Author: Nathan Zeldes

http://www.nzeldes.com

Chained skeleton

September 15, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

Was filling up the car at a gas station when I noticed a bicycle chained to a signpost at the corner. Well, part of a bicycle…

Chained Bike Skeleton

As you see, this bike has been there for a long time (enough to develop serious rust), and in the meantime it lost wheels, seat, handlebars and more. Only a bare skeleton remained, as if the bike had been dropped into a river of mechanical Piranhas.

So what? So it suddenly reminded me of the image of a human skeleton chained to a wall, a literary device used all too often in the pulp horror fiction of my childhood, in more recent action movies, and even in some respectable literature. The poor bike had lost all its removable organs, but the predators that did this never bothered to unchain it from the signpost…

Japan 2: Optimized asymmetric staircases

September 11, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

Japan 1: Tactile sidewalk strips for the blind

September 7, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 8 Comments

Amir is back from Japan, and sent in some interesting photos attesting to that country’s outstanding and different ways of solving life’s daily problems.

Tactile Sidewalk Strip in Shibuya, Tokyo

For starters, here is yellow path marked out on a Tokyo sidewalk, whose surface is textured with the little rubber bumps that are so annoying at some airport terminals. Turns out these strips are quite common in major cities in Japan.

This is not a way to mark the road to the Wizard of Oz; it has a very practical and worthwhile function: it allows blind or low-vision individuals to find their way safely. The bumps have different patterns where the trail changes direction – they are linear on the straight and round at intersections, allowing the users to sense through their feet where they should pay attention.

In addition, the strips continue in public buildings like railway stations, where they mark the way to the ticket office and other key locations. There are also plaques with Braille directions in strategic locations along the paths. The photo below is from the train station at Kurashiki.

Tactile Strip in railroad station in Kurashiki, Japan

That is one simple, ingenious and commendable practice that other nations ought to emulate!

Smart timing of the windshield wipers

September 4, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 1 Comment

Windshield Washer symbol A piece of thoughtful design on the Renault Clio:

When you activate the windshield washer, the fluid is squirted onto the glass and the wipers are activated for four consecutive cycles. This is pretty much standard these days. But in the Clio, they then rest for three seconds, and give the windshield another single wipe.

The added wipe gets rid of the annoying trickle of fluid that often forms at the top center of the windshield after the first wash/wipe action. It’s not hard for the driver to reactivate the wipers, but the Renault designers took care of it for us. Good thinking!

Out of the Box billboard technique

August 31, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 1 Comment

Our supermarket provides a large billboard for public use, where people post the usual mix of personal ads of all kinds. So many of them, in fact, that any one ad is likely to get drowned or covered by other ads before the day is out.

Billboard

Ad on access ramp So here’s one person that solved this problem in an original way, providing their ad with a unique chance to register on people’s eyeballs.

I was walking up the ramp at the left in the photo above, which leads to the supermarket’s main doors, and I saw at my feet the ad in the photo, taped right to the metal ramp. It advertises a flat for rent – and no shopper coming that way can fail to notice it. Wayda go!

Bless old style artisan shops…

August 28, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 2 Comments

We needed a standing lamp for the living room, and went shopping. We started with some of the larger lighting stores around town, and found a great many lamps, mostly imported from China. Like most manufactured goods today they were inexpensive and looked like they would do the job – for a while. The workmanship was usually shoddy and of course there was nobody to tell that I prefer the on/off switch to be just at this height, and I need a longer electric cord, and would love it if the lampshade were just a bit wider…

After a while we were beginning to consider compromising, but decided to first try Karl Marx. This is a small old style shop in downtown Jerusalem; it has been there forever, and I never entered it, though it did attract my occasional amused glance because of the coincidence of its founder’s name.

Karl Marx lighting shop, Jerusalem

The shop occupied a tiny room crammed so tight with lamps and lampshades that one could barely stand in it (the photo doesn’t begin to convey this). And there we found a lamp we liked, which we could get with any shade we wished, because they’re made to order by the owners; in fact, we were guided courteously through all the possibilities and ordered one decorated to our specification with a frieze in a color and style to match our living room rug. And of course they promised to construct it with the switch where I wanted it, the cord the needed length, and so forth. The quality and workmanship, too, were perfect.

This is one of those old fashioned Mom and Pop businesses that represent the skill and dedication of a lifetime (or more), and produce goods handmade to a standard no longer seen in the mass-produced disposable products that flood the large chains. I should be sad discussing it, because these wonderful shops are fast disappearing; but I’m too delighted in the excellent lamp Messrs. Marx made for us!

