SIGNAL VS. NOISE

Stewart on Germany

Jon Stewart on Germany's refusal to join the U.S.-led coalition: "Poland wants to fight and Germany doesn't? That's crazy. It must be like the way an alcoholic doesn't want to go into a bar. They'd start bombing and wake up the next morning and say, 'Did I just invade Czechoslovakia last night?'" [via Gawker]

New BMW 5 Series Takes a Dive

What the hell did BMW do to the new 5-series? There are so many things wrong with this car, but a quick peek at the headlights should be enough. I'm sure it drives well, but maybe it's time to fire Chris Bangle before things really get out of hand. They've already had to redesign the 7 just a year or so after its poorly received release. The pressure is on -- especially with advent of Audi's new, gorgeous A8. If the new 5-series is a hint of things to come, BMW is in real trouble.

Usability Myths?

UIE says that certain usability myths need reality checks. They may be right, but I have a big problem with their reasoning. For example, for the "users give up because pages take too long to download" myth they say:

Testing shows no correlation between page download time and users giving up.

Here's my problem: People aren't very likely to give up if you're watching over their shoulder. One of the biggest, often ignored issues with formal usability testing is realizing that people don't like to fail in front of other people. Plus, people are usually a lot more patient in the presence of someone else than they might if they were alone. Finally, did people know they could "give up" while you were conducting your tests? What were their expectations and instructions?

Here's another myth - users will leave a site if they don't find what they want after three clicks. In fact, on every site we have tested in the last three years, it takes more than three clicks (except for featured content) to reach any content at all. Not a single user has left any of these sites within three clicks, and only a handful chose featured content links.

Again, did people know they could leave the site if they didn't find the content within three clicks? Or, did they keep trying and trying so they didn't fail in front of the testers? Remember, when you are user testing a site you are also testing the person performing the tests. When people are being watched and evaluated they'll often go to great lengths to make sure they succeed. But, giving up after not being able to find something within a few clicks can make someone feel like a failure. Not being aware of this behavior can lead to inaccurate, skewed results. Skewed results makes it really difficult to debunk myths. Your thoughts?

Stock Chart Battle

eBay vs. the NASDAQ, the DOW, and the S&P 500. One of them has performed incredibly well over the last year. Actually, the big 3 .com's have all done really well over the past 12 months (especially compared to the NASDAQ).

Edward Tufte Tears Into a PowerPoint Slide

Edward Tufte shreds a PowerPoint slide concerning the possible tile damage on the Columbia. My favorite point: The slide features 6 different levels of hierarchy used to classify, prioritize, and display 11 simple sentences. And then there's the little bullet (5th level down) that says that the debris that struck the Columbia was 640 times larger than the data used to test the model. Nothing like a critical detail given fifth priority.

Odd Couples

In the "who knew they were friends?" category of amusing photos: Calvin Klein being escorted away from N.Y. Knick Latrell Sprewell in the middle of a game and the Strokes chatting up Justin Timberlake.

"The Best Musical of the Century"

David Merrick once hyped one of his musicals, "Subways Are For Sleeping," by placing a full-page ad in New York papers with raves from random people with the same names as real critics. Here's the ad (with description) and here's another version of the full story.

Subways was an awful show and Merrick knew it. He instructed his press agent, Harvey Sabinson to contact seven people with the sames names as the drama critics covering New York theatre. He was to take them to a preview performance and then wine and dine them in some fancy restaurant. All he had to do was get their written consent to quote them in an ad for the show...Sabinson then went through the archives of some of the biggest hits ever on Broadway and lifted the quotes from old reviews.

Coining a New Phrase: Mix It Up

I've decided there needs to be a new term, a new phrase, for breaking a bill (bill as in money, not as in a utility bill and certainly not as in a person, Bill) into its most sensible components. For example, saying "Mix up this $20" should net you a $10, a $5, and 5 singles. "Mix up this $50" should return a $20, two $10s, a $5, and 5 singles. Or, two variations on the theme could be "Mix it up the easy way" which would provide bigger bills (no singles) or "Mix it up the hard way" which would replace the smallest non-single bill with the appropriate number of singles. Like it? Who's in?

