User Experience – Frequently Ignored Answers

You know, many sites implemented a section named – Frequently Asked Questions. I reckoned before that you only need this section because the site is not easy to use or understand and therefore you need pages and pages to explain the details. And the questions in most cases are not “asked” by the site users / customers; but by the developers, marketing “gurus” and the site owner. In other words, kinda useless.

But then I figured we cannot ignore the fact that many dumb users / customers thought they are smart-ass and try to do funny things with a website – for instance, I have users argued with me many times why they need to use their public digital certificates to do a digital signing … go figure.

So I think, why not set up a page in your site named – F.I.A., Frequently Ignored Answers ? In this page, there are no frequently asked questions, just a bulleted list of stupid answers … for examples,

  • You see black on your monitor, because you have not switched it on yet.
  • Yes, your ISP bill may be expensive, but we cannot “switch off” or “shut down” the Internet for you.
  • Your PC will still get infected if you don’t install anti-virus software … just don’t blame us.
  • Your PC is not working not because you visited our site, but your kid installed a game last night. Don’t call our Call center.

Now I feel good, I created an acronym by myself. F.I.A.

Dopod C730 – Two Weeks Later

Since I bought the Dopod C730 two weeks ago, I installed a couple of software – just to make it work like my previous Nokia N80 … But before all that, I first installed a new homescreen / theme to replace the default (i.e. ugly) one. The theme was downloaded from Cuago (see below), but I intended to get some new ones from smartphone.krisdoff.net in near future. Once downloaded, I twisted the default image a bit and that’s why you can see the “M.Y. Phone” there.

Cuago theme

The screen is really gorgeous and bright, isn’t it ? So, what’s next ?

As mentioned, to mimic the N80 I installed a few software and configure something first –

For example, the RSS feeds

RSS feed

Then, the mobile Gmail,

Mobile Gmail

And Sudoku from the freeware site – smartphone-freeware.com 😎

Sudoku

From the same site, I also downloaded the Screen Capture software from Ilium (that’s why you can see all the screen shots here)

But is the Smartphone really good ? I don’t know yet, I still have something to fix:

  • The Worldmate I bought did not work, and still waiting for a newer version,
  • I still don’t understand some status icons on top of the screen (and it’s not covered in any document and websites)
  • Many times, some programs’ keys are covered by the “Start”, “Contacts” buttons in the bottom of the screen.

Lastly, one more gadget – you really need to buy a Bluetooth Stereo Headset with a good headphone … the sound quality is very good.

Media Player

By The Numbers

No doubt I am a fan of Guy Kawasaki – I bought almost all his books, and I am a faithful reader of his blog. In the blog there are posts full of insights in presentation, marketing and Internet start-ups. Like the recent one about his latest new web business venture – Truemors.com. Don’t miss it … there are lots of interesting numbers about setting up a web site.

By the numbers: How I built a web 2.0 …

Presentation 2.0

If you’re a fan of Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki, you will love their presentation to death. They both have excellent presentation skills and professionally prepared slides. For skills, I think you really need to have their charisma as well as working hard … i.e. not all of us can do that. But for the slides, at least you can reference their high-impact slides and get some ideas. Here is one from a marketing firm with pretty much the same idea – Meet Henry. Enjoy !!