Tag Archives: convenience

Taking for granted

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A couple nights ago I flushed the toilet and the fresh water looked a light yellowy-brown. I waited and flushed again, it was the same colour. Then I went to the sink and ran it to discover that it wasn’t just a toilet issue but an issue with the water coming into the house. I called the city emergency line and spoke to someone about what was happening, and he asked for our address. Moments later her confirmed that maintenance crews were working on our waterline in the neighbourhood and they were aware of the situation.

He said that what I was seeing was iron deposits, and that I should wait 30 minutes, because the work wasn’t completed yet, then run water for 20-30 minutes and my water would be clear. And he said not to worry, that the water was still chlorinated and safe. It was late, so I waited until morning to cycle the water and it was clear in seconds.

This made me think about how lucky we are to turn on our taps and just expect clean and safe water. I’ve lived in this house for 27 years, and this is the first concern I’ve had about fresh water… and it was a minor issue that was over almost as fast as it arose. Then I thought of so many things we just take for granted:

  • Reliable electricity
  • Food availability
  • Food safety
  • Good roads
  • Hospitals
  • Safe schools
  • Safe communities
  • Emergency services 

The list goes on and on. We live in one of the best countries in the world. We operate from a position where we just expect things to work… and they do. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a marvel that we can go through life not thinking about the safety and reliability of basic services, only recognizing that we take these things for granted when an anomaly happens. Because for the vast majority of our lives we are blissfully unaware of how lucky we are to have not just basic necessities, but comforts of life that we just expect to be there.

How lucky are we?

No more manuals

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One of the things I’ve been using Chat GPT & Copilot for has been to save me time looking through device manuals for things I don’t know how to do.

Today’s request, “This is a photo of my washing machine. It has a ‘Clean washer’ option on the dial, but I don’t know the instructions for that. Could you please let me know what they are?”

It was simple enough, I just needed to add bleach, but asking the question rather than flipping through a 40+ page manual with tiny font is just so much better. Recently I’ve also used AI instructions to fine tune the settings on my hot tub. Again, this was so much easier than pulling out the manual.

It’s like having a specialist at your disposal. Soon AI will be the manual. There will be a QR code on the device and when you scan it with your phone it will send you to an intelligent, personified AI manual which will ask you how it can help. Then in conversation, text, & with created-just-in-time video, it will guide you step-by-step.

You know those annoying, ‘Getting Started’ instructions that help you set up things like a remote control? Well AI can help make those instructions both easier and interactive for when things don’t go as smoothly as expected.

We are just a few years away from never having a paper manual shipped with new devices again. Because, there will be an AI agent designed to help you with far more detail and context specific assistance than an analog booklet could ever provide.

It should be getting easier, but it isn’t

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Sometimes it’s hard to believe that we live in the 21st-century. It should be getting easier, but it isn’t. All of our schools just got new photocopy machines, and there is a one hour video tutorial to learn how to use them. More videos and instructions are required, if you are the one who is doing any kind of basic maintenance like replacing the toner.

Related to this, when was the last time you bought a new TV and you instantly knew how to use the remote? I find incredible irony that there is nothing universal about a universal remote control. I don’t know, call me crazy, but I would think that in this day and age the tools we use would get simpler to use, not more complicated.

Borrow a friend’s car and try to fill the gas tank and you’re left puzzled as to where the release is for the gas tank’s door. Go to the gas station and there’s a process to get your rewards card punched in, because you don’t have room in your wallet for 17 rewards program cards. Try to connect your phone to that same borrowed car, and you’re worried that you’re going to have to cancel another users profile. Or you are faced with a touch screen menu that just doesn’t make intuitive sense.

How is it that the user interface of almost everything we do now is more complicated than necessary? Why is it that every single place we go to online we’re expected to login or create an account, or at the very least close one or two pop-up invitations to do so? i’m looking at a website for 30 seconds, to find out one piece of information, do I really need to decide whether or not I want to accept cookies?

My microwave has a touch dial where I have to spin my finger in a circle to get to the appropriate time. I don’t think I can ever hit the time I want without toggling back-and-forth. This takes me significantly longer than if I had to punch three number keys on a touchpad and hit ‘Start’. There is nothing convenient about this. And that’s my point…

We live in an era when things should be getting a lot easier, user interfaces should be intuitive and natural to use, but instead everything seems to be getting a little more difficult. I just don’t get it.

It shouldn’t be this hard

I get really frustrated when things don’t work like they should. I’m putting in medical claims into my online insurance claim form and the form won’t let me upload the requested evidence of receipts. Is my file too big? No. How do I know? Because it’s my second time through and I’ve made the file smaller this time.

I’ve refreshed the page and restarted my claim from scratch. I’ve made the file into a different format… and I’m watching the little spin-wheel loading symbol go around and around and around. I’m now going to start again on a different browser.

It amazes me how in such a technologically advanced age we run into issues like this so often. I’ve had people tell me they wanted to leave me a comment on my blog but they couldn’t figure out a way to sign in. But if I don’t have a sign in either by email, Facebook, or WordPress then I’m inviting spam messages. It shouldn’t be a process that doesn’t work, people sign in to things all the time.

I’m now on a second web browser and the file still is t uploading. I’m going to give up and try again later. Maybe restart my computer first. Maybe reduce the file size some more. Basically I’m going to waste a whole bunch of time doing something that should already have been over 30 minutes ago.

It really shouldn’t be this hard. I feel for elderly people who run into issues like this, then spend 45 minutes on hold waiting to ask for help, then getting flustered even more trying to follow instructions over the phone. Maybe AI will help, eventually, but I see things getting more frustrating rather than better in the short term. It all boils down to bad user experience and ultimately bad customer service.

(And as a final thought, I was trying to cut/paste a few words in the last sentence on my blogging app and my highlight feature froze on the wrong words… I had to save the draft to be able to do anything else. A small inconvenience but still, one of those little things that should just work!)

Wear and tear

I have shoes that I only use in my basement to go on my treadmill and stationary bike. The shoes have red soles. Yesterday while stretching I looked down at my treadmill and I saw two red lines on the track belt where my feet land when running.

They are a bit hard to see in the photo despite playing with the colour contrast, but they are quite visible when I look for them on the belt. I don’t know why, but it didn’t occur to me that I would be wearing down the treads on my shoes just running on a treadmill. Thinking about it now, it does make sense. I’ve been using these same shoes for five and a half years… of course they would have some wear and tear as I walk and run on a treadmill 4-6 times a week.

But had my soles not been red, leaving their marks on my treadmill, I probably would have ignorantly ran in the same shoes for another 3-5 years without replacing them. It’s funny how we take objects for granted, expecting them to work, not thinking about repairing or replacing them until they just don’t work anymore.

You aren’t likely to replace a kettle or toaster until it stops working. Your favourite jeans remain your favourite until they tear. That 5,000 hour light bulb was not something you ever thought would need replacing until it just doesn’t turn on.

While our bodies age and show signs of wear and tear, we don’t always think about other things that do until a repair or replacement are needed. But these worn down shoes can actually affect my stride and cause me issues before I realize they need to be replaced. They can affect my personal wear and tear.

What’s something you just expect to work until suddenly it doesn’t anymore?

Second monitor

At work I just updated and replaced computer monitors for my staff. It was time, especially for my online teachers and secretaries, who spend the vast majority of their day looking at screens. Two of my secretaries use 3 monitors, and many teachers and myself use 2. My setup is that I use my laptop as my keyboard and usually have my calendar on that screen, then my two monitors are on the raised platform of a desktop stand-up desk behind my laptop. A couple of my teachers have the same setup, while others put their laptop between the monitors on a flat desk.

No matter what the setup, all but two teachers see great value in having additional monitors. I like having additional monitors so much that I’m considering a second monitor at home. The reality is that more screen real estate means better productivity. Some people might think it means more distractions, but that’s not the case. If you are going to choose a distraction, more monitors won’t add to the distraction. If that’s what you are choosing, one screen is enough.

However, for productivity a second or third screen is invaluable. Almost nothing I end up doing requires just one screen. If I’m dealing with an email about a student, I have email open, and then I might also have our student management system open to see what courses they have with us, and I might also have the ministry data system up to see their transcript of courses. That’s just one of many examples where 3 screens are far better than either jumping from one online system to another or splitting your screen to see different tabs or systems that then require scrolling.

If you spend a lot of time on a screen, do yourself a favour and add at least one more monitor, then watch your speed at tasks and overall productivity increase… but a fair warning to you that once you do it, you can never go back.

PS. And even if it isn’t something that works for you, don’t let that stop you from providing it to others in your organization… it will increase productivity!

The luxury of convenience

I had a chuckle today in the grocery store. A woman rushed by me, grabbed an item of of the shelf and keep going almost in a single motion. She was obviously in a hurry. She was also on her cell phone and the part of the conversation I caught was, …”Seriously, I wish our damn phones were still connected to our walls with a wire.” The irony of her saying this on a very portable phone wasn’t lost on me.

I then went to Starbucks and sat for a few minutes having a breakfast sandwich. Our local store is newly renovated and it both looks and feels really nice. They expanded the serving area without taking much seating away, and the order pickup area has a large section with the alphabet in 3 rows to help people find their order by name much faster. However, when I went to dispense my garbage I realized that the only recycling and disposal bins were at the back of the store next to the washrooms. This is not remotely convenient.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, when we were doing our main floor renovation last year, we knew we wanted a coffee station on the small counter next to our fridge. It wasn’t part of the original plan, but I requested a sink be added to the counter. I thought about how after the coffee has been pressed on our espresso machine, we would want to rinse out the portafilter, and it would be really inconvenient to walk this over to our kitchen sink about 15 feet away, while it dripped coffee. Between making coffees and rinsing out the wet cat food containers for our cat, there are days I use this sink more than the main kitchen sink.

 On a completely different topic, Zoom calls can be great to bring people together, when geography can be challenging, but it can also be a complete time suck with added opportunities for meetings to happen, when a memo or email would be faster. A memo instead of a Zoom call can free up a lot of time that a meeting can steal from the efficiency of a more productive day.

There’s no doubt that having a mobile phone provides considerable convenience compared to phones with a spiral cord connected to it, in a fixed location. But we can’t deny the distraction that these smart phones have created, taking time away from us. So their convenience comes with a fair bit of inconvenience as well. 

I think people often spend a lot of time thinking about how one thing can be convenient and through a lack of design thinking forget about how other things also need to be convenient. It is true that sometimes one convenience needs to be a sacrificed, and not everything can be equally as convenient. The new Starbucks layout is definitely more convenient for the employees, but they really missed the mark, making it less convenient for customers. That’s a luxury that shouldn’t be missed. 

Empty Malls

We went to the mall nearest to my parent’s house and I was shocked to see about 60% of the stores closed. The grocery store and drug store were busy, but while my mom waited for a prescription I went looking for a coffee, and the rest of the mall was almost empty. The closest I got to finding coffee was a Subway and Booster Juice, both with no customers in the stores. Both had shuttered, empty sores next to them.

The strip mall and small malls that we’ve known for decades are dead. There won’t be a revival. Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and other online shopping sites are in direct competition with these malls and unless someone is pulled to these malls by the need for groceries or a prescription, none of the other few remaining stores will get a visit.

That said, all malls won’t die just the stand-alone ones. The newest form of densification in cities is to build a mall or commercial level shopping below high rises… stack the customers on top of the shopping spaces and make the mall convenient to visit. You don’t even need to put on a coat to visit the mall, it’s just a trip down the elevator, or a walk through an underground parking lot.

Goodbye strip mall. They will all be torn down and revived only when a few hundred condos are built above the mall space. You want customers in your mall? Make the mall an extension of their living space. Until that happens, you’ll see more and more empty, shut down, and abandoned stores… Malls that are mere shells of what they used to be.

Convenience at a cost

Yesterday I went to the Apple Store and purchased a new computer. I knew what I wanted but was talked into buying the larger version which came standard with the upgrade I was getting with the smaller one. The price difference happened to be the same as my educator’s discount but it did cost me a bit more for memory differences between the two sizes. Still, I left the store really happy, and excited about the added screen real estate. All said and done, the whole exchange took less than 20 minutes.

If that was the kind of exchange between the sales clerk and myself that I received at all stores, I’d probably shop in stores more often. But most exchanges end up being like my Canadian Tire experience, and this makes me not want to shop. So I do most of my shopping online. I order from the convenience of my home and the products arrive at my home. I am my own sales clerk. I don’t need any shopping bags at the till.

While grocery stores, and hair salons, and pharmacies will probably survive over the next 20 years, I’m not sure how many retail stores are going to survive when more and more people choose to shop online? Walking in the mall last night I looked at a few stores and wondered how much profit they could possibly make after paying for rent, power, and staff. Then I wondered what our economy would be like without these jobs, if most retail stores no longer needed all their staff?

Shopping from home is really convenient, but it will change the way our shopping malls and plazas look. Maybe the cost of this convenience will be far greater than the convenience is worth.