Operation Uplink Keeps Them In Touch

Operation Uplink is a unique program that keeps military personnel and hospitalized veterans in touch with their families and loved ones by providing them with a free phone card.

37BetterGoogle

Google is the search expert. Yet as good as their search engine is, the results are only as good as the search terms you enter. How can you know if "african coffee trade" is a better search than "africa's coffee trading" when you're doing research? You can't possibly know, but Google can.

Our idea for 37BetterGoogle was to go beyond Google's standard search and offer alternatives based on the words you originally entered. By searching for different forms of the same words and comparing those results to your intial query, Google does the legwork for you, helping you see results you may never have discovered the first time around.

So have a look around and be sure to click the links to the alternative searches. Our hope is that Google will see value in adding the search options described above to its basic search functionality.

CityofChicago.org

Frustrated. That's what I am. Frustrated. I'm trying to find out how I can purchase a city sticker for my car at Chicago's brand new, highly touted, New Portal Web Site! A search for "city sticker" returns useless results and a search for "car sticker" returns zero results (UPDATE: a search for "vehicle sticker" returns a link to the "44th Ward" which actually contains a link to the proper page listed below -- but who would have known a link to the 44th Ward was the secret link?). The "Vehicle Stickers" link I found on this page (left side nav, 3rd from the bottom) leads to a page not found error. But, guess what? After at least 50 clicks, multiple searches, and just plain luck, I found it. Where? On the City Clerk of Chicago's page. Man, I'm an idiot. I should have looked here first. City Clerk of Chicago. Of course. Stupid little me was looking on the Traffic & Transportation page.

Look, this "New Portal Web Site" is a mess -- a hideout for inconsistency (just look around, you'll see), confusion, design-by-committee decisions, and, of course, politics. I imagine that there's no bigger political nightmare than building a government site. I mean, can you imagine? Designers, engineers, marketing staff, bureaucrats, and politicians? But, web development is only hard if you make it hard. The essence of everything is simple.

Antonin Scalia: Paragon of Free Speech

Scalia requests ban on broadcast media at talk:

C-SPAN, the cable television network popular with political junkies and insomniacs, is outraged that the City Club of Cleveland has banned broadcast media from covering today's speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Especially galling, says C-SPAN, is that Scalia is coming to the club to collect its Citadel of Free Speech Award. (emphasis added)

God bless those Supreme Court judges... They really know how to do irony.

TinyURL

Bugged by lengthy URLs? Sick of posting URLs in e-mails only to have them break when sent? Tinyurl.com lets you enter a URL of any length and then creates a tiny URL (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/6f2e) that will not break in e-mail postings and never expires. You can also add TinyURL to your browser's toolbar for instant URL abbreviation. [via Good Experience]

Next Contingency Design Workshop: April 25

Our next "Making Mistakes Well" Contingency Design Workshop has been announced: April 25, 2003 at our offices in Chicago. Registration is limited to 15 people so sign up quickly (previous workshops have sold out). $395 until April 12, then $495 until the 19th if there are still seats available. We hope to see you there. View results, photos and attendee comments from our 2002 Contingency Design Workshop Series. 99% agreed that it was money and time well spent.

Demetri Martin

Speaking of jokes, I saw a promising comedian on Conan O'Brien the other week: Demetri Martin (he's got some clips up at Comedy Central and Zilo). Sort of a thinking man's comedian, a la Stephen Wright or Mitch Hedberg (ya know, "Swimming is a confusing sport, because sometimes you do it for fun and other times you do it not to die" or "I'd like to sell candy in childproof containers" type stuff). "Yale grad does standup, pudnats" is an interview that discusses his path.

DM: Standup is so great: It teaches you about failure. Success really depends a lot on the window you give yourself, I mean, if you only give yourself two months and then give up, you won't get it. But if more people gave themselves, like, 10 years, so many more of them would be successful at it.

A Brick Wall and a Spotlight

Anyone hear any good jokes lately?

The Start of a Pattern?

Do the recent redesign of Matt's a.whole, relaunch of Dooce, and the always tight What Do I Know signal the return of the tiled background image? Thankfully, these are elegant and interesting -- in a tasteful patterned material sort of way. Are backgrounds back?

