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UX London
UX London — Launched today - I'm really proud of the liquid semi-elastic layout, in particular the way the homepage resizes. There's also a whole bunch of HTML 5 and CSS 3 loveliness. Pair programmed with Jeremy Keith.
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Site Launch: Django People
One of the many sites Simon and I are collaborating on at the moment came into fruition in the (very) early hours of this morning.
Djangopeople.net aims to unite the Django community in their common allegiance of development environment. Until now the Django community's spirit had been a victim of the documentation's success, with such conclusive coverage people commonly don't feel the need to venture into IRC channels, or mailing lists to ask for help.
A very simple site, Djangopeople is (currently) just a mechanism to say who you are, where you live, what your skills are and provide links to sites you have contributed to that run on Django. Naturally there are plans to develop this further.
So far uptake has been great, since we launched—About 15 hours ago—a total of 633 people have signed up and added their profiles. Which is really exciting!
If you develop in Django head on over to Djangopeople.net and add your profile. We welcome feedback and bug reports.
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Usability issues, when lives depend
I tried to give blood today. Although I'm a registered donor I haven't been for quite some time, not since they turned me away for being anemic. Times have changed since then, you no longer get a free tub of Ben and Jerry's ice-cream, and it isn't against campus equal opportunities law to advertise the time and place to give blood. You can also book online now.
Naturally, for a large and important system, the online booking form isn't great. Just looking at the main issues (I'm sure there are a ton more): You search for your postcode to find the nearest donation center, in smaller areas it is probably not so much of a problem but there are three donation centers in Brighton, each identified only with 'BRIGHTON' and the distance. There is also an unexplained number of 'days'; what that means is pretty much anyone's guess. It could be the days in a week the donation bank is open, except the first result is '16 day(s)', last I checked there weren't 16 days in a week.
Clicking on a venue took me through to the page for that place, it was then that I realised there are '16 sessions at this venue' - what did that have to do with days!? Is that 16 sessions per day? Perhaps, though probably not.
A list of available sessions is shown. The little clock bullet point is cute, until you realise it is the only clickable area to get through to book a session on that day, and the next / previous buttons just take you through to more sessions - I spent ages trying to find how to book a session from this page!
Clicking the little clock brings up a popup window for your personal details, blocked by my popup blocker, nuff said. The options don't include the ability to change the date but do let you select a time that wasn't previously listed as available for that date, totally infuriating if you have clicked the wrong date, also how do you remember which times were OK?
I submitted my details to give blood that afternoon, then I notice in teeny tiny writing ...
If you want to book an appointment for the next day, you must book it Monday-Friday between 9am - 5pm. Unfortunately we cannot take appointments on a weekend for Mondays. We are also unable to accept appointments made for today, unless otherwise stated.
Now I understand that someone for some reason may need to check the details and respond personally but it does seem odd that you can't book for, say, the afternoon. Perhaps some routine behind the scenes where they only check the website once a day to correlate the books? To me this smells of bad practices underlying bad software implementation.
My theory was further confirmed when I received the following email from someone at the National Blood Service:
EBLOOD - Donor - Details don't match
Thank you for using the website to make an appointment. Unfortunately, our system will not let me do this and we need to speak to you to resolve this...
Despite giving them my phone details in the compulsory field that they made me fill in, I received no calls (they said they tried to call and failed). I called the booking helpline to sort things out, and apparently the "system doesn't work well when people change addresses". The problem was that they had two records for me and couldn't combine the details easily, so the lady had to send a form off to get 'them' to update my address on one of the records and delete the other one. I couldn't even go down to give blood and sort things out there because "they wouldn't know which record to use". Unbelievable.
I gave the lady my phone number (again) and am currently waiting for someone to call me to confirm things have been straightened out and I can finally donate blood to someone who needs it.
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The Great British Booze-up at Shakespeare's Pub (Monday, March 10, 2008)
The Great British Booze-up at Shakespeare's Pub (Monday, March 10, 2008) — The official SXSW party for Brits in Texas. Organised and funded by Clearleft, Carsonified and Boagworld this looks to be a lot of fun! see you there :).
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Edenbee - Global Swarming
Edenbee - Global Swarming — Holding page of upcoming site by Clear left.
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