Hi, I’m Matt Balara.I solve design problems with my head.

Let me start by saying I’ve rarely been as disappointed with an online experience and customer service as I currently am with those of Electronic Arts. Frankly, I’m pissed off. If you’re rant-squemish, look away. Update: see below.

I was at dConstruct last week, and one of the speakers I enjoyed the most was Aleks Kotoski. She shined a light on the chasm between the games and web industries, showed what we can learn from one another, and suggested ways to encourage bridge building. When you think about it, game designers have everything anyone needs to totally rock interactive design. Think of the stunning skills that game designers can be proud of:

• A track record of creating interfaces that are simple to use despite mind-boggling functional complexity.
• Masterful guidance through experiences that not only makes sure you’ll advance, but also keeps you motivated to see and do more.
• A sense of aesthetics that can make a fanciful world believable and consistent, not to mention wondrous and beautiful.

So why does Electronic Arts, a company that earns its money from the sweat of game designers’ brows, have a site (especially the store) which fails to even be usable, let alone rock? Couldn’t someone in the company with these skills take a minute to look at their web site?

My problems with Electronic Arts started back in 2006 when Will Wright, best known as the guy who created The Sims, gave the first demo of Spore. Back then, my problem was only that I wanted to play Spore, and it didn’t exist yet. It took two years for it to be released, and when it finally came out last weekend the more irritating problems started.

Keep in mind that as soon as I saw that demo I said to myself, “I must play that.” I was a fan before the game even existed. I’m the proverbial choir. There should be nothing in the world easier than selling me a copy of Spore. So why haven’t I got it yet?

Buying Spore: Round 1

1. On the day it came out, I eagerly pounced on the German Spore site, and clicked on “Hol dir Spore” (Get Spore).
2. I landed on a page with all the different versions of Spore, and seeing no “Buy Now” button, clicked on the “EA Store” teaser in the right column.
3. The big fat text on the next page said “Jetzt Herunterladen” (Download Now) and I grinned. Getting close! Click!
4. A green button “In den Warenkorb” (Add to shopping Cart) on the next page promised to lead me the right way. Click! Gimme!
5. Typical shopping process, click type type click click. Once finished (hahahah, it’s mine!) I clicked on the download link, which led to… an exe.
6. Realising I’d just bought a PC download, I slapped my forehead, and started searching for a way to get to Electronic Arts’ customer service.

That’s what most of us do first when something goes wrong online: blame ourselves. I had indeed made two critical mistakes, but both were unavoidable. I hadn’t screwed up, Electronic Arts had. But more on that later.

Electronic Arts (dis)Service

After many more clicks and quite a bit of backtracking, I’d managed to write a mail to Electronics Arts support: “I screwed up, blah blah blah, please change my download to the Mac version blah blah, thanks!” An automated email reply promised an answer within 24 hours.

After 60 hours without an answer, I tried again. Another 24 hour promise. 48 answer-free hours later, although I was pretty annoyed with Electronic Arts and their service vacuum, I was still ultra-keen to play Spore. I’m not known for patience, so I figured I could work out a refund for my PC version mistake later, and went back to their site to buy the Mac download.

Buying Spore: Round 2

1. I returned, full of suspicious caution this time, to the “Hol dir Spore” page mentioned above.
2. Being suspicious, I noticed the tiny “More Info About the Mac Version” link I’d failed to notice before (first critical mistake above). Hmmm. Click.
3. The Mac info page had links to two vendors: amazon.de and weltbild.de. Doesn’t Electronic Arts sell the Mac version themselves? Hmmm. Anyway, Amazon’s my friend. Click.
4. Boxed CD version only, delivery by the 15th. Erm, no thanks. Back. Click weltbild.de.
5. Same thing. Boxed version, delivery days away. I want to play now, and it can’t be that there’s no download for Mac. C’mon, this is software! Back.
6. Down at the bottom of the Electronic Arts’ Spore Mac info page, I find another teaser for the EA Store. That’s better! Download here I come! Click!
7. Hunh? I’m on the same “Jetzt Herunterladen” page from before. By now I’m downright mistrustful, so I notice the tiny grey text: “Platform PC” I’d missed earlier (second critical mistake). Could Electronic Arts be actively trying to piss me off? Is someone at EA laughing right now?