Fond Farewell

It's with a somewhat heavy heart that I report that tomorrow will be my last day with 37signals. Don't worry, JF and I haven't had a massive row expediting my departure, my reason for leaving is much more benign: I'm burned out beyond hope of repair.

The last few years working with JF, ML, and SU have been exciting, challenging, and sometimes trying, but mostly wonderful and I feel that I am much better for having had the experience. I know that they will continue to take 37signals to greater and greater heights.

As for me, I'm going to put out the "Gone Fishing" sign for a little while. Who knows, tomorrow may also be my last day in the field of Web design -- which would not sadden me one bit. In the meantime you might find me whiling away the hours in a small boat on a small lake in the pristine environs of our neighbor to the North (take that Schenck ;-).

Au revoir y'all!

Hitchcock

I never knew this: Alfred Hitchcock, a five-time nominee, never won an Oscar for directing.

More Meetup News

Like Online Dating, With a Political Spin (NY Times) discusses the impact of Meetup.com -- design by 37signals -- on Howard Dean's campaign. The author writes, "the site has clearly proved an irresistible tool for political networking and organizing." After a recent meetup of supporters, Dean's campaign director, Joe Trippi, said, "I've never seen anything like that, with no advance people, totally self-organized by a bunch of citizens. It was a really great moment."

Arctic Drilling Vote in Senate

Bush one vote away from Arctic drilling OK:

Senate Republicans say they have moved to within a single vote of guaranteeing President Bush one of his top domestic priorities -- opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

The House has already approved this measure but the Senate initally stalled it last year. Now that the balance of power in the Senate has shifted, however, this budget provision looks more likely to pass. If you would like to make your voice heard on this issue, it's not too late to write your Senator.

37signals in eMarketer

Today's eMarketer cover story, E-Commerce Site Searching, discusses 37signals' E-Commerce Search Report.

The Return of Personal Responsibility?

Bobby Knight said he wouldn't accept his $250,000 salary this year because he and his team failed to live up to his expectations.

"I'm just not at all satisfied with what transpired with our team in terms of our fundamental execution," Knight told The Dallas Morning News for its online edition. "I don't think it's anybody's fault but mine. You heard me talk after games all season long about missed opportunities and how we didn't see things. Those are things that have got to be taught. Learning those things is just as much a responsibility of the teacher as the ones learning those things," he was quoted as saying.

Do-What-You-Wanted-To-Do-Anyway For Peace

While I admire the effort, I found the recent students walk out of class to protest the war stuff difficult to take seriously. Those brave students sure do know how to sacrifice I tell ya. Next up: "Keg Stands for Peace."

Along the same lines, Nerve.com conducts an Onion-esque interview with Mr. O, the man behind masturbateforpeace.com.

Nerve: Before the war came up, what were you masturbating for?
Mr. O: Like everybody else, I didn't have much of a purpose for it. But that's one thing many people say: "I was doing it anyway; now I have a purpose for it, and I feel good about it." A lot of people feel that masturbation is a selfish thing, so we're happy to give them a positive reason to do it.

As Cellphones Become Cuter, Clarity Suffers

Interesting article in the N.Y. Times today about cellphones. This may seem like common sense, but the article notes that, for the most part, the latest generation of phones with internalized antennas provides poorer reception than older phones with exposed, pull-out antennas. A research firm is cited as having found that "all other things being equal, the radio strength of today's phones with internal antennas is 15 percent to 20 percent less powerful than that of phones with external antennas."

So perhaps your crappy reception is not due to your provider, but your newfangled phone? Interestingly Verizon, which is the largest cellphone carrier in the U.S., refuses to sell phones with internalized antennas (so, if you're a Verizon customer and have been waiting to get one of those cute, tiny Nokia or Sony Ericsson phones, don't hold your breath).

You might think that this move to internal antennas was simply done for cosmetic purposes, but, at least according to the phone manufacturers, a big reason for the move was to address customer complaints.

At Nokia, a company spokesman, Charles Chopp, said that one reason the company had moved to internal antennas was that broken antennas were "one of the top 10 complaints about cellular phones." Users prefer the "ease and carryability" of phones with internal antennas, he said.

