Connect the dots from the green pin to the boxy thing

I never would have guessed that the best way to get something from Pennsylvania to Boston is through Tennessee. But then, geography was never my strong point.

(Memphis must be FedEx City.)

Here is where my expected experience completely deviated from the actual experience.

What I thought would happen is that Amazon would ship the other books right away and once the pre-ordered book became available, they would send that out. That’s how it works in regular stores – if something is available in-store, you can pay for that and walk out with it, but you can also pre-order something else at the same time and come get it when it becomes available. So I waited. A week went by and my books hadn’t arrived. Then another week went by. At this point, I got worried and logged back on to Amazon to see the status of my order. I was shocked to see that they hadn’t even shipped it yet! Apparently, they were holding back my entire order until the pre-ordered book became available.

While I understand that in order to save on shipping Amazon needs to combine orders into as few packages as possible, it was the last thing I would have expected that they would hold my entire order because one item was not available. It just doesn’t make sense. What Amazon should have done is one of three things:

1. Make it crystal clear that the order will not ship until the pre-ordered item is available.
2. Ship the available items right away and send the pre-ordered item when it’s available.
3. Don’t give customers the option to mix pre-ordered and available items in the same transaction.

While #2 is my preferred option, any of these would have been acceptable. As it was, I lost two weeks waiting for an order that didn’t come and then had to go through the trouble of canceling the entire order and re-purchasing the available items separately. Thankfully Confessions of a Public Speaker comes out next week and I’ll finally feel safe ordering it. And in the future, I’ll steer clear of Amazon’s “pre-order” system.

It’s been a couple of weeks since our round of usability tests at the SAP BusinessObjects User Conference (rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?) and I wanted to share a couple of thoughts about the experience. This was the first time we did usability tests since I joined the team back in March and it was also my first time meeting our community of users in person.

The first thing that struck me was the willingness of people who use Xcelsius to come and participate in the testing sessions. There were 13 sessions total, with room for one tester and one observer, and we had most of them filled before the conference even started. Our recruiters said they had people practically busting down the doors, trying to get into the sessions. This kind of support is exactly what we need in order to improve our product. For those who couldn’t make it, this is what it looked like:

The second thing that really impressed me was the quality of feedback we received. I have to admit, I was a little nervous going into these sessions because I know a lot of our users get frustrated with some of Xcelsius’ shortcomings. However, everyone that participated was very supportive and provided great constructive feedback. We learned a lot from watching people use the product – some of which we expected, and some that took us by surprise. Spending 13 hours looking at Xcelsius through the eyes of our customers was a very enlightening experience.

Finally, the thing I enjoyed most was meeting everyone in the Xcelsius user community in person. I follow many discussions online (including on LinkedIn, SDN, and Twitter) and it was very exciting to be able to put a face to the names of people I have come to respect through these discussions. I tried to meet as many people as I could, through lunches, networking events, the Xcelsius Community event, and the usability testing sessions. Through all of this I learned a lot about what people do with Xcelsius and their top concerns. There were two questions that I heard more than any others, though, and I’ll leave you with the answers here:

1. Q: When is the next version of Xcelsius coming out?

   A: Unfortunately, I can’t comment on that. All I can say is, “soon.”

2. Q: Are you related to Matt Lloyd?

   A: You know how some people are related by marriage? Well, Matt and I are related by product. Beyond that, there is no relation. It’s just an awesome last name.

Also, if you want to see photos from the Xcelsius Community event, you can find them on Flickr.

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The new Wolfram|Alpha “computational knowledge engine” is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long while. My first impression was that this was just a big fancy calculator to help people solve NP-complete problems and complex differential equations and whatnot. Not that this wouldn’t be impressive in its own right, but it’s not exactly something I would use (though I could have used it back in college, when I was smart). The really cool thing about Worlfram|Alpha, though, is that it has a myriad of possible uses.

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Taken at the "Importance of Presence in Presentations" session at the
UPA Boston Mini Conference.

You can download the slides here (in PDF form) or here (in PPTX form).

Read my Delta horror story here.

They called my phone and asked to speak with Nick. I said that I was his wife. The woman on the line then proceeded to explain how they would like to ask Nick a few questions regarding the quality of service he received when he recently exchanged his phone at their service center and was there a better time to call? I said that I’d giver her his phone number, since she was calling me on my line. She responded with “Oh, if this is your number, then the call won’t be necessary. Thank you for your time!”

It’s baffling to me that they would call, asking for feedback, but really all they care about is checking off some box saying they called a certain number.

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