time on that you are solving a non-existent problem. Because users don't search for categories (searching for books at amazon.com is less likely to happend than someone searching or a title).
• Jared says mega-dropdowns suck because they weaken the scent.
• Don't piss them around with irrelevant stuff in order to make the users stay on the site longer, it won't succeed.

Harry Brignull (Madgex) - What you need to know about eye-tracking

Twitter: #harrybr Slides

Harry held a short en concise workshop where he talked about common misconceptions of eye-tracking. He emphasized that eye-tracking only tells you what the user is looking at and that there is a big risk over over-interpreting the information. These are his 4 things you need to know about eye-tracking:

• It only tells you what the user looked at not what they did or said.
• It only tells you what the user looked at at the end of the seccade but not what they grazed over or what their peripheral vision picked up.
• Eye-tracking is not scientific by definition even though it looks sciency, there is a risk of being carried away and over-interpret.
• To interpret any eye-tracking data you must know the question being asked to the participant.

Justin Davis (

Madera Labs)

-

Make it obvious: Affordance as design tool

Twitter: #jwd2a Slides

I signed up for a presentation by Donna Spencer but it was instead being held by Justin Davis. I'm not quite sure why. Unfortunately this presentation was really beginner level although for people who don't know what affordances are I'm sure it was rewarding to attend. Justin talked about the history of affordances (Gibson, Norman, Gaver etc.) and then how the initial concept has a slightly different meaning than it did in the science of perception which Gibson studied.

An affordance, in Gibsons view, is our perception that something, unbeknownst to us, affords a certain action. The perception that a surface invites to a certain type of action and is relative to the actor: an infant and a grown woman won't perceive the same affordance in a flight of stairs (the baby is to small to use them).

It only included real physical objects in Gibson's original theory.

Norman transplanted the term into HCI and instead of only taking the physical capabilities of an actor into account also made the term include the actor's goals and past experience. The meaning came to shift more to "invite to action" rather than the original "affords an action". Also Gibson never meant to include things on a computer screen because he based his theory on how light bounced of surfaces (ambient optical array).

Gaver expanded on the concept and categorised affordances into false (looks like an affordance but isn't), true (looks like an affordance and is one) and hidden (doesn't look like an affordance but is one).

Then Justin went on to talk about the importance of designing button that look like real world buttons and therefore affords clicking. My question remains whether or not this is the result of habituation only or the fact that the button looks like a real world object.

Justin's three guidelines:

• Mimic in real life properties.
• Watch users, do they perceive a button as clickable or not?
• Respect convention.

Peter Merholz (Adaptive Path)

-

Product Strategy and Planning Tools

Twitter: #peterme

Slides: -

Peter was really hard to capture on camera, he kept running back and forth as he was talking

Peter's workshop was the first part of the Adaptive Path UX Intensive set of workshops. It was more a set of exercises to use when focussing, defining and setting scope for your design strategy than a lecture (like the previous workshops). The session centred around of how to implement the right design strategy for your product. The most important take-away for me was exercises for deciding which features to cut and how to design a realistic road map for future releases.

After the seminar we there was a screening of the movie Objectified and we proceeded to have drinks at an Irish bar, food at a seafood restaurant and finally some more drinks at the aforementioned Irish bar.

UX Lisbon day 1

It was an early morning for me since registration started at 8.00 and Portugal is one hour before the Netherlands.

To make matters worse the map that I got when checking in wasn't new enough to include the recently built Red (Vermelha) line. But after some confusion I arrived at FIL - Feira Internacional De Lisboa.

After registration I took place in one of the auditoriums for the first session

Caroline Jarrett - Label placements in forms

Twitter: #cjforms Book: Forms that work Slides: Label placement in forms

People who didn't sign up for other workshops asked me later if it really was possible to fill 3 hours just talking about forms and 'yes' it is entirely possible.