This is an interesting example of manufacturers having to choose the lesser of two evils. Going the internal antenna route definitely seems to make the most sense for them since it eliminates breakage as an issue, which probably dramatically reduces the number of returns/exchanges they have to honor (poor reception is probably attributed by most people to their carrier vs. the phone manufacturer). But is that the better choice for the customer? Is lesser reception a worthwhile tradeoff for you in exchange for an unobtrusive, unbreakable antenna?

For me, as someone who lives in a city where reception generally isn't a problem, this is a worthwhile tradeoff -- I would prefer a smaller phone with one less breakable part, but how about you? And, if you worked at one of the manufacturers, would you have advocated for this move or fought against it? Just curious to hear people's thoughts on this.

Ford to sell hybrid SUV at a loss

Ford will sell a gasoline-electric hybrid version of the Ford Escape at a loss while it tries to cut the costs of the hybrid system in half:

"We have to subsidize the price of the hybrid technology," said Prabhakar Patil, chief program engineer for the hybrid Escape, set to go on sale late this year. "We feel it's important to get in the market for this technology and get feedback from customers."

Kudos to Ford. Hopefully they're still moving forward with their Model U design as well, despite the company's economic woes. One day we may have cars that are good for the environment -- rather than simply just "less bad."

Civil City Cards

Cellphone closetalkers, 2-seat taking train riders, and line cutters beware, Civil City is out to nab you.

Wanting to give the 40% of Americans who ignore rude situations a means to get involved, we devised the CivilCity Card. Simply handing someone a CivilCity Card allows the dialogue about rudeness to take place on the safety of this Web site rather than in the emotionally charged moment of offense. Through this method of "passive confrontation," people of all degrees of assertiveness can address people behaving badly.

Truth is a Pathless Land

I recently began reading "Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti" -- a collection of the writings and speeches of the Indian philosopher ("one of the greatest thinkers of the age" according to the Dalai Lama). He was selected at the age of 13 to become the leader of the Order of the Star, a religious group. In 1929, he dissolved the group before it's 3,000 members and explained in this speech that he did not want to belong to any organization of a spiritual kind because "no organization can lead man to spirituality."

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is trying to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down; rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. You must climb toward the Truth, it cannot be "stepped down" or organized for you.

Later on he gives his take on the compassion of straight talk:

If I speak strongly, please do not misunderstand me; it is not through lack of compassion. If you go to a surgeon for an operation, is it not kindness on his part to operate even if he causes you pain? So, in like manner, if I speak straightly, it is not through lack of real affection, on the contrary.

Colorblind Web Page Filter

Very cool design tool: See your pages as if you were colorblind.

37signals News

Our E-Commerce Search Report was recently profiled in a couple of online publications:

• Internet News: Majority of Online Stores Fail Search Engine Test
• Line56: Retailers Neglect Online Searches

37signals is also mentioned in this story about weblogs:

• The Globe and Mail: Marketers turn attention to blogs

Also, some new snapshots were recently added to Design Not Found, our collection of real-world contingency design examples:

• Yahoo! Personals: Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places
• eBay: Helping Each Other
• Budget: Optionally Required
• Amazon: Good Memory

Napplester? An Apple Online Music Service?

Is Apple about to launch an pay-per-song online music service? If true, it appears it will be Macintosh only. That's a good move. Why? Well, for one thing it's easier to sell this as a proof-of-concept to the music industry if only 3% of the market can use it. I'm sure that's why the labels appear ready to sign on. Secondly, the only way this sort of thing is going to ever work is if it's beautifully designed and tightly integrated with both the desktop and a portable MP3 device. Apple is the only one who can make that work. If other companies/organizations keep trying to pull this off, and they fail by offering up confusing concepts and implementations, it's going to give the labels more ammo to say the concept itself is flawed. Go Apple. Should be interesting.

The Quantity Question

Why can't e-commerce sites just assume you mean 1 (one) if you leave the quantity field blank? For example, take this alarm clock at Crate & Barrel. If you just click the "ADD TO CART" button without entering a quantity, it returns an error. Sites need to be smarter. 37signals recommends: Unless someone specifies more than one item, sites should assume one item. It's bad design (and manners) to throw an error at someone when they didn't really make a mistake.

Salute the Logos

Finalists for logo-contest.com's Department of Homeland Security logo design contest. Finalists have ten days to revise their logos based on public input.