Author Archives: Harry Brignull

Where’s my order?

DV247.COM – fairly standard e-commerce site. I ordered something on Friday and on Monday started to wonder what day I needed to stay in for collection. Here’s their order status page: Now I couldn’t see any indication here of whether … Continue reading

Too good

Pac man pie chart joke (via Boing Boing)

Why do call centers treat callers like documents?

Some call centers tend to treat you, the caller, like a document. You call up with a simple piece of information (e.g. “You’ve over billed me this month”) and then you get bumped between different staff members like an unwanted … Continue reading

Ringtone scams: usability and the law

I’ve just found out that I’ve been charged over £100 over the past year for a subscription-based polyphonic ringtone service that I never subscribed to. I am very pissed off. I managed to track down the perpetrating company, Stream Group … Continue reading

Chaotic tools

In an intriguing article in Wired about the new Darren Aronofsky film The Fountain, I spotted this nice quote from the chap responsible for the (non computer generated) effects: “The CGI guys have ultimate control over everything they do,” Parks … Continue reading

Do Not Push Button – Joseph Scott’s Blog

Do Not Push Button (via Adam Kalsey) A fair chunk of my work is involved in producing training courses to teach people software and systems that their employer has had developed. If people need to read stuff to figure out … Continue reading

By “Unlimited” we, er, mean, limited. Very limited.

I’m surprised to see the way ISPs and telcos still describe their products so misleadingly, even after the trouble that Talk-talk got into with the ASA about offering free broadband “Forever”. Orange are currently running a campaign that uses the … Continue reading

Interfaces for Power Users

In Productivity and Screen Size,  Jacob Nielson trashes a recent Apple survey on how fabulous large monitors are for productivity. (He doesn’t actually say he disagree’s with Apple’s results, just that their methodology was suspect). I’m not quite sure whether … Continue reading

Spaces are not allowed

I just tried to fill in an online form and I typed in my details (actually I pressed a little button on the Google toolbar that filled most of it in for me. Marvellous…) then submit. The form popped up … Continue reading

Rather Nice Critique of thetrainline.com

Andy Budd (the other slightly better known AndyB – he scolded me once on a mailing list for signing myself AndyB. Cheek!) demolishes thetrainline.com rather nicely. I wonder if companies get to read this kind of stuff and whether they … Continue reading