Coffee cans and Bees

August 24, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 2 Comments

Recently Elite, a major manufacturer of chocolate, candy and coffee in Israel, launched a campaign to prepare us all for “the same beloved familiar taste in a new packaging”. Every instant coffee can had a sticker heralding the change, then the new cans came out with stickers extolling it.

Elite coffee cans Now actually, the change is minimal and mostly unimportant, as you can see in the photo of the old can (at left) and the new. They have a slightly modified graphic design, but it’s the same good ol’ coffee we’re all addicted to. But there is one change that caught my eye: the new can is noticeably taller. Since both contain 200g of the same powder, you’d think it was also thinner; and in a sense it is, but not at the base; in fact the bottom and top are of identical diameter. The new can, however, has a “waist” in the middle.

Honeycomb So what? So, canned goods have to be stored, transported, and stocked. They therefore need to be packed close together; ideally you’d want them hexagonal, as the bees had discovered long ago. But even with round cans, you need to try and minimize wasted space. In the home this means minimizing shelf footprint, or base area; you want to be able to put as many of these on a shelf as possible. For shipping and storehouse space you also care about height, of course. But what you really don’t want is to have this sexy curvaceous can that maintains the same footprint but adds height by wasting unusable empty space in the middle.

Oh well, at least they have a new font in their logo.

Honeycomb photo source: Richard Bartz, via Wikimedia commons.

Poor error message design in a car

August 20, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

This morning I get in the good ol’ red Renault Clio, put it in reverse and start backing out, when the car emits a persistent beep.

Renault Clio warning display I stop and scan the dashboard, and there I see a message on the alphanumeric display: Select Park. I do put the gear in Park, and everything is back to normal. I try to reverse again – beep and message return.

This makes very little sense, so I stop, pull out the owner’s manual and look for error messages. There is a pageful of them, but no mention of “Select Park”. I feel like those brisk officers in action dramas that say to their panicky men “Talk to me!”… but the car isn’t talkative, merely cryptic.

After a while I notice the overhead lamp is on, so I realize the door isn’t fully latched; I slam it shut, the car is happy, and I’m off to a day’s work. But the Select Park message is now a nominee for worst car error message ever. Consider:

With the same display they could’ve made it say “Close door“, or “Door open“. Could’ve? Heck, should have!
Note the lower display, which does indicate an open door. Problem is, the Select Park message is so much more prominent and puzzling, that the second display failed to register in my mind altogether.
The beep and text alert only work when you’re in reverse motion. This makes no sense, and had me looking for a cause to do with this specific mode.

Bottom line: error messages should explain causes, either directly (Door is open!) or indirectly (Close the door!). A message that essentially says “Freeze! Something is wrong!” is no good.

A noble piece of hardware!

August 10, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

Engrish is all around us; here is a recent sighting that made my day.

Noble Keyboard by Teac

This is from the box of a Teac Media Systems slim multimedia keyboard, model TK-5108. One can’t help but wonder whether this item is noble by birth, being descended from a long line of aristocratic peripherals, or is its praise the result of some outstanding feat demonstrating strong nobility of character. 🙂

Let’s add Interrupt capability to customer support systems

August 8, 2009 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

I’m sure this happened to you: you call the support number of your bank/phone company/whatever, go patiently through all the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus, get shunted to an “all agents are currently busy” music, waste long minutes listening, and finally get a human to talk to. You explain your request, and the agent politely says “Let me put you on hold while I find out the information”. Before you can protest, you’re back on the music!

Which goes on and on, and you have no idea whether the agent is really digging up the information, or he had a heart attack, or he simply forgot about you… the music just drones on. Doubt starts gnawing: should you hang up and start over? Maybe he’s just seconds from picking the line again? Anguish, anger, and unhappiness fill you. And if you’re in the middle of some bank transaction you don’t want to abort, and you have a meeting starting in 3 minutes, you really need to ask the agent what’s going on – but he’s just out of your reach. This is definitely not a good customer experience.

So, what can we do about this? What is needed is a protocol we used to have when I was an amateur radio operator. Back then, people would speak in turn on the radio waves: …AB1CC, this is XY7ZZ, over! Roger XY7ZZ, this is AB1CC… But we had a mechanism for getting a word in sideways if something urgent came up, say another ham with an emergency communication: you could wait for a pause between words and say “Break-break!” and the talking party would shut up and listen. We had an Interrupt capability.

This capability is what we need in those service desks: a mechanism – say, some key sequence on the phone – that would cause the line to go back from hold to the agent that parked it there. Even the knowledge that you could, if you wanted to, get the agent back and ask how much longer is he going to take – would make you feel a lot better, much less helpless and frustrated.

Take note, my dear bank – give us back some control!