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Usability Watch – Why can’t I do what I want to do!?!

I’ve been shopping round for a new car recently and that means I inevitably have to get some (outrageous) insurance quotes. In the UK there’s a website called confused.com which is basically a screen scraper service that goes around multiple companies and is meant to get you the cheapest quote. Strangely, the cheapest quote I got from them was about the same as the most expensive quote I got when I went through the process manually, but that’s for another day.

On the the point! I’ve used the site before to get quotes, last time I was looking for a car in fact, so I duly signed in using my details. Upon sign in, I was presented with the following screenConfused.com welcome page you can see to the right. So why is this such a poor screen? Well, put yourself in my shoes, I hadn’t visited the site in a while and was coming back to get a new quote. With that in mind, what’s missing from that screen? Thats right, it seems as though all I can do is visit and view existing quotes. So where do we go from here? I assumed this was just because I was revisiting and I had outstanding quotes, so I hit “Previous” in search of a more usefull opening screen, but no, nothing, nada. Turns out, that if you want to create a new quote, you have to go and visit one of your existing quotes. Why? This is the sort of interface and usability madness that drives me mad, excuse the pun. To put it simply, I’m just as likely to want to create a new quote as revisit an old one, so those options should be on par. The other option that should clearly be available is to update my details. Hell, I want to input my details once and then just reuse them over and over. At the moment, while it pre-populates the fields with your pre-entered details, theres no way to just choose a car and hit submit. With the amount of information some insurers ask for, it would save some serious time, and just seems like common sense.

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Stikkit Quicksilver Plugin

I think my life has just changed.  My personal data manager of choice, Stikkit, Stikkit in Quicksilverhas had a plugin released so that it works with the best task launcher ever conceived, Quicksilver.  If you head into your Quicksilver preference pane, you can now add a Stikkit plugin which allows you to add and amend Stikkits as well as accessing your current Stikkits.  Have a look at this post over a The Unofficial Apple Weblog which will run you through the setup process.  This is really how things should work, the integration between Stikkit and Quicksilver is pretty seemless and having access to all my Stikkits right there on my desktop, and then being able to use them in the ways Quicksilver allows, is a revelation.

I’ve posted about Stikkit before and praised the way in which it uses natural text as an input mechanism.  This remains extant when using Quicksilver.  I’m convinced this is the future.  So long as there are great desktop applications out there, Quicksilver being one of them, many people will find it hard give them up.  Likewise, which web apps are as easy to use as Stikkit, many people will want to start using it.  This is the perfect balance.  One of the things I like about Stikkit is that I can just type information in there and Stikkit sorts it all out for me, tagging it and setting up reminders and generally acting like my mother (i.e. picking my socks up, doing my laundry etc.).  With the amount of time it takes for me to create a Stikkit greatly reduced, its become my go to app for pretty much everything.  A word of warning though, occasionally you will need something a bot more structured.  For me, Stikkit works great as a place to hold to-dos, meeting minutes, general notes and such like.  I back it up with a more formal and structured application for when its required.  My personal choice for this is Active Collab, which you’ll need to host yourself, but provides a very usable solution.  That may come as a shock to many of you as I was a long time proponent of the 37 signals application Basecamp.  unfortunately, it just doens’t seem to be moving in the same direction as me, which is a shame.  I’ll cover this at a later date, as it seems to be happening with a few of my old favourite we applications.

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How to get through today with Google Reader

So, we all know what today is. And, unfortunately, many tech and web 2.0 sites like to take full advantage. So, I bring to you a technique for avoiding all this silliness using Google Reader. Its quite complicated, sorting the wheat from the chaff isn’t easy at the best of times, let alone today, so bear with me.

Ok, first, bring up Google Reader in your browser.

Then, click this button Google Reader View All . This ensures that whatever you do next will be applied to all posts.

Next, click this button Google Reader Mark All As Read Button .

And that should be it, all done. You will, however, have to apply the same “fix” every so often for the next 24 hours.

Enjoy a peacefull Sunday.

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