Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.
I’ve been looking forward to a much needed holiday in the US this November. On Tuesday night, I checked my passport only to discover that it will expire in December this year. As the US requires at least six months validity on the passport, I thought I could hop on the passports website and easily renew my current passport.
Boy oh boy was I wrong. What should have been a quick and painless process turned out to be a case study for a bad user experience.
Having what I thought was a current and valid passport, I selected the Passport Applications menu item, then the Renew option. After following the form flow for a while, I got stuck on the login screen, was eventually locked out and then asked to contact the passport team (the number only works if you call during business hours). When I called the next day, I was told that I can’t renew my current passport as it has less than two years validity (thanks to a name change due to my marriage two years ago). Instead, I’ll have to go through a new passport application.
After going back and being a lot more through with my reading of the extraneous text on the passport website, I discovered that there’s actually a PDF that you have to download and read which contains important information (can you spot it in the image below?). I also discover that despite the page saying that you should use the renewal form if you have a current passport, you still need to find the relevant PDFs on the website, read the instructions in great detail and hope that you have the right form.
This was pretty annoying but I buckled down and tried to work my way through the online new passport application. The first page I get asks a series of questions (as per the following image). Note that the supplementary text for the third question “Do you want to renew your Australian passport?” doesn’t tell you about the less-than-two-years validity rule.
Once you start the form, there is no clear indication of the documentation you need to have to complete the form. As I start completing the form, I soon realise that there’s eleven steps I need to go through. Each step has to be completed before you can move to the next step (which is an absolute pain if you’re trying to work out what documents you need to have prepared BEFORE you get to that step).
The step that’s currently causing the most angst is the citizenship section. I have to prove that I’m an Australian citizen - either via an Australian Birth Certificate (which I don’t have as I’m born overseas) or an original Australian Citizenship Certificate (which I also don’t have as I’m on my parents’ citizenship certificate).
The Citizenship website tells me that I can apply for proof of citizenship, which is a 12 page PDF form, costs $55 (Australian dollars) and will take about 30 days. This is a problem - I leave for the US in less than 30 days.
I call Immigration who tells me that I have two choices - apply for my own citizenship certificate (which won’t arrive in time, unless I can prove that there’s a compassionate reason like death in the family) or use my parents’ original certificate (which is still located on the other side of the country).
The fact that I have a current and valid Australian passport, a Medicare card and the Citizenship Certificate number doesn’t matter. According to the new rules that came into effect on 1st October 2008:
From today, the Australian Passport Office will only accept the new passport applications forms which were introduced on 1 July 2008 to strengthen the identity management process that underpins the Australian passport issuing system.
The new forms better ensure the names included in replacement passports match those recorded on state and territory births, deaths and marriages registers or the Australian citizenship register.
I wonder how they thought I got my original passport?
So to fix up potentially erroneous processes from previous years, the Australian Citizens has to undergo quite a difficult process to apply for a passport. I’m still in the process of applying for a new passport. I’ve asked my parents to send their original certificate through registered mail so I can get it safely and on time. But funnily enough, I’m not the only person to be going through such a bad passport user experience.
Lessons learned?
For Government:
- Map out the entire user experience - the experience can be harder that you think and it’s not just limited to the web!
- Consider a better integration between passports.gov.au, locating an appropriate passport interview venue (some Australian Post offices) and the Immigration department (for proving your Citizenship if required)
- Rewrite your content so it makes sense!!!
For the Citizen:
- Give yourself ample time to renew or apply for a passport, especially if you need to prove your citizenship!
Fingers crossed that I can get everything sorted out in time for my November holiday…
Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.
How many of you are familiar with the infamous Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares tv show? It features the famous chef, Gordon Ramsay, who visits a struggling restaurant and has one week to turn it around. As I started watching the series (the UK version first), I couldn’t help but noticed that there was many similarities between what Gordon Ramsay does and what we do in the user experience field (potentially, minus all the F-words).
I decided to share my thoughts about whether Gordon Ramsay is a guerrilla user experience (UX) consultant at yesterday’s BarCamp Canberra. BarCamp Canberra is the very first of many, I hope, BarCamps to be held in our capital. For those not familiar with BarCamps, Wikipedia defines it as:
An international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.
The Canberra BarCamp covered a wide range of topics, including design, social networking, open source and future technologies topics.
Defining user experience
In my presentation titled Ruth’s UX Nightmares, we briefly covered the meaning of user experience:
All aspects of an individual’s perception and interaction with a company, its services, and its products
Designing a product (whether it is a website, web application, a service, or a physical product) is not just about the actual product. It’s about the broader meaning of design (which was covered nicely in Darren Menachemson’s talk on Broadening design thinking). This means thinking about all aspects of the product, from the look and feel, interaction design, information design, help services (online and offline), the physical interactions that may exist with the organisation and the customer, as well as the context of use.
In Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, some of the UX elements that Ramsay looks at include:
- Amount of choice on the menu - too many choices that are presented to the customer can cause confusion
- Price of food
- Quality of food – is the food sourced locally? Is it fresh or is it frozen/packet food?
- Quality and timing of service
- Staff attitudes
- Décor (visual elements)
- Layout of restaurant
- Brand perception
- Interaction between the front of house service and kitchen
What this shows is that there are many elements that form the user experience. They all need to be considered together in the context to run a successful business or product.
The Gordon Ramsay Guerrilla UX Method
The Gordon Ramsay Guerrilla UX Method is a tongue-in-cheek look at a simplified UX life cycle of research, design, testing and implementation. Ramsay’s methods align with many UX techniques.
