Announcing the 2007 User>Driven Hall of Fame and Shame
Well, it's that time of the year again and time for the second annual User>Driven Hall of Fame and Shame.
Last year, if you can still cast your mind back that far, a number of products and services were nominated by readers, but in the end, Netflix won the Hall of Fame award for their innovative CD-by-mail service and continuous improvement program for their online user interface.
The Comcast HD DVR won the Hall of Shame award for "frequent crashes, unresponsive remotes, poor navigation and searching, and the lack of basic features found on competing DVRs that have been on the market for many years."
Like last year, I'd like to invite readers to submit nominations for products or services that they thing are incredibly well or incredibly poorly designed. Last year's instructions, slightly updated:
Take 10 seconds right now and think of the one thing (product, service, website, software, gadget, whatever) that really works for you, that's so elegant in its design and operation it must be the result of a good feedback loop between the product designers and its intended users. Write down your first thought in reply to this entry.
Then take 10 more seconds and think of the one thing (same list) that really irks you every time you have to use it because the product designer clearly did not take the time to think about how it would really be used or try it out on one real-life person before getting it to market. Write that down too and hit reply.
Even if your favorite product or service isn't new for 2007, if you used it or became aware of it this year, put it down.
Last year I nominated a few items but this year it's all up to you. Just click the little comments link below to add a comment telling everyone why your most and least favorites are deserving of praise and/or scorn. Let's hear it!
Bruce McCarthy
I neglected to mention when posting this yesterday that the nominators of the winning entries for the Hall of Fame and the Hall of Shame (the best- and worst-designed products of 2007) will each receive one of the new User>Driven T-shirts from Zazzle.com.
Get your entries in quickly before someone else scoops your idea and make your case so people will vote for them!
Bruce McCarthy
in Bad examples, Good examples, Surveys, Fun
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Reader Comments (14)
I am just waiting to see if Lars re-nominates the Comcast DVR for worst product of all time!
First nomination bragging right go to Regina who sent me a reply by email. She says:
"The best designed product I’ve used in years and just LOVE its simplicity and effectiveness is my hard boiled egg slicer. Indeed, it is wonderful and works perfectly every time. Very simple design: tight thin wires evenly strung across a press arm; a nice egg shaped cradle for the egg to rest in… works perfectly every time."
IMO, 'works every time' is a key design feature.
She also says: "I believe my brand new cell phone should be in the hall of shame, however. It is the basic phone they are pushing at the Verizon store these days (a two-fer offer) - Samsung [u540 – v cast music phone]. It is nice and sleek and lightweight. The screen is clear and shows text large and good color. But, every time I pick it up I accidentally engage two or three different buttons. Most times, my fumbling gets me to one step short of snapping a photo. And if you are not careful, it will snap shut on you while you are trying to open it to answer the phone… Jonny [her husband] hung up on me once already in our first day of owning them."
'Every time I pick kit up I accidentally...' IMO is the sort of thing that would be picked up quickly if any user testing at was done.
Thanks for being first, Joe!
I wonder if I can nominate WordPress. I have been blogging for a year and half now and I am in awe of how good the platform is and how any thing you would want to do has a plugin created by a wonderful person. It has it quirks but I nominate WordPress for bringing publishing to the masses!
-Avinash.
PS: If you were only looking for actual products/services then I nominate GM OnStar. My new Saturn came with it, I am totally in love with it. From self diagnostics reports via email (your left rear tire has low air!) to driving directions to the delightful phone ("Daddy its the car calling!"). I realize I am late to this party but nonetheless I am very impressed at how well the product is designed and how well it works.
Thanks, Avinash! I think WordPress counts as a service. No reason you can't have two nominations, though!
Anyone else have experience with WordPress or OnStar to share?
I've been fairly happy with Squarespace, the hosting service I use for User>Driven. They have all the modules I need and it's reasonably easy to work with their interface. I sometimes wish they had an army of plug-in developers like WordPress and TypePad but I think switching platform would be difficult at this point so I would need a really compelling reason.
Nothing really stood out in the software/electronics areas this year. The one product that I continue to be delighted with is of all things...a hand vacuum I received for Christmas.