A lot of stuff that she spoke about were old news to me but I was interesting to hear about her research. Here is a compilation of my notes:

• Just as with all other applications forms must be tailored to suit the audience you are designing for (scientific calculations v.s. a simple sign up).
• Forms are susceptible to "lost in translation" mistakes but general form design holds true across cultures.
• Don't begin a form with the hardest questions that way the user has some momentum when she encounters them and due the the effort invested is more likely to fill them in.
• Don't put a lot of space between the label and the form field itself. It makes it much harder to fill in (it made me think about the Apple Human Interface guidelines).
• It is debatable if questions above the form field or left aligned next to the field makes much difference for short questions. For longer questions is makes much more sense to put the question on top due to alignment issues.
• Highlighting the background of a label and the adjoining field helps the user keep track of her status.
• Make sure that short forms are above the fold, especially the submit button.
• Use "any reasonably harmonious arrangement and then test it"
• People quite often confuse hints for default values. I asked her about the wording of the hints mattered but she had not yet tested it.
• The symbol for mandatory is less important to users and quite often stupid to add in the first place. Why are you asking for it if it isn't mandatory? In the few cases where options aren't applicable point out that they are optional instead. If you are going to use some sort of indicator don't put it to the right of the form field.
• Having the labels inside the form fields can make sense for applications where space is limited like on a phone but mostly it just confuses people.
• Inline forms like the sign-up form on HuffDuffer seems to confuse people as well (it reminded me of the English exams back in school where I quite often would miss seeing one of the gaps and therefore miss a point).
• For English sentence case or not doesn't seem to matter for labels (but it would just be plain weird with title case in Swedish or Dutch).
• The use of colour so long as it doesn't cause visual strain also doesn't seem to matter much.
• Don't use links for action (thank you)!
• Be aware of false ends (don't put pages without input in the middle of a multi-page form).

Kristoffer Dyrkorn (Bekk) - Designing search

Twitter: #kristofd

Kristoffer's presentation was about improving the search paradigm that we are all familiar with. He showed us prototype work on a pearl growing-like search concept which drew inspiration from Google similiar and like.com. Using a set of "pearl parameters" the object being search for would emerge from the sea of less interesting stuff.

Sami Niemelä (Nordkapp) - Designing agile interactions

Twitter: #samin

Sami held a presentation about the importance of Sprint 0 in agile projects to clarify vision, lay down base work and initial planning. My most important take-away was the necessity to have planning run 2 sprints ahead of the development sprint and the ux work 1 sprint ahead.

Bill Scott - Designing with patterns

Twitter: #billwscott Book: Forms that work Slides: Designing web interfaces

Bill's presentation was absolutely the one that I looked forward to the most the first day. He has a lengthy career behind him beginning with game programming for the Mac back in 1985. After listening to his talk with Jared Spool on UIE brain sparks I became clear that I had to sign up for his presentation. Funnily enough he spoke more about anti-patterns than patterns. Here are my notes from the presentation:

• A pattern is a stylized way to capture the solution to a recurring problem (then he went on to talk about Christopher Alexander which I hope any self proclaimed UX practitioner is familiar with).
• He talked briefly about the history of design patterns in HCI and Jennifer Tidwell (excellent book but a bit dated by now).
• He compared the need for patterns to the Joshua tree principle (the importance of being able to name things). Anti-patterns are useful for the same reason.
• Interesting moments is a concept for making sure that every state of an interaction is described. It is basically the same as a tipped over decision table that with the state of the controls in the action space (I too used decision tables for interaction design specifications when working at Knowledge Values).
• Bill explained his six design principles:
• 1. Make it direct - in the words of Alan Cooper "where there is input let there be output": don't introduce needless modes in your user interface. Bill used Flickr as an example of an interface that doesn't require the user to go into a separate editing mode to change properties of an image (I'm sure VIM users beg to differ). Pitfalls are the artificial construct, tiny target and mouse trap anti-patterns (list of anti-patterns).
• 2. Keep it light weight - Make the content become interactive without resorting to needless and bloated animations and transitions. He talked about the hover and cover anti-pattern where an element would hide another element on hover and the double duty anti-pattern where a control would match to more than one action.
• 3. Stay on the page - Don't break the flow with forcing the user to go through a bunch of pages in trying to accomplish her task. A result of this is users pogo-sticking back and forth (as Jared Spool would later point out, pogo-sticking will increase the risk of a user dropping out). Bill also talked about breaking the flow with what Alan Cooper calls "idiot boxes" (dialogues).
• 4. Provide an invitation - Recognition rather than recall: give the user good memory cues that there is extra content available through e.g. dog ears or invitations on hover.
• 5. Use transitions - Transitions make the UI sizzle more but they can also be a major annoyance. Bill talked about the "cheesiness rule": Take whatever animation you made and then cut it's expose time in half otherwise the interface will quickly look cheesy.
• 6. React immediately - Be as immediate as possible, react immediately on the users request and provide an indication of the request being processed if it's not possible.
• I asked about Hoekman Jr's statement about design patterns not being enough and Bill said that it was basically the same thing but on a higher level. He seemed to be hesitant to say anything negative about Hoekman's statement though.

