Both my career and personal life is undergoing many dramatic changes. So I was not able to update anything over here after Jan 14th. On a pleasant surprise, I got an email from indoition.com stating that my blog too listed in the elite list. I am giving the URL so that it will be easy to catchup other useful technical communication blogs. *ahem my blog comes as forth from the top (of course there is no particular numbered list, number matters you know 🙂 )
Here we go:
One fine day I logged on to my payroll information site to check some information. I have to select a Date using a Calendar function. For example if I wanted to select 28th October 2010, I need to click several times to get the corresponding month and the date as 28th displayed on the screen.
Here is the catch. I am using Internet Explorer 7.0 version. That website has some script error resulting Calendar function didn’t pop-up. So I was clueless how to enter or select the date. Without selecting the date, I can’t process my request.
I called my colleague to get some idea on that. Yes, my assumption is correct; he too came across the same error. And the solution that he gave was too funny. “Close the session and log-on after an hour”. 🙂
Why can’t I directly type-in the date that I wish to..?
Enter Date: __________ (in DD/mm/yy format for ex: 31/03/10)
See the above example; I have a User Assistance on the screen itself. Do I need a calendar function here..? I don’t think so.
Note: By the way after an hour, I was able to enter the date and processed my request. 🙂
Let us assume you want to know the birth place of Tom Cruise. What you will do..? You will Google it and explore those information related pages. This is the normal way of using Google – using key words for information searching.
Now let us assume you have a picture of an unknown person and you are interested in knowing his/her name and other details. How will you use Google..? I have thought of suggesting Google to do some research on this area.
Now let us assume you got an image, say a Close button and you would like to see a similar image of bigger/smaller size without using keyword search. That is rather than using “Close Button small in size” keywords in the Google search tab, you would upload the reference image and view similar images – big or small, red or blue. How does it sound..?
Yes, it is possible.
You will see a lot of pages with similar images of your reference image. But this technique doesn’t works out for human faces (or at least in my case). 🙂
Also you can give an image URL to search for similar images or
If you are good at drawing, test your hands by drawing an image and upload to see similar images.
I think it will be quite useful for graphic/UI designers and lone technical authors who are jack of all trades (but master of none like me). 🙂
Scenario:
U.S.airways came across a unique problem. Though many of their customers logged in their site, checked for flights, fare etc didn’t proceed to book their tickets. In short, there is a huge dip in U.S.airways business. Web Metrics results were quite interesting.
Many of their customers entered the flight numbers wrongly, so the site was unable to process their request. Annoyed customers changed their mind and as a result no business for U.S.airways.
When they corrected this error (?), (maybe an auto-popup flight number field instead of a text box), U.S.airways found almost 100 percent rise in their business.
So unless you don’t know how your clients use your website, you can’t say that whatever you have developed is user-friendly. The feature which sounds simple for you may be annoying for the clients.
This is referred as Customer Experience Management (CEM). There are many vendors deploy CEM for their clients (of course not in free of cost).
I am planning to explore the web metrics and post few more in this space.
A Writer's Day 