No Joy

So, Electronic Arts has managed to turn an excited future Spore fan into a disappointed and frustrated ex-customer in three easy steps.

First, by making their website as misleading as possible. As I said above, they have hundreds of people who are interaction masters. Games and websites are quite different animals, but the principals of clear and simple interface design, user guidance and expectation fulfillment work for both. Note to EA: get your designers to help with your site. You need it. Urgently. If they’re too busy, let’s talk. I’m looking for a challenge.

Second, by hiding behind a “service” wall which pushes customers away. No one who’s spent money on a product should have to explore, research and fight their way to getting help with that product. The best single way to get a customer to love a brand is to turn a moment of confusion and helplessness into a feeling of relief and satisfaction. Note to EA: without your customers, your products are worthless and you can pack up shop. Make happy customers priority number one and change your service strategy to reflect it.

Third, by insisting on selling bits packaged in atoms. Games are bits. Boxes and CDs are atoms. Bits travel well through the internet, take up no space on the shelf, and don’t require me to leave my keyboard, which is where I play my games. This should be obvious to anyone who’s been selling bits as long as Electronic Arts. But I’ve got a Mac, and there is no Mac download. That doesn’t mean there’s no Mac version of the game. There is. There’s just no download. Their games have taken very creative advantage of the internet for years now, so why are their distribution methods (at least for Mac versions) stuck in 1998? Note to EA: Apple’s US home computer market share seems to be around 8%. Do you really want to inconvenience and irritate that many potential customers? All you’d have to do is upload the Mac version to your server. Why haven’t you?

What Now?

I’ve just written Electronic Arts again, and simply asked for a refund. Another promise of an answer in 24 hours. We’ll see.

As much as I wish I could claim that Electronic Arts will collapse in on itself due to its confusing web sites, poor service and outdated sales methods, I doubt they will any time soon. They sell some pretty cool games, and people want them. I’d like to say this experience has so turned me off Electronic Arts that I’ll never buy from them again, but I still want to play Spore and will buy it somewhere, somehow. So in this case, getting the experience right is probably not a matter of corporate survival.

But think of how much better EA could be if they not only had killer games, but also a site that encouraged instead of hindered sales, and service that left customers loving the brand? Sounds like a pipe-dream from where I’m standing, but it should be CEO John Riccitiello’s dream. Anyone got his email address?

Update: today I got an answer from Electronic Arts! Only five days late, but who’s counting? Bad news is, they say:

Spore in Macintosh platform is not available to download. We recommend you to purchase physical copy for Mac Platform.

The good news is, they’re idiots! Spore is actually available as a Mac download from GameTree. A friend (thanks captkevman!) saw my complaints, read this article, and made me aware of GameTree via Twitter. Funnily enough, the info about where to buy a Mac download of Spore is buried in Electronic Arts’ own support site. Maybe the support staff should also read it? Either way, I’m off to download Spore. Hold my calls!

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Who could possibly know more than Disney about guiding, exciting and entertaining people? Interface designers can learn a lot from “Mickey’s 10 Commandments”, developed by Walt Disney Imagineering President, Marty Sklar. (commandments in bold, my comments beneath)

