Usability Forum

Posts tagged with "office"

Everyday things: Chair instructions

By Eddie Lopez. Thursday, 4. June 2009, 02:59:33

everyday things, complex, chairs, office

We got new chairs at the office. They are really nice, and I'm certainly grateful to have an un-stained, new comfortable chair, particularly in these tough economic times.

...but I can't help but laugh at these instructions that came along with it. It's hard to think a chair could be so complicated, but well, there you go...

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The "killer" feature for online meeting logistics

By Eddie Lopez. Friday, 24. April 2009, 14:27:55

work, connect pro, office, video conference ...

Post updated to give webex some love

I've seen 'em all. Webex, Sametime, NetMeeting... all the tools you use to collaborate across sites and their various ilks and incarnations. Yesterday, I saw a feature in Adobe connect (and subsequently in webex) that I thought was the best thing since screen sharing... "Call Me."

In my experience, the biggest hurdles for online meetings are the five, sometimes ten minutes spent at the beginning trying to get everyone up and running in the meeting. Heaven forbid you want to add someone last minute ("hey Kenneth, can you jump on this call? We're talking about interaction design.")

There's always a series of connection information for the audio portion-

A common conference line
A meeting identifier
a passcode (either for leader/participant, or security)

...these often add a series of cumbersome logistics as people either announce on the line instructions, forward emails with meeting details, or post them on the video portion of the site (chat windows, etc). Facilitating this process is a "killer feature" in my book.

Adobe takes a stab at it- instead of having to look up a number every time you want to join a conference, you can just remember your own phone number and have the conference call you. You just type in your phone number and hit "call me," and presumably you're off and running. Simple approach to the problem- I'm not sure if competing products offer this feature- but I've never seen it. (Usability Principle: If the user can't find the function, it isn't there)

WebEx does something similar, but they manage to make it sound a little less friendly:

Adobe sticks out in my mind because it was easiest to discover, and clearly dispalayed on their "features" page features page

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Viewing the (system) clock when giving a presentation?

By Eddie Lopez. Tuesday, 7. April 2009, 21:43:31

presentations, office, usability, powerpoint ...

Regarding PowerPoint. Why is it that you cannot display the system clock on in the slide show view?

(One) Answer:

"I don't want them to think about me, or the time on my computer, or how much time is left, or when lunch is. That's just a distraction, and including it in the slides would be counterproductive."

I totally get that you don't want your audience to focus on the clock, and they should be paying attention to what you're saying. That's a perfectly valid reason to not show the clock. There are, however, many cases where it would be perfectly cromulent to have the clock there. I say this, because the vast majority of presentations I've given or sat in on, the clock was somehow involved.

Some considerations:

When I was in the military, we practiced "hitting our mark" for briefings over and over again. But the real life scenario is that the col. or general always has somewhere else to be at the bottom or top of the hour. That's the governing factor- if he comes in late, or you don't plan for the appropriate Q&A time, you don't get to encroach past the end of your time. This is duplicated in just about every meeting I've ever given in civilian life as well- the top or bottom of the hour indicates when we stop or start, and the presenter will always ask the audience anyway if that needs to deviated from. The clock is the governing authority over everyone's time and/or the meeting room that was scheduled, it should be viewable.
Regarding distracting people by having the clock on the screen, sure, but it's certainly less distracting than having half your audience look at their watch because they have another meeting to get to in 3 minutes. At least they can know what time it is discreetly without having to look at their watch. (lets face it, not every meeting is drop dead engaging, yes, they should be- but lets deal with the realities of the situation). Besides, most people don't have watches anymore anyway.
I haven't used any recent iteration of PowerPoint (work is using Office 2003), but from what I've seen, Office 2007 only addresses half of the problem. It allows you to see the clock in the presenter view, but as I've already noted before- often the presenter isn't the "top dog" with control of the meeting. In most of my experiences, presentations are to superiors who are always dealing with other projects of equal or greater importance to what the presenter is talking about, they are the ones with control over when/where the stop/starts are.
There are a ton of timer based functions and additions, macros, scripts, whatever for PowerPoint and similar products for timing the presenter. But don't think I've ever seen anyone ever use anything like that ( I've worked in technology, health care, banking, and the military, all predominantly used PowerPoint in it's easiest/roughest form). None of these functions really matter in my experience- it's always about what time is on the clock.

Does this make sense? What do you think? Distracting? Needed? Or do presentation tools already address this? (again, I'm on Office 2003, I'm not sure if 2007 does this)

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