Southern Railway recently upgraded their train ticket buying website. The new user interface (UI) is very pretty, and I would guess it’s an easier place to buy train tickets online if you’ve never done that before.
If you buy tickets frequently, and particularly if you need receipts for expenses then it’s a user experience (UX) disaster. Here’s how…
If you know the short code for your station
I live in Haywards Heath, which has a short code of HHE. In the old setup (still used by South Eastern trains) this is what happens:
Southern’s new site also tries to offer me Garelochhead (some hundreds of miles outside their franchise) because it has the letters ‘hhe’ in it.
On my first try using the new site I managed to accidentally select Garelochhead, and boy are those trains to London expensive, slow and infrequent.
One way
The old default used to be a return journey. The new one is a single. I find it hard to believe that’s a decision supported by data – people generally want to go and come back.
Too specific
The new site makes you choose a train for each leg of the journey, which was only required if making seat reservations on the old site. Not only is this unnecessary and potentially confusing when buying a ticket or travelcard that offers some choice over when to travel, but it leads to…
The fraudulent receipt
Having made you specify a train for each leg of a journey that information then makes it onto the order confirmation that I expect many people (like me) use as a receipt[1]. That’s fine if you actually end up taking those exact trains, but what if you don’t? I can see a situation arising where a boss approving expenses knows that a particular train wasn’t taken, so the receipt turns into a lie.
The receipt should be for the ticket bought, not the journey (forcibly) planned.
Just take my money
Southern used to store my credit card information as part of my account, but now they make me type it in every time.
and do you really need a phone number?
I can’t think of a time that I’d ever want an online ticket provider to call me.
A booking reference AND a collection reference
and neither of them in the email subject.
When picking up tickets bought online the machine needs a collection reference to be typed in (on the not awfully responsive touch screen keyboards)[2]. This used to be presented at the top of the email:
Now the first thing presented is some totally irrelevant ‘booking reference’ and the vital ‘collection reference’ is further down.
I’d also note that the email comes from Thameslink – not Southern who’s website I bought the ticket at. Some extra confusion for those unfamiliar with exactly how private enterprise has taken over our railway networks.
For the record the right thing to do here is put the number I need for the machine into the email subject – so I don’t have to actually open the email to find it when I need it.
Conclusion
The new Southern Railway ticketing website might look prettier than the old one, it might even be friendlier for occasional users, but it’s a disaster for frequent users like me and a terrible example of how too much attention to user interface can ruin user experience.
Notes
[1] Arguably the ticket itself is a receipt, but that’s not much help when it’s been swallowed by a ticket machine after a return journey.
[2] I have in the past been able to collect tickets just by presenting my credit card, which seems to me how things should work; and I’m struggling with what the threat model looks like for people picking up tickets with a card that ties to an order but that’s somehow illegitimate without the 8 character code presented at the time of the order (which a fraudster with card details would see anyway).
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble, technology | 1 Comment
Tags: Southern, ticket, train, UI, UX
The Dell Lesson on Trust Scope
Dell has been in trouble for the last few days for shipping a self signed CA ‘eDellRoot'[1] in the trusted root store on their Windows laptops. From a public relations perspective they’ve done the right thing by saying sorry and providing a fix.
This post isn’t going to pick apart the rights and wrongs – that’s being done to death elsewhere. What I want to do instead is examine what this means from the perspective of trust boundaries.
Fine On Your Own Turf
It’s completely acceptable to use private CAs (which might be self signed) within a constrained security scope. This is regular practice within many enterprises. Things can get a little underhand if those CAs are being used to break TLS at corporate proxies, but usually there’s a reason for this (e.g. ‘data leakage prevention’) and it’s flagged up front as part of employee contracts etc.
Where Dell went wrong here was doing something that had a limited scope to them ‘it’s just to help support our customers’, but global scope in implementation[2].
Who Says?
When a company adds a CA certificate to its corporate desktop image then not only is the scope limited to users within that company, but the decision making process and engineering to put it there falls onto a relatively small number of people. That small group will be able to reason about which certificates to add in (and maybe also which to pull out).
It’s completely opaque who at Dell (or Lenovo etc.) got to make the call on adding in their CA to their OEM build, but I’m guessing that this wasn’t a decision that got run by a central security team (otherwise I expect this would never have happened).
The Lesson
Something that can impact many people (perhaps even a global population) should not be subject to the whims of individual product managers. Mechanisms need to be set up to identify security/privacy sensitive areas, and provide governance over changes to them.
Note
[1] It now seems that there’s also a second certificate ‘DSDTestProvider ‘
[2] That mistake was further compounded by making the private key available, which thus amounted to a compromise toolkit for anybody to stage man in the middle attacks against Dell customers, a pattern seen previously with Lenovo’s Superfish adventure. Dell’s motivations may have been purer, but the outcome was the same.
Filed under: could_do_better, security | Leave a Comment
Tags: CA, certificate, Dell, trust
After all of the noise surrounding Apple’s special relationship with Intel when it first launched the Macbook Air the IT press have been strangely quiet about it ending[1].
Intel’s 6th generation ‘Skylake‘ Core CPUs have been out for a few weeks now, and it seems like the only machines you can buy them in come from Microsoft and Dell.
This is a big deal for me, as it means that it’s possible once again to get travel size/weight laptops with 16GB RAM and decent size SSDs, so I can finally replace my almost 3 year old Lenovo X230. If I had to buy a laptop today I’d be torn between Dell’s XPS13 and the Microsoft Surface Book (and MS would probably get my money as they offer 1TB SSD for the Surface Book and Microsoft Surface Pro 4, even if it is a ridiculously pricey upgrade versus the cost of mSATA drives).
If the roll out of the new chips follows the usual pattern of other OEMs getting parts 3-4 months later this means that we can expect to see new Macbooks, Macbook Airs, Macbook Pros, ThinkPads etc. some time in the new year (perhaps with announcements at CES and shipping a little while later).
There’s some speculation that Apple looked at x86 chips for the iPad Pro, and the decision to go with ARM might have soured the Intel relationship, so it’s easy to see why the ‘WinTel’ relationship might grow stronger with Microsoft – especially now that they’re making such great devices (having escaped from Intel’s ‘Ultrabook‘ branding monoculture). It’s less clear how Dell got one over Lenovo and HP (and Acer, Asus, Toshiba and Sony etc.).
So the good news is that it’s finally possible to buy a decent laptop again. The bad news is that any chance of a 16GB Macbook is deferred, and I’ll also have to wait for something with a trackpoint (which I’ve always prefered over trackpads).
Note
[1] It seems that the tech investor community have noticed.
Filed under: technology | Leave a Comment
Tags: apple, Core, Dell, Gen6, HP, Intel, lenovo, Microsoft, Skylake, Surface, ultrabook
Rising from the ashes of GigaOm the tribal gathering of cloud elders that is Structure has returned, and got off to a strong start with Battery Venture’s Adrian Cockcroft presenting on the State of the Cloud and Container Ecosystems. Cockcroft paid particular attention to the impact of containers, which wasn’t even a major discussion topic at the last Structure conference in 2013. The event’s opening also had a significant contribution from Intel, with particular focus on healthcare applications for cloud.
Filed under: cloud, Docker, InfoQ news | Leave a Comment
Tags: cancer, cloud, Cockcroft, conference, FPGA, healtcare, iaas, Intel, saas, Structure
I had many issues with the kitchen I bought from Wren living. One of the most troublesome ones came from wooden worktops, and in hindsight I should never have bought my worktop from Wren.
Sizing
Wren don’t supply a full range of sizes. So they tried to cover a 2605x945mm island with two pieces of 2400x900mm worktop (actually the original order had one piece of 2400x900mm and another of 3000x610mm, but that would still have meant multiple joins).
I ended up getting my worktop from Worktop Express, who supply 3000x960mm (amongst other sizes) and do next day delivery.
Cost
Wren charged (and later refunded) me £997.98 for the two pieces of worktop that didn’t fit.
Worktop Express charged me £350 (plus £25 delivery) for the one piece that did fit.
Don’t ignore the extras
Wren added a £50 ‘worktop care kit’ to my kitchen order, which included oil, cleaner and joiners. Some of the stuff I just didn’t need, and the rest could have been sourced much more cheaply elsewhere.
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble | Leave a Comment
Tags: kitchens, living, wooden, worktop, Wren
I had many issues with the kitchen I bought from Wren living. Some of the most troublesome ones came from appliances, and in hindsight I should never have bought my appliances from Wren.
Everything at once
Buying my kitchen and appliances at the same time from the same supplier seemed like a good idea. I’d have one company to deal with, and everything would come at once. If only that were true.
Two of the appliances came three weeks late, and an appliance that was damaged on delivery took nine weeks to be replaced.
Cost is just one consideration
When I shopped around for the appliances I’d bought with my kitchen at Wren I found that I could get them cheaper, though the difference wasn’t generally too bad – tens of pounds not hundreds.
Delivery is the key
The appliances I ordered were generally available online with next day delivery from a range of UK sellers.
Wren don’t do next day delivery. Wren use Swiftcare to do their delivery (when things aren’t coming in their own vans). Swiftcare run a 10 working day service. Within that 10 days you’ll get a call 48hrs before a planned delivery to see if you’ll be home to take it, if not then back to square one. On the day of delivery you’ll get a call about an hour before the (huge) lorry comes.
So Wren saving a few quid on shipping costs means that you can be left waiting weeks for appliances.
Availability is important too
I’ll repeat the point – the appliances I ordered were generally available online with next day delivery from a range of UK sellers. So it was annoying to be left waiting for weeks for Wren to get stock and Swiftcare to come along.
The substitutes
Wren didn’t leave me without. When they couldn’t deliver they sent me CDA brand substitute appliances. In some cases (like the hob) it wasn’t worth the bother to fit another thing, but in others (like the microwave) it was genuinely useful to have the substitute.
When I got substitutes I was told that I could keep them afterwards ‘for the inconvenience’. How it makes business sense to give away hobs, extractors and microwaves when the items the customer wants are available elsewhere for next day delivery remains a mystery to me.
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble | Leave a Comment
Tags: appliances, extractor, fridge, hob, kitchen, living, microwave, oven, Wren
My Wren Kitchen – The Issues
Many things went wrong with the kitchen I bought from Wren Living:
If you’re here because you’re thinking of buying a kitchen from Wren then may I suggest that you first try out their customer support and see if you like it. Dial 0345 127 7008 the choose option 2 then option 3 then option 1. You may want a speaker phone or hands free set whilst you wait to get through. In my experience a typical wait is around 20 minutes.
Issue 1 – late delivery
My kitchen came a week late after our designer made an unauthorised change to the delivery date.
When I placed my order I was unclear about when my builders would be ready to install, so I took a guess and went for the week of 27 Jul. As things progressed the builders asked for it a week earlier, and I called Wren on 23 Jun to see if I could get it moved forward. Sadly they were already booked solid for the week of 20 Jul, so I had to stick with the original date, but I was assured that I should be able to get the kitchen early that week. When I paid my balance on 29 Jun delivery was still on track for w/c 27 Jul.
It was a nasty shock when I got a call from Gemma on 28 Jul saying that delivery was scheduled for the following week, but in the end that’s when the kitchen actually arrived. Apparently my designer Rebecca had pushed the date back (initially to w/c 17 Aug, but then to w/c 3 Aug). Rebecca later said that she’d got a message from my builders asking for the change, but that wasn’t true.
Issue 2 – missing appliances
When my kitchen finally did arrive (a week late) it came without the hob or extractor that I’d ordered.
I got a call the evening before delivery saying that the hob and extractor weren’t available, and that we’d get substitute appliances instead. This caused some consternation, as the granite would need to be cut to fit the hob, but what if it might never come. I was eventually told that the hob would definitely be delivered, but it would take up to 5 weeks, and the extractor would be up to 3 weeks.
The appliances came on 24 Aug – almost 3 weeks after the kitchen.
see Buying Kitchen Appliances from Wren Living for more
Issue 3 – long lead time for replacement unit
New units need to be made from scratch and delivered in Wren’s vans.
The design had failed to take into account the thickness of a wall, meaning that we needed a 600mm unit where a 300mm unit had been specified. The new unit was ordered (and paid for) on 4 Aug and delivered on 20 Aug. The unit we didn’t want was collected on 22 Sep, and refunded on 28 Sep.
Issue 4 – deformed butler sink
Even items Wren doesn’t make itself need to be delivered in their vans.
The granite fitter unpacked the butler sink we’d ordered so that he could put it in place for accurate measurements. He noticed straight away that it didn’t look right:
The issue was noticed on 5 Aug, but the replacement didn’t come until 20 Aug. Wren didn’t collect the deformed sink (which they insisted on taking back) until 22 Sep.
Issue 5 – damaged wall unit
Another item that needed to be manufactured and delivered according to Wren’s schedule.
One of the wall units was damaged during shipping, puncturing the box and the back of the unit.
The issue was reported on 6 Aug, and the replacement came on 20 Aug. Wren didn’t initially make it clear that there was no need to return the broken unit, and that I could just get rid of it.
Issue 6 – wrong sized worktop
Wren specified two 2400x900mm pieces of wooden worktop for the island 2605x945mm, but they were both too short and too narrow to be fitted in any way that didn’t involve multiple joins..
It was six weeks before the incorrect worktops were taken away, and a further week before I was refunded.
see Buying Wooden Kitchen Worktops from Wren Living for more
Issue 7 – granite not fitted on time
Wren subcontracted the granite fitting to Original Marble and Granite (OMG). I was told that the granite would come on 14 Aug, which fitted into the lead time of 5-8 working days after measuring. It was fitted on 18 Aug.
Issue 8 – microwave damaged during delivery
Appliances that were available may suddenly become hard to get.
The microwave was one of the last things to be installed, so this problem wasn’t spotted until 21 Aug. It then took over 9 weeks to get the replacement.
see Buying Kitchen Appliances from Wren Living for more
Issue 9 – broken retaining clip on drawer
This was the only issue that Wren dealt with expeditiously. I emailed customer support on 8 Sep with these photos of a broken drawer clip, and on 12 Sep some new ones came in the post:
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble | 4 Comments
Tags: appliances, damage, delivery, extractor, hob, kitchen, living, microwave, service, support, worktop, Wren
My Wren Kitchen – Overview
I bought a new kitchen from Wren Living this April for delivery in late July. It’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought that wasn’t an entire house.
I shouldn’t have bought my appliances from Wren.
I shouldn’t have bought my wooden worktop from Wren.
I’m writing this because I felt badly treated by Wren. I’d made a large and important purchase, and once they had my money they didn’t seem at all interested in keeping me happy.
The only person that ever apologised to me was Kelly Longman in Southampton (covering for the absent manager from the Guildford branch where I bought) – thanks Kelly for showing some compassion and humanity.
My experience with customer services was miserable. They never replied to emails, and calling generally involved waiting 20 minutes for somebody to answer the phone followed by a ‘computer says no’ type conversation. I logged 4 hours and 20 minutes calling customer support, most of it spent on hold.
If you’re here because you’re thinking of buying a kitchen from Wren then may I suggest that you first try out their customer support and see if you like it. Dial 0345 127 7008 the choose option 2 then option 3 then option 1. You may want a speaker phone or hands free set whilst you wait to get through.
Wren’s Managing Director Armando Sanchez at one time published his mobile number, but that number is now taken care of the same customer services team. I guess the level of customer unhappiness was too much for him.
From conversations with friends it seems that maybe there’s no such thing as a good kitchen company, but hopefully my bad experiences with Wren can help you choose better where you buy (parts of) your kitchen from.
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble | 1 Comment
Tags: customer, kitchen, living, service, support, Wren
A/B Testing Into Mediocrity
I’ve been noticing that lots of the services I use online have been getting worse. My friends have been complaining too. I think I know why.
A/B testing is a great way for product managers to make decisions based on data (rather than their own gut feel). But what happens when A/B testing meets the classic technology adoption curve?
Rogers’ Bell Curve (Wikipedia)
As the Innovators and Early Adopters get started with something A/B testing works with them. It helps to explore the solution space, and smooth the rough edges off.
Just add moron
As the Early/Late Majority, or worse still the Laggards get on board the A/B testing starts tuning things to their preferences, which might generally be towards a simpler user experience where only the most used features are presented. Other features – the features that the Innovators and Early Adopters liked (we know this from earlier A/B testing) start to disappear, or get hidden away behind special ‘nerd knob’ selectors.
It doesn’t have to be like this
Pretty much every service lets me customise things to my preferences – stuff like text size, background colours/pictures etc. There’s absolutely no reason why users shouldn’t be able to override A/B testing when they find it taking their personal user experience in the wrong direction. Better still I expect that if A/B testing was done into adoption clades it would cause some very nice split evolution into different ecological niches. This might blow the brains of simplistic (simpleton) product managers who want to keep everything uniform, but people aren’t uniform – deal with it. The secret to good user experience is know your customer (KYC[1]) – wasn’t that the whole point of A/B testing in the first place. The point here is that some customers are different from others – get to know them and those differences and you can serve them better.
Here’s a great counter example of KYC from Barclays via Conor Ogle:
We have the technology
I was at the Andreessen Horowitz London tech summit last week and one of their portfolio companies gave a demo of customisation that they do for online retail. It was carving up customer groups by their various profiles six ways from Sunday for various online (A/B) tests, so clearly we’re at a place where this is a commodity for presenting product, so why isn’t it a commodity for presenting features.
Conclusion
A/B testing can be a great tool, but if its used too bluntly then it can actively destroy a well tuned user experience of early adopters as less demanding users follow them. Product managers need to get smarter about segmentation.
Note
[1] Yes, I know KYC has a specific regulatory meaning in banking etc., but any services organisation should be trying to know their customers better, and striving to delivery a delightful user experienced based on that knowledge.
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble, technology | 1 Comment
Tags: A/B, product management, testing, user experience, UX
ContainerX will launch their ‘Container Platform for Enterprise IT’ at DockerCon Europe next week in Barcelona. Described as ‘vSphere for Containers’ the platform aims to give developers a self service capability using the Docker command line, whilst providing operations teams with capabilities that they’re familiar with from managing virtual machines.
continue reading the full story at InfoQ
Filed under: Docker, InfoQ news | Leave a Comment
Tags: containers, ContainerX, Docker
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