2016 is come and gone and the end of the year was such a downer for so many people that I thought a little levity was in order. Come for the dog pictures, stay for “Are you from Canada?”
Now on The Interconnected: Learning from the Ladies Room
Learning from the ladies’ room is a tale of indecipherable design in a place where most of us would really like the design to be obvious. It’s also a guide into a world most men don’t get a glimpse into, and hopefully a lesson in user hacks and how to prevent them.
Now on The Interconnected: A Little Levity
2016’s been a hell of a year. Here’s A Little Levity on The Interconnected that looks at some of the weirder bits of the year.
Now on The Interconnected: The familiar road may not be the smoothest
Another post on The Interconnected, this time about how sometimes we get in our own way. We tend to assume it’s easier to use the tools we have than learn to new tools — which is fair most of the time, but sometimes it’s dead wrong.
Hack this experience please
Here’s an idea for all those cunning folks who think that the way to get women into tech is through fashion (I’m looking at you, IBM):
How about store service hackathons? We need someone writing register software that asks intelligent questions about purchases. Like “You’ve purchased 6 shirts of size X in this transaction – are you sure you wanted to buy that X*2 pair of pants?”
I would much rather the sales folks ask me if I meant to buy something *totally whacked* than ask me for my phone number so they can spam me with ads. They’d get more purchases from me and more loyalty too. And for those rare occasions where someone is buying something way off the pattern intentionally, a simple “yes” moves on the transaction.
Or an RFID system that helps you locate the single pair of 14 petite pants in the store.
Or a self-check system for when the store is mobbed and you just need this pair of earrings.
Or something that predicts the best time to go swimsuit shopping based on the shipment dates, staffing, and the number of other people in the store.
Or something that makes it easy to figure out the damn clothing sizing system.
Things that cut down on our mistakes and make us more comfortable trying to find that “right” outfit for that next event.
If you insist that women would be more interested in STEM if it was tied in with topics women are supposedly all interested in (we’re not) then start with hacking the things that keep us from enjoying (or cause us to hate) those topics.