Research
The key idea of research is to gain an understanding of the business and the users that will be using the products that you are designing. Gordon Ramsay achieves this by:
- Conducting expert reviews where he always tries the food of the restaurant that he’s helping.
- Running contextual inquiry where he observes the way the chefs are working in the kitchen, as well as how customers are serviced.
- Conducts user interviews to find out what people are thinking about the food and the restaurant. He often does this by walking about the city/town and asking passer bys about the restaurant.
- Doing a competitor analysis to find out about the other restaurants in the area. He’s then able to recommend whether a new direction is needed with the restaurant, such as the recent US episode where Ramsay recommended a move to healthy food to best service the health spa area that the restaurant was located in.
- Researching the business - for example, where to source the freshest products such as fish from local fisherman rather than importing frozen fish from overseas.
Design
Much of Gordon Ramsay’s design methods are about simplifying the product being presented to the customer, while maximising the quality. In the La Parra de Burriana episode, the owner was offering 72 dishes to customers, including his signature dish - prawns in garlic, with chocolate sauce. After a few choice words from Gordon Ramsay, the new menu was simplified to a few key dishes that could be handled by the staff.
Surprisingly, Gordon Ramsay also looks at navigation and orientation. In the Moore Place episode, customers were confused upon entering the restaurant. It wasn’t clear where they had to go next. After a physical restructure of the layout, customers were guided to the dining room with no chance to get side tracked.
The design of the décor is a big factor in every episode. Gordon Ramsay almost always recommends a simple elegant style to fit with the simpler menus on offer.
Testing
User testing is another key factor with Gordon Ramsay hitting the streets with various products on offer. My favourite is the giblets club sandwich user testing from the La Riviera episode. The key message is to offer products that people want, rather than what you think they want.
5 rules
I finished the presentation with five Gordon Ramsay’s rules applied to UX. These are:
- Keep it f***ing simple
- Customers, customers, customers - it’s about knowing your users and thinking about the entire user experience
- Communication is key
- Know what you’re doing - do your research and make sure that you understand the context and the constraints
- Be passionate! Gordon says “cook from the heart!”
I’ll probably expand this in a separate post.
The presentation
Note: I’ve been having issues uploading my presentation to slideshare, so you may notice some funny stuff happening. There are a few slides in there which are appearing with a red background and it shouldn’t look that way! It looks fine in the original presentation. Weird….
The verdict
The very first BarCamp Canberra was a success. I thoroughly enjoyed the day. Thanks to the unorganisers (Andrew Boyd, Stephen Collins, Simon Pascal Klein and Nathanael Boehm) and to the generous sponsors.
You can catch many of the great presentations on slideshare and photos on flickr. There’s also the twitter stream and video will be available soon.
Edit 22 April 2008: The podcasts from BarCamp Canberra #1 are now available.
Canberra people - tomorrow is our very first BarCamp Canberra! Have you registered? It's free to come along and participate.
I'm planning on talking about 'Ruth's User Experience Nightmares' (based upon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares - I love that telly show).
Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.
There’s a good range of excellent web events coming up shortly and I’m proud to announce it here (despite being a bit behind the foot, as these events have officially launched some time ago).
Website user experience & CSS workshop
The first is the Website user experience & CSS workshop run by my friends Donna Maurer and Russ Weakley. They are both experienced teachers and trainers - I attended one of Russ’ CSS workshops a few years ago and it was excellent and Donna is one of the most experienced Information Architects in the world.
This is a hands-on workshop where you will will learn to build detailed websites layouts from the ground up - starting with page layout, navigation and form design; and ending with clean markup and elegant styling using XHTML/CSS.
The workshops will be held in four cities:
- Canberra - Monday 31 March and Tuesday 1 April
- Melbourne - Thursday 3 April and Friday 4 April
- Sydney - Monday 28 April and Tuesday 29 April
- Brisbane - Thursday 1 May and Friday 2 May
More information and registration can be done over at http://www.maxdesign.com.au/workshop2008/
Web Directions South Government
Brought to you by the same folks who run the excellent Web Directions conferences, Web Directions South Government (Gov08) will be held in Canberra on 19 and 20 May. Gov08 will be a full day two track conference, plus an optional extra day of workshops, focussing on the concepts, technologies and techniques for meeting the challenges of eGovernment.
The line-up of speakers look great. If the past Web Directions are anything to go by then this is sure to be yet another great conference.
More information is available at http://gov08.webdirections.org/
Web Directions UX08
Also brought to you the same folks who run the Web Directions conferences, Web Directions UX08 is a full day two track conference, plus an optional extra day of workshops, focussing on concepts, technologies and techniques for building great user experiences on the web.
More information is available at http://ux08.webdirections.org/
BarCamp Canberra
I’ve announced it in an earlier post - BarCamp Canberra is happening 1000-1700 on Saturday 19 April 2008 at the CSIT Building, North Road, ANU.
More information and registration can be done at http://barcamp.org/BarCampCanberra
BarCamp Sydney
BarCamp Sydney is happening 9am-5.30pm on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 April 2008 (the weekend before School Holidays) at the Roundhouse at UNSW, Anzac Parade.
More information and registration can be done at http://barcamp.org/BarCampSydney
Canberra Web Standard Group
Canberra Web Standards Group is happening tomorrow! We have two interesting topics covering GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies, and Wikis at work and it’s FREE.
More information and registration can be done at http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/in
IA Cocktail Hour
Another free event for the Information Architects (IA) community and those interested in this space. This will be held tomorrow straight after Web Standards Group meeting.
More information can be found at http://iacanberra.org/2008/03/26/ia-cock
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