On a brief road-trip up to Olympia, Washington yesterday, we stopped at a friendly Arco station to, well, get some gas, but also look for weird c-store snacks. Of course.

While there, I spotted this pretty classic bit of Human Interface Design at the payment station:


The instructional sticker, placed on the pay station, is valiantly attempting to explain to people how to pay.

But, as you can see, instead of pressing the actual Enter/Receipt buttons, immediately below the instructions, people are desperately pressing the instructional sticker itself. (And not just once or twice — often enough that the printing has been almost completely rubbed off!)

Seriously, see it up close. And it's both sides, too.

While we could/should chuckle at zany dumb people — oh, heck, go on — I blame the designer. The fact that they needed to add a sticker in the first place should have been an immediate red flag that the overall design has fundamental problems. Consider alternatives quickly: is the LCD screen the problem? Is it hard to read? Since it can't be made higher because of ADA access, can it be made clearer, or more graphical and less textual, with better instructions? Can they use voice prompts ("now press the green enter button") tied to a big blue "help" button? Better yet, how about replacing the whole screen/keypad combo with a much-friendlier single touchscreen?

Still, even if they missed the dire "let's use a sticker!" klaxon, here's a good rule of thumb: don't make your instructions significantly easier to see / parse than the actual interface you're trying to explain. :)

Interestingly, this kind of stuff applies to software UI design as well. Any time we find ourselves having to over-explain a control, or hope that people read the documentation, or pray they stop and smell the tool tip, we'll usually back up and completely rethink what we're trying to do.

Regardless: hooray for people!

(For what its worth, someone at this gas station didn't like the Spanish instructions very much, either.)

Remember the infamous Best Buy Wall Numbers I posted about a while back? I have an update.

Call me crazy, but it seems — especially after this ominous comment — that I might be that one guy who ruins it for everybody else:

What you're seeing is, well, what you're not seeing — the magical, revealing, way-too-public store performance numbers have been totally removed from all the Portland area Best Buy stores I visited last weekend. All that's left is a swath of slightly off-color wall. (And, in some cases, the number holders themselves.)

Unsurprising, but still, bummer. Fare thee well, product replacement plans. Adieu, mon shrink.

If anybody has a copy of the memo that made this change happen, send it over! :)

So, Verizon has this internet service called FiOS, yeah? Wikipedia has all sorts of delicious details. It's technically "fiber to the premises" (FTTP). But in my mind, it's known as AWESOME TO THE PREMISES. It's fast, affordable, and makes me cry each night before I go to sleep. The problem? I can't get it here. But if I lived about 10 minutes away, I could. Let me explain.

At the risk of sounding like an infomercial, here's the low down: FiOS' basic "tier 1" service plan offers incredibly solid speed: 5 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up, for $39.95 a month.

Now, first, please understand that I currently "experience" 0.384 Mbps upload speeds here at home on my Comcast connection, and, to get extremely technical, it sucks mega dong-beans. So, in this case, I'm mostly excited by the upstream speed: 2 Mbps up would be glorious. Second, it's worth noting that the entire Panic office currently shares a single 6.0/768 Speakeasy DSL line, and we pay a whole lot more than $39.95. So, already: Tier 1 FTW.

Now, what about Tier 2? Oh my stars and garters.

Tier 2 is 15 Mbps down. And 2 Mbps up. For $49.95 a month. $49.95. 10 times the speed of a T1!

The good news? It's available in my area! The bad news? That means everywhere in my area except my exact area. Portland. You know, the city.

See that graphic up there from The Oregonian? I live right in the middle of that "white circle of sadness". Those other colored areas are where Verizon FiOS taunts me all around, yelling and poking and scraping me with razor-sharp shards of fiber, downloading terabytes of internet magic in seconds and then just dragging it all into the trash just to spite me.

The problem? Essentially, Qwest. SURPRISE!

As The Oregonian's Mike Rogoway recently wrote: Multnomah County is Qwest territory, Verizon is not about to mix it up in Qwest-dominated land, and Qwest is basically broke. So, we have no competition, and no hope for Qwest to offer hot new services. Our local non-cable choice? Qwest or nothin'. I mean, even death row prisoners get to choose a last meal, which, really, is a totally irrelevant comparison.

Why doesn't Verizon go head-to-head with Qwest? As I understand it, when Ma Bell was broken up, the Baby Bells were all granted regional territories. And with the territories, came the networks, all built out and ready to go. Qwest got Multnomah County, but they don't "own" Multnomah County. In other words, there's nothing preventing Verizon from entering Multnomah county, except for the incredible cost and overwhelming difficulty of building an entire network, in a city, from scratch — every last central office, foot of cable, and line of fibre. So, while nothing's stopping them, really, everything is stopping them. Which is a great place to be in, if you're Qwest.

So, Verizon, I implore you, in the optimistic fever of an impossible dream: expand to Portland! Build out your network! I'll help you hook it all up! Damn the cost! Run the wires! And give Qwest a good old fashioned run for their money — which you'll totally win, hands down, in a matter of minutes. I think you'll be surprised by the results.

Dear Readers,

Sorry for the post-E3 tumbleweeds around here. For what it's worth, I spent a couple of weeks in Japan, and then got sucked back into my (exciting) Panic-related work upon my return. Returning from vacation is, as they say in China, like putting a mouse on a frog on a cat on a cock (rooster) — a delicate balancing act, to be sure!

Anyway, I'm back, a ton of stuff is going on lately, and I have a lot of topics to post about in the coming weeks — including stories, photos, and movies from Japan!

Enough about me:

Today, if you didn't know, was the Nintendo DS LIte USA release day!

So, after all my hullabaloo, I feel obligated to ask: did you get one? How'd it go? Is it everything you thought it would be? Are you disappointed in any way? What do you think of that death backlight? Etc. etc.

Let me know! Post a comment! Tell your story!

While doing a bit of shopping today I tried to poke in and check availability around the Portland area. Our local Fred Meyer was sold out, but the really bizarre Best Buy near the airport seemed to have quite a few sitting on the shelves! I guess that's... good? Did you have any trouble finding yours?