1. Know your audience
   The first link in the chain. Be aware of who your users are, what they like & dislike.
2. Wear your guest’s shoes
   Put yourself in your user’s shoes, visit what you make regularly and try and see what it’s like for your visitors. Watch them and what they do.
3. Organize the flow of people and ideas
   Know where you want to lead people and offer clear pathways to help them find the goals.
4. Create a “Weenie”
   Like a hotdog on a stick, draw people on by offering clear visual attractions.
5. Communicate with visual literacy
   Use the basics of form, colour, typography, etc. to get your message across clearly.
6. Avoid overload
   Don’t confuse users by pulling them in too many directions at once.
7. Tell one story at a time
   Think in stories, and make sure you’re only telling one at a time. A well-told story has far more impact than an info-dump.
8. Avoid contradiction
   Be consistent in each experience you design, create a little world which is believable.
9. An ounce of treatment, a tonne of treat
   Sometimes users will have to work their way through the experience. Offer them a treat at the end, a reward which makes the work worth it and leaves them feeling good about it.
10. Maintain it
    Peeling paint gives a feeling of dysfunction. Spend time on upkeep: fix broken links, update content, remove or update outdated info.

Listening to Marty Sklar explain these made me think that there’s one commandment missing. When you hear his voice, it’s clear that he likes the people who visit Disney parks—“guests” in Disney-speak—and really wants to give them an enjoyable visit. Sometimes we interface designers develop an arrogant attitude, and look down on users who are too stupid to understand our genius. “The button’s right there you fool!” We need to remember that we’re trying to help people navigate through complicated functions and information. I’d add “Learn to like your users” between commandment 1 and 2.

Go have a listen to this Disney podcast to hear Marty Sklar explain the commandments himself. [via boingboing]

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Update: based on this article Feedly has made some changes (and damned fast, 5.5 hours) to the first-time experience. Make sure to read the comments.

So everyone has been talking about Feedly. It’s a Firefox plugin that gathers your feeds from Google Reader, does some magic, and tries to present all the articles you love to read in a magazine-like way (I’ll link it further down, but recommend you read the post first). It’s a beautiful idea that I was immediately excited to try out. Considering how much time I spend reading feeds, and how little time I spend with well-designed newspapers and magazines, and how boring and ugly even the best feed readers are, my first thought was, “I’m on that bandwagon!” I signed up, installed, and restarted Firefox.

I had my first creepy Feedly experience in just 2 seconds. From the first load, Feedly showed me all of my Google Reader content. Why was that creepy? Well, I never logged into Google Reader, and Feedly never asked me for anything. It just pulled all of my feeds in there automatically, I assume by taking my Google Reader login from a cookie. I very consciously avoid saving my Google passwords in any browser, so this was creep-out no. 1.

Creepy Feedly experience number two occured the next morning, when I cooked myself an espresso and opened Google Reader on my iPhone. I was actually just thinking, “Hrm, for Feedly to actually be useful to me, I’d have to be able to open it on my iPhone.” Then I scrolled through my list of folders/tags (Google’s still confused about these terms). First of all, most folders had far more unread items than they should’ve (everything was on 0 yesterday), and secondly there were 3 new folders/tags: z.feedly.favorites, z.feedly.people and z.feedly.seeded, and they were all overflowing. The night before I’d played with Feedly for all of 5 minutes, and not selected anything as a favourite, nor selected any people, nor “seeded” anything, whatever that is. Feedly just added tags/folders automatically, and based on some criteria I don’t understand and were never explained, added articles to them.

So the Feedly folks have taken a great idea—a feed reader with a magazine layout—and have turned me, someone who’s actually wished for something similar in the past, completely off of it in less than 24 hours. I’ll be uninstalling now. I understand that Feedly is just trying to be helpful. A neighbour might break into your house to wash your laundry for you with the same motivation, but would you thank him?

If at some point Feedly sufficiently explains the mysterious things it does before installation, or makes invasive man-handling of my Google Reader account optional, I’ll reconsider using it.

And if, in spite of all of this you want to try it out, go install Feedly (Creeply?) and see for yourself.

Update: thanks to Kosmar I now know how to uninstall Feedly properly, and a little more about privacy and Feedly. Kudos to Edwin Khodabakchian, the guy behind Feedly, for being so straight about these issues.

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A chat with Ryan Singer after the next08 has been bouncing around in my head for a few days.