It's the Black & Decker 18V Pivot Vac.
http://www.blackanddecker.com/ProductGuide/Product-Details.aspx?ProductID=14069
Why does it stand out? First, it's the first small vac I've used that is really powerful. Some vacs sounds like toys, but this one sounds like a corded model. Second, its unique pivoting head let's you swing the nozzle (with a well placed push button) wherever you want it. Third, the bagless dirt collection canister is easy to open and empty without getting debris on the user. Fourth, vacs are usually a clumsy shape, but the Pivot vac folds up into a compact package. Lastly, it looks like a Spinner from BladeRunner when it's folded up, and that enhances its coolness factor.
Worst product is my wife's Samsung cell phone (probably the same model referenced above)...
This is easy. The best product is Apples' Leopard OS. The worst is Vista. I would have said the iPhone is the best, but the opportunity to compare / contrast Apple and MS for each of their OS releases was too compelling.
iPhone anyone??
Frank, are you nominating the iPhone for the Hall of Fame or the Hall of Shame?
Many people rave about it but many others feel it suffers from a slow network, poor sound quality, lack of memory, sudden price drops, etc.
Last night I wrote a comment on my iPod Touch nominating it, because I have found so handy to have nicely designed little web browser in my pocket. But some how I couldn't post a comment from the iPod, ouch!
I also nominate the the BlueLine power cost monitor, which I blogged about in June and I believe you mentioned as well. I used it for 3-4 months and learned a lot about how to reduce my energy use and my electric bills. I think this kind of device has a lot of potential in the future.
I have must have had good tech karma because I didn't encounter any new products that drove me crazy (but plenty of old ones still deliver).
I'd have to second (or maybe third) the iPhone as best. If this is truly a competition of design then it wins hands down. The small technical and pricing issues with it don't come anywhere close to outweighing the elegance of the UI and user experience. That said, I'm waiting (seemingly forever) for the 3G version :)
I, too, was disappointed there wasn't a new 3G iPhone (and one with more memory) at MacWorld this week.
The iPhone's biggest weakness can be described by imagining how great it would be with MS Exchange connectivity. No calendaring, email, contacts with the corporate server....No business users.
Ok, onto my techie hall of fame:
1. DD-WRT. It wasn't born in 2007, but it's awesome and everyone should use it. Turn your $35 Buffalo router into a $500 beast.
2. Windows Home Server. Sounds dumb until you really look at what it can do. Too much to describe here, but it's new and worth a look if you're interested in a very robust backup solution. And no, your Linux app can't match it.
3. The original Zune. It was released last year and was a complete dog, but given new life this year with a $99 price point and new a whole new UI, including neat features like wireless sync. At that price it's the best value out there for a 30-gig media player.
Honorable mention: The Eyefi 2-gig SD memory card with built-in 802.11 wireless. Pictures are automatically sent from your digital camera to your computer (or sites like Flickr) immediately after they're taken. Maybe not a must-have, but it's neat nonetheless.
ON THE POSITIVE side, I'm going to nominate the iPod Touch, especially in light of the software upgrade announced on Tuesday. As soon as Some Bright Mind figures out how to rig an audio in microphone and get VOIP working on it, it will become my must-have device.
ON THE NEGATIVE side, I have to call out iChat, especially since the release of Leopard. The Bright Minds responsible for this program seem to be allergic to QA, especially when it comes to compatibility testing with users on previous releases (esp. Tiger). Every time I fire up my Mac and see my father's "Available" icon on my iChat buddy list, I am reminded that I cannot (despite repeated attempts and no end of configuration jiggering) start a video conference with him. As a result, he can't see his grandkids and vice versa. It's a huge bummer that has everything to do with crappy testing, and it pisses me off royally. In fact, it's the one black spot on an otherwise pristine first experience with the Apple iMac.
A colleague wrote to nominate Google apps for the Hall of Fame and Yahoo's equivalent for the Hall of Shame.
"Google's stuff "just works" - it's invariably easy to use, and they are constantly adding convenience features. Google mail is light years ahead of Yahoo mail in terms of simplicity and ease of use. Google's calendar lets a user type in an event in "plain english" and it just inserts the event into the calendar (example: "Lunch with Joe next Tuesday at noon"). Google understands that the computer should "understand" the user, and take context, etc. into account.
Yahoo's apps are complicated, overly flashy, difficult to use -- essentially useless."
I use both Yahoo Mail and Gmail and I have to agree about the differences in usability ans simplicity (concepts that usually go together) between the two.
I also remember a day when it was different. I switched to Yahoo Mail many years ago from Hotmail because I found the Yahoo interface simpler, less cluttered and faster. Times have changed.