The day ended with drinks at the brewery where beer was served in giant towers.

Lisbon sightseeing in preparation for UXLX.

Tomorrow it begins. Due to the massive ash induced delays I wasn't able to attend the pre-conference get-together but I did manage to see a bit of Lisbon. Unfortunately the pope was there to and it was jam-packed with people and they blasted pope music through loudspeakers throughout the whole city centre (Three things he has in common with a recently deceased pop star).

I had some traditional Portuguese cuisine at a touristy restaurant and I whole-heartedly agree with the Jews: seafood and meat do not mix well. Tomorrow I'll try something else on the menu.

Going down town passing by Praça dos Restauradores

The view from the hotel room - Aguas Livres

Oh, and on an unrelated note: HTC started twittering that they are rolling out 2.1 updates for certain phones maybe soon they will release the update for Hero!

TAP Portugal - pay good money for low budget service

This is my first flight with TAP and if you can judge the people based on their airline they are probably a dwarflike people with a deep love of tea-like coffee.

Combined with that the link to online check-in didn't work, understaffing at the checkin desk and a one and a half hour delay without any information; you got a really horrible experience. The woman talking down to me when asking about the delay is just an added bonus.

If you are going to Lisbon from Amsterdam don't choose TAP.

Just look at all that crazy leg room!

Waiting at Schiphol (note to self: don't fly TAP)

I arrived at Schiphol in good time but then stood in line for almost an hour waiting for check-in. I know it shouldn't surprise me but it is incredibly frustrating to wait for people trying to check in seven bags, going economy with multiple pieces of hand baggage or traveling with fluids. Have the not stepped on a plane in the last four years? None of which was helped by desks closing and the only person left was a poor girl who acted as if it was her first day.

Side note: TAP didn't even post anything about the ash cloud on their web page until yesterday only to have it removed later the same day. Talk about poor customer experience!

But at least I made it to the gate on time. Ux Lx here I come!

Härliga Hälsingland

Back from two weeks of forest work, roof laying and paddling canoe and kayak at my parent's place in Hälsingland. I put Anna and my sisters to work gathering wood for the winter.

Repairing the barn

Anna dragging newly cut logs

Maria playing with Mogwai

Me kayaking

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.

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.

Edinburgh, Fish and Chips, Cabs, Travellodge and a civil partnership ceremony.

Anna and I attended a civil partnership ceremony for two of Annas friends. The trip was great fun (I had fish and chips) besides standing in line for an hour to get a cab at the airport and I wouldn't for the life of me recommend anyone to stay at the Travellodge.

When it came to standing in line for a cab I was still kind of glad that we were in UK and not in Holland. I can just imagine the Dutch all running over one another to get ahead in the queue.

The afterparty was in a bar that served drinks in tea cups, inventive!

Anna visiting Edinburgh castle (I was there too)

New York!

Anna and I went to the Big Apple for five days. Normally when I go back from holiday I feel that I am sort of done and that I've seen what I wanted to see. This time however I felt that I could stay months and still only scratch the surface.

Anna on Brooklyn Bridge