Apathy Sketchpad

For those of you who missed it, the climactic moments of Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who were interrupted by an on-screen graphic of Graham Norton which appeared to promote Over The Rainbow. You can see the moments in question here:

Thousands of people rightly complained, so I thought some balance was in order.

The current series of Doctor Who is a triumph. Steven Moffat is a superb writer and Matt Smith is uniquely suited to his new role. I cannot praise it enough. Last night’s episode was particularly exciting: a two-part, mid-series story featuring the brilliantly creepy Weeping Angels from Moffat’s “Blink”, which won the Hugo Award, the BAFTA Cymru and the British Academy Television Award and was nominated for the Nebula Award, and Professor River Song from the sublime Silence In The Library story, also nominated for a Hugo Award. And I thought it lived up to all of that. This is genuinely world-class television, of exactly the kind the BBC is best at and ought to be making.

By far the best part was a gaudy yellow graphic pasted over the climactic moments to advertise an extended audition show for whatever musical Andrew Lloyd Webber reckons isn’t making enough money on its own merits. I suggest you implement this on the radio too. My enjoyment of Just A Minute would be hugely enhanced if while Nicholas Parsons read out the final scores a continuity announcer yelled over him that things look bad for Brian in The Archers next.

I no longer visit the cinema because I can’t enjoy a film unless there’s something to ruin the immersion. At home I get my gran walking in, seeing me rapt on the sofa leaning in toward the screen, and saying “it’s only a film, love”. The BBC have taken great strides to accommodate that. The magenta logo pasted over every single second of Being Human was genius. Aidan Turner’s portrayal of a man devastated by his betrayal by the one person he thought could save him, for a while, from the murderous hell that his vampyric life has become is hugely enhanced by the bright pink logo whirling away pointlessly in the corner because you’ve shunted the show onto a fringe digital channel to try to make BBC Three seem less of a mindless, chav-focussed waste of a frequency band.

I expect these graphics are very effective too, because usually people interested in science-fiction drama are the same people who are interested in brightly coloured singing competitions. I found myself thinking “oh my, how are they going to get out of this? What’s the Doctor’s plan going to be? Can River Song die in this if she’s already ooh look, it’s Graham Norton. There’s a show about the Wizard of Oz on? How exciting, I must watch that. Why did nobody tell me about this program before? Come on, you tedious Time Lord, hurry up and save the day so I can see which Dorothy will be leaving tonight!” Then I think there was some water or something but mostly I just wanted Graham Norton to come back. It was especially useful because I don’t really care about expertly written sci-fi drama. I can get that at one of the many science-fiction-drama bars in Manchester City Centre, but there isn’t really anywhere I can go to hear fairly average members of the public sing popular songs they haven’t written and then cry.

I was dismayed to read that “thousands” of people have complained about these graphics, perhaps because the graphics don’t also have sound. I think if the graphic also made noise it would be more effective. I was glad that when forced to apologise you didn’t pretend the graphic was an error or promise to stop using them, and that you restricted the apology to the timing of the graphic and routed it through a news report of an anonymous spokesperson.

When you get talent like Moffat to helm your flagship program, it’s important to make sure he knows his place. If you show his work as he intended it to be seen instead of spilling the plot all over the internet the previous week and using the climax to advertise dross then he might start to think you respect him and demand a pay rise or the budget cuts to be reversed or something. Obviously we couldn’t have that.

