unfulfilled by order fulfillment

Thinking I was getting a good deal, I ordered TurboTax from Staples.com for $49. At the time, I didn’t realize that I could have walked into the store and gotten the same price. But, what I did know was that Staples always has hundreds of copies of TurboTax on the shelves – so, I figured, I must as well select the “Pick up from store” option and save on the shipping.

My first surprise was that the site informed me (after I paid, of course) that my order will not be ready for two days. Well, OK, I’m not in a desperate rush to pay my taxes, but that’s a bit inconvenient. There was another surprise on the order slip – it said “UPS shipping, free”. UPS? Why would you need to ship an item to a store that already has it?

When I finally showed up to the store, my order was there - still packaged in the UPS envelope. Why, I ask, why? Right next to the checkout lane, there’s a huge display with dozens of TurboTax boxes – couldn’t I have one of those?

Sure, in 1999, online shopping may have been a novelty. But today, can’t Staples.com and Staples-down-the-street realize that they’re the same company? And that I, as a customer, don’t really care which one I shop at, as long as I get a good price? And that paying an external shipping company is probably not the best use of their budget?

we are #1-10!

Every year, the Nielsen/Norman Group compiles a list of ten "best" intranets, and publishes a report that it sells to companies (like ours) eager to take a peek at the competition. Every year, we read it and walk away with mixed feelings: some features are well designed and executed, while others are years behind what we have. Oh, and of course every year there's a submission that consist of a lightly-customized SharePoint portal... and that's it. "Bah!", we say, "We’ve got SharePoint, plus CMS, plus a stand-alone portal, plus a crapload of applications, plus thousands of static collections..."

Surely, our users are just as proud of the hornet's nest of complexity that we call our intranet.

In any case, last year we decided to throw our hat in the ring. A small brain trust from a couple of departments got together to work on the submission. I ended up writing and rewriting sections on our design methodology and usability testing, as well as the "lessons learned".

We sent in the submission, complete with dozens of screenshots, and waited patiently for the result. When it came a few weeks later, we were pleasantly surprised – we got selected! Unfortunately, we were not allowed to reveal that fact until the final report was published.

But that wasn't all there was to it. We thought that we were done with the writing part. Wrong. Being selected into the top ten meant more writing – much more! When we sent in the second wave of documents, the NNG people responded with a draft of the writeup... and let’s just say it needed a lot of work. I can sort of understand the factual flaws and the inconsistent voice, but the amount of grammar errors and typos reminded me of the finest Lee, Kong & Co. work. More revisions, more emails...

Finally, yesterday we got the good word that the report was officially released. You can visit NNG to check out the summary, but getting your hands on it would cost a cool $224. At least we've got our copy for free... regardless, it's nice to be recognized in the same crowd as GE and Wal-Mart.

catching up

Dogs, holidays, house, and everything else have conspired against any blogging activity, but no matter - I still remember a thing or two from the past month.

The highlight was the San Fransisco trip, of course. Kathy was nice enough to host us for a couple of days after our poorly-planned arrangements with Hakeem fell through. On Monday, Dec 7th, it was time for me to hit up the "An Event Apart" conference, and hit it I did. It was intense - not a multi-track CHI-like affair with 45-min nuggets of knowledge, but more of a tutorial onslaught. AEA was very much practice-oriented and focused, and I liked that. Glad I went.

Susan and I had a little bit of time to explore San Fransisco on our own, and the highlight for me was the Legion of Honor museum. Maybe I didn't expect a classical collection in the vicinity of the Golden Gate, or maybe it was the nicely-selected exhibits... or maybe it was the fact that we got in for free with our Bank of America cards... either way, it stood out during our museum blitz.

Jonas was nice enough to drive us to Napa, where we enjoyed a two-hour wine tasting with the owner of Hendry winery. Afterwards, we spent the remainder of the trip in South Bay, thanks to the hospitality of Dave and Jen. How they find time for anything with Dylan and the twins, I don't know. Hakeem made an appearance at the 11th hour and came through for us with a drive to the airport. Good times.

Fast-forward to the end of December, to the non-denominational holiday celebration at the Drozdetski home base. As usual, we've had our dinner on the 24th, sat around for a minute, and decided it was time to open presents. I made off handsomely, but then followed up after Xmas with an investment into a PS3. Yes, "investment" into our Blu-Ray/Netflix watching experience - the games are a nice bonus.