Photo by A30_Tsitika

We got onto some basic info architecture assumptions which define almost all sites my company makes, and most sites in the web. The more we explored the idea, the more both of us were surprised at how these assumptions often keep users from doing what they’re used to doing in the web — finding things fast.

Top-Down Boxes in Boxes

A new site structure usually starts with a number of assumptions. Big Fat Assumption Number One is that the content chunks will be stuffed into a hierarchy of boxes. The first group of boxes form the 1st level navigation, and each of those boxes usually has more boxes inside it. Often the 2nd level boxes have more boxes inside them, and I’ve seen this boxes in boxes structure repeated down to the 5th level.

A user can only try to guess which box what he’s looking for might be in. And instead of getting the content chunk he’s looking for when he selects a box, he gets a new set of boxes and starts guessing again. When he finally reaches real content (after guessing, guessing, guessing, etc.) the chances are relatively good that he’s not found what he wants, and the guessing game can start from the top again.

If individual chunks of content (or user goals) are the bottom of our structure, we’ve just built an info architecture from the top down.

Hierarchical boxes are also made of “conceptual steel” and separate chunks from each other. This works for a book: the boxes are chapters, which have boxes in them called paragraphs, which are full of chunks called sentences. But once a book’s printed it doesn’t change. Web sites change constantly, and boxes are change-resistant.

Bottom Up Piles & Lenses

Instead of imposing a structure on content chunks from the top down, why not look at the chunks themselves first; i.e. bottom up? If we find common attributes for the chunks, e.g. colour, and label each chunk either blue, green, yellow or red, then we have a labeled pile of chunks.

To find something in a colour labeled pile, users could use “lenses”. A red lens would make all blue, green and yellow chunks disappear, leaving only the red chunks visible. If our chunks also had an attribute size—with labels big, medium and small—they could then combine size and colour lenses to quickly find large/red chunks, or small/green ones.

Old Hat?

Sure, none of this is particularly revolutionary—it’s the way a great deal of those sites we insist on calling “web 2.0” work. Flickr is a gigantic pile of images whose labels are tags, but also technical details such as which camera made the image, Creative Commons license, interestingness, etc. Most of Flickr’s navigation doesn’t throw the user into a box, it provides them with a lens through which they can look at the chunks they’re interested in, and ignore the rest of the pile.

Where The Hell am I? Who cares?

The assumption that drives us to make top-down box architectures is that without a structured, categorised series of boxes in boxes, the poor user will lose his orientation. I think this is seriously outdated thinking, which comes out of the interface thoughts of the pre-internet software design era. It might make sense in the focused, daily-use context of an application, but a user who can find any page in your site from google, and jump directly to it, doesn’t give a crap where he is as long as he finds what he wants. When I’ve asked a number of daily-use but less than cutting-edge users “where” in the web they are right now, the answer surprised me: “What do you mean? I’m in Google.” So much for that carefully thought out color-coded box hierarchy.

Hunters & Gatherers

Am I recommending that all of my corporate clients throw their hierarchies out the window? Hell no. But I would like to see them experiment a little more with piles & lenses to supplement their box hierarchies. Traditional boxes-in-boxes navigation is fine for gatherers, but google is teaching users hunter strategies: select a goal, focus on it, jump on it as quickly as possible. The next time you start a concept with Big Fat Assumption Number One, and begin stuffing content into boxes-in-boxes, take a step back, look at the chunks at the bottom, and see if you can offer the hunters piles and lenses to speed their hunt.

What do you think? Leave a comment…

Back at Reboot I met the amiable guys from seto, Jan & Tobias. Reboot’s the kind of place where almost everyone’s got a project they’re endlessly excited about, and these guys were no exception. During a coffee break they whipped a laptop out and gave me an impromptu demo of their product, mpathy.

If website statistics is looking through a telescope at a crowd, then mpathy is standing in the crowd, staring at people as they go by.

It works like this: sign up for their service, embed a little Javascript in your site, and as soon as someone visits your site, you can login at mpathy and watch the show.

The “show” consists of a layer over your site showing real-time mouse movements, clicks, scrolling — whatever the user did is recorded and played back for you. Whereas stats give you a very general feeling for what users are doing on your site, mpathy puts the second to second user behaviour under the microscope. Of course it’s usefulness is directly related to your own ability to notice trends and reach conclusions based on them, but for an interface designer it’s a remarkable addition to (or substitute for) user testing.

So remember, as you’re reading this your every move is being recorded. Try not to look as crazy as this visitor from the 15th.

Fair warning: seto is a German company, and so far mpathy is only available in German. But don’t let that scare you: just click the big pink “Anmelden” button ad the rest should (almost) explain itself.

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Way back in 1999 WIRED magazine wrote about e-paper. The basic gist was that digital displays which are light reflecting (like paper, and not light emitting, like a monitor) and flexible enough to roll will be a part of our everyday lives, well… the day after tomorrow!

Electronic Paper will soon be in production at 3M, and by mid-2000 will be as much a fact of life, its developers say, as the dead-tree stuff.

Yes, the timing is utter bullshit, but think for a moment about how cool this could be.

One Book to Rule Them All

Other than some bored Japanese ladies, who wants to read anything longer than a short e-mail on a PDA, let alone mobile phone? Imagine instead that you’ve got a hardbound book, small enough to fit in a big pocket and thick enough that it feels good in your hand. Open it and all the pages are empty. Set it down next to your computer, select some text, click sync, and suddenly your book’s full of the text you selected.

Or a folded piece of paper with the dimensions of a newspaper, but only four pages — front, two inside the fold, and the back. Your newspaper can also download the news, not only in the train in the morning, but the newest news in the train home as well, and when you get there you can download your favourite magazine into it.

Dream On

This sounds like something that would just have to sell like hot donuts, doesn’t it? So why didn’t Xerox PARC & 3M’s Gyricon get off the ground? Sure the name’s crap, but is that why, since 2005, they’ve only been “focusing on licensing the technology”? E-Ink and Lucent’s collaboration looks mostly like a way to make ugly, expensive signage. And Philips has perhaps the best looking web site of them all with PolymerVision, but as far as I can tell, the product itself is just as far as all the others from the rollable, foldable, page turning dream. I can only assume that the necessary engineering still escapes even firms of this size, and that the cost of an e-paper book would therefore be well beyond people like myself.

The Sony Reader is just a PDA that’s a little easier to read, and Philips’ Readius (where the hell do they get all these disastrous names?) is perhaps smaller, but hardly better. And both are far less than something to get excited about. Sorry WIRED, even after 40 articles in the last 7 years, we’re still waiting to sit in the park reading Lord of the Ri… erm, Paul Auster’s new boo… erm, Rolling Sto… erm, some blog.

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For the last two weeks I’ve been locked up at home with a lung infection. Certainly not my idea of fun, but in an attempt to make the best out of feverish coughing, I spent some of my downtime playing World of Warcraft, and the rest of the time getting to know Second Life. The former is a wonderfully entertaining way to waste some time, but I’m afraid that the latter didn’t make me feel much better. Read on…

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Today, Windows Vista appeared in, according to Bill, 39,000 stores. Quite possibly a big deal for many people who spend as much time in front of a computer as I do, but not for me, at least not when compared to the launch of the OTTO Store. Read on…

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There aren’t many blogs today in my Newshutch that aren’t doing something to accelerate the MacWorld Expo hype. Never one to passively watch a bandwagen roll by, me and my two cents are jumping on. Read on…

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In the frolicksome days of my youth, I played too much Dungeons & Dragons. The one have-to-have-it item in the game was the Bag of Holding. What appeared to be a simple leather sack on the outside was capable of holding anything you could get into it, and as much of anything as you wanted. Bear with me when I say that the Bag of Holding is today known as the folder, and it’s the one indispensible have-to-have-it item in the desktop metaphor GUIs we know today. Read on…

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