thekua.com@work

In my experience, achieving high quality is a key part to being adaptive and nimble. Continuous improvement and responding to the feedback allows you to achieve high quality. Here’s what I’ve applied to training so far:

• Set design and collaborating ideas – One approach I could have taken to developing the material included simply writing the content, trainer’s guide, handouts, etc and run it with a single class before trying to change anything. Instead, I came up with a few options, bouncing ideas off someone else who’d run training before and asked them, “I’m thinking of trying something like like …, I imagine it would work like … and we’d achieve … What do you think? What discussion would this generate? Would people find it engaging?” It stopped me detailing things too early and putting in too much effort that would need rework.
• User Centred Design – For some of the worksheets, I applied some principles from Don’t Make Me Think, testing them out with some users to make sure they needed as little instructions as possible. It’s important for students to have a good experience with everything to do with the course. You can see the evolution by looking at the picture above – it’s a worksheet for introducing the concept of velocity for the XP Lego Game.
• Finding the right metrics to use – I’ve already changed my feedback forms since running the pilot programs, looking at what information I actually consume and how people use it. I used to have a two-page feedback form, the first including instructions and a focus on multiple choice answers, with the second page using a more free form format. Since I hand them out in class, I give verbal instructions and removed the detail blurb I had at the top. I also condensed the form into a single page, and focused on three key questions I am more interested in – “What did you like best about the session? What constructive changes would you suggest to make the session more effective? What else do you want to know about?”

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Ticketmaster sent me an email this morning suggesting a concert for, apparently, “one of my favourite performers”.

They’re as far off as they could be. Much as I have a lot of respect for some of the music this artist produces, I doubt I’d ever place it on my favourite artist of all time list. Ever.

Respect for customers is really important in today’s world. Choosing what language and words you use demonstrates this. It’s even more important if you only send emails.

Amazon uses recommendations or suggestions when offering alternatives, as they know they get it wrong sometimes. At least they’re honest about it. In case you wonder, I prefer a more local site (GigsAndTours.com or Stargreen.com) for buying tickets.

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In trying to change my return flight to London from Bangalore, I’ve been trying to reach British Airways. Calling two of their numbers (the only ones given to me in fact) resulted in the following experience:

*Ring*, *Ring*

“This is British Airways. You have reached our India free number. This service is currently unavailable. Please redial using the advertised number.”

*Click*

That’s it. No greeting. No explanation. No alternatives. A simple message offerings many lessons to learn from.

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Thank you for responding to the issue that I raised (located here) about a problem how one of your ASP.Net 2.0 Framework controls and Internet Explorer (and only Internet Explorer) fail to work well together.

I’m very happy that the time that I spent detailing the steps to reproduce the problem was well spent and that, you too, were able to reproduce it. I’m quite disappointed that we have not made any progress on fixing the problem and the solution offered to me was to submit the same issue but against a different product group. Unfortunately it looks like that avenue is currently closed (see Internet Explorer feedback site)

As someone who has spent time giving you feedback that I feel will help make your overall product better, I find it a little shocking that you ask for me to commit even more time even though I do not feel like we have made any more progress to fixing the problem. I can understand your desire to ensure issues are properly classified so the appropriate team may address it, but I feel I do not need to be involved with your company’s strategy at issue resolution since I feel you have all the information you need.

I appreciate your constant correspondence to my submitted issue, but I think I would have had a much better experience had the person who closed my issue, reclassified, or even duplicated the issue for the correct team to ensure that continued progress is made on the issue. I don’t understand why I need to spend additional time iterating the same information I have already provided your company with.

I am happy to discuss more of my experience submitting feedback and my own personal thoughts on how the user experience could be better. I do encourage you to contact me (emailpat “at” thekua.com) as I will be happy to share more of my thoughts to help improve the experience.

Yours truly,

Patrick Kua

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I’m not sure what makes it difficult people putting in a DNS entry so that [somesite].com redirects to www.[somesite].com. I hit Argos yesterday only to find out that apparently they use Websphere. That’s all very nice to know as a techie, but as a customer, it’s not quite the user experience I want.

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