Archive for September 2008

 
 

iTunes Genius, Tricky like a Fox

Well, thus far the iTunes “Genius” has quickly allowed me to fill some gaps in my music collection by finding some obscure tracks that I did not know existed without me having to lift a finger.   It was a win-win for me and Apple, I got to listen to some new cool music, and Apple got to take even more of my $$$.
But alas, the Genius ain’t so smart.  On three separate occasions I have now purchased tracks that the Genius said I was missing, only to realize I actually owned the song.  It is a little hard to keep track of the thousands of songs I own in my head, and I have mistakenly trusted the Genius when it says I am missing those tracks.
The biggest benefit I see to Genius is that it is a time-saver and reduces the friction for me to find music that interests me and at the same time reduces the friction between my bank account and Apples ;) .  But, if I have to go validate each Genius recommendation by doing a manual search (on the same song title) each time, it completely undermines the benefit and REALLY makes it for an annoying experience.  
Now I am stuck in the unenviable position of having to go figure out where I purchased music I already own and then struggle with the abysmal “refund”  UX in iTunes to get my money back.   So far, I have purchased about $30 of music via iTunes Genius, of which about $10 was music I already owned.  The cost for me to get my $10 back will easily be $100 of my time.   So not only did Apple abscond with my $10, they make the friction to get it back very high.
Way to go Apple, excellent customer experience.
Update 9/24/2008:
So now Apple is denying my request to get a refund claiming I have asked for too many “I already own this” refunds (3 in total.)  Pretty incredible, this year alone I have spent over $10,000 on apple products (all consumer level) and they are getting their backs up over a measly $3 that was a result of their bug.
Apple in 3 years == Microsoft. C’mon guys, get with the program.

September 19th, 2008 | Apple | 0 Comments

360 Flex Feedback – Thanks Community

I just got feedback from my 360 Flex session, and I must say it was very pleased to see how many people found the session valuable.  It is always very hard when preparing to present technical information to guess what people already know and what they want to learn.
I spent quite a bit of time polishing code and generating some new stuff that I could share with the community, and the reality is that if this were a billable engagement (the work required to prepare for my preso) it would have been a good size project.  So I was very gratified to see such positive feedback from the community.
I have not done a lot of public speaking, and as such it is something I am trying to learn how to enjoy more and become more effective at.  One of the real challenges I find is how to be engaging and dynamic when discussing detailed technical information.  I tend to be more about “here are the facts” and less about “here I am to entertain you.”  I think there is a happy medium somewhere in the middle that a speaker finds over time, this is something I am striving for.
I look forward to MAX, and even more so the next 360 Flex to have an opportunity to create even more engaging and valuable presentations that I can share with the community.

September 19th, 2008 | Adobe, Data Visualization, Degrafa, Flex | 0 Comments

A Few Processing Sketches

Here are a couple of sketches I was playing with today that were derivatives of the Fireworks subsystem (okay lets be honest, the subsystem is less than 100 lines of code)


September 11th, 2008 | Processing | 2 Comment

Which Data Visualization works Best?

1) Heat Index Grid (click for full view)


2) Micro Histogram  (click for interactive version)

3) Punch Card Grid

Recently I was asked by Universal Mind if I would be interested in consulting for them on the User Experience and Data Visualization aspects of their ground-breaking geo-spatial product SpatialKey. I felt it was a great compliment and privilege to have such a well recognized and respected company in the RIA world ask for my input, and I was excited by the prospect of working with such people as Mike Connor (VP Business Development), Tom Link (CTO) and Doug McCune (Flex Rockstar) and the many other talented people at UM. 
Whiile many of you in the Flex community probably have already heard about SpatialKey, for those of you who have not, definitely go check out their technology preview. Basically, SpatialKey represents some really innovative work on showing high volume data sets as they relate to geo-coded data with visual interpolation techniques that far eclipse the standard pin-based metaphor found on most geo-spatial visualization tools.
In that vein one of the tactical areas I was asked to look at is the effectiveness of certain types of visualizations for specific types of analysis. One of those areas was trying to plot crime incident data data by hour and day of week for a given 7 day period. From this discussion we came up with three alternative ways to visualize this data… one existed currrently within the system, one I created based on the visualization problem as i saw it, and one was found by surfing the web. One of the challenges in doing Data Viz work, is the more work you do in the field the more unique visualizations you create the stronger your preference for certain visual patterns becomes, thus creating a bias in what seems most effective for you.
While I believe I have scientific reasons to explain why I think one of the visualizations above is more effective than others, it comes down to what casual users find most intuitive. To that end, I would be greatly appreciative for any readers to vote on the visualization they feel is most compelling to solve the analysis problem of spotting trends and subtle differences in numeric counts (arrests) as plotted hour-by-hour for a seven day period. While we are interviewing real users in the SpatialKey target market, getting feedback from the Flex community is just as valuable. Just use the comments section to vote for 1 (heat index grid), 2 (micro histogram), or 3 (punch card). (Pics 1 & 2 show the same data, Pic 3 is a different data set, which I realize make the comparison a little harder, but hopefully still valid.)

September 10th, 2008 | Dashboards, Data Visualization | 17 Comment