Last night I decided to order some pizza from Pizza Hutt. I rang their 0800 number on my cellphone, and got a pre-recorded message saying that I should try out their new text message pizza delivery service. Now, normally I’m not a big fan of text messaging. It might cost less than a phone call, but in my experience doesn’t save any time. Maybe I need a dialing wand. Still, I like to support new technology and initiaitives, so texted the word PIZZA to 8383.

This was the reply:
"PZA HUT TXT: 2 Ordr 4 delivry Snd the TXTcode to 8383. Chk out our $5 discount deal! Snd the word MENU to 8383 for Deals and TXTcodes. Qs? 0800838383"

I’m already a little bit annoyed (it doesn’t take much, as you can probably tell). Why didn’t they just tell me to text MENU to begin with? By this stage I was a little dubious about how they could offer all their options in just 160 characters of a text message. But, dutifully following instructions, I texted back, and received a 2-part message in return.

The first part looked like this:
"PZA HUT TXT Menu: Lg Pan Hawain $11.95 (HAWI) / Lg Pan Meat Lvr + Garlc Brd + Pepsi $16.95 (LMDL) / Lg Pan Meat Lvr + Sup Suprm $19.95 (PAIR) cont…"

And the second:
"Lg Pan Sup Suprm+Hawin+Garlc Brd+Pepsi $24.95(PMDL) / Lg Pan Vege Suprm $11.95 (VEGE). 2 chnge base add word THIN 2 yr msg. Snd code in brackt to 8383."

This is where things get tricky. I was wanting 2 pizzas, so PAIR looked good enough, but I also had a free voucher for a regular pizza. So I hopefully texted "PAIR. And a free regular Sup Suprm". Sure enough, I got a text back saying that my order couldn’t be recognised, and that I should ring 0800838383. Back where I started. So I rang through, and said I was having a few problems. She asked me for my cellphone number and then told me that even if I had just texted PAIR through, it would have been no good. My details weren’t in the computer, didn’t I read the brochure properly? What brochure?! Apparently that’s where all the instructions were. Of course.

Defeated by technology again, I ended up placing my order over the phone.

Trent

I happened to be in Singapore a couple of years ago. If you’ve ever gone to Singapore you will know about the amazing electronic gadgets that are cheap as chips compared to what we pay here in New Zealand. Reciting some seemingly important work related reasons why I needed the (then) latest Visor Prism PDA, I convinced myself that I needed to buy one. I think I used it solidly for about 3 months.

Today, I’m using a trusty $10.99 paper diary from Whitcoulls while my Visor Prism sits relegated in a box at home. If we talk return on investment, I think my diary has outperformed my Visor by a magnitude of a thousand.

I’m pretty sure that my experience with the Visor is not unique. Why is that? Of course, there could be hundreds of reasons why I didn’t use my Visor and it also depends a lot on what I had intended to use it for - but at the end of the day, I stopped using it because it took too much effort. Although my paper diary doesn’t do email, send text messages or allow me to read ebooks, it does one thing really well - I can scribble appointments and notes in a fraction of the time it takes me to do it on the Visor. I know that newer models do a lot of fancy stuff - and they’re getting painfully close to being practical, but I’m sure that they too have their own set of usability and interface challenges.

In a just over two weeks I’m off to Melbourne to attend the Mobile Commerce World conference. There I hope to meet some interesting people who’re responsible for integrating usability into these next generation mobile devices. People like Scott Jenson, formerly the head of Symbian Design Lab, who know what it’s like to balance the utopian desires of usability and the commercial reality of budgets and requirements. There I hope to learn more about the reasons why basic mobile devices are so pervasive while the uptake of more advanced gadgets and services are disappointly sluggish. With my background in telecommunications, this is an area that we’ll be getting involved in.

In other news from the Optimal Usability desk, we’re making a presentation at the New Zealand Computer Society on Thursday 28th August, we’re working on a study of the state of commercial usability in New Zealand and starting some research with Victoria University around video analysis in usability testing. Plenty happening and certainly looking forward to reporting on these in the next news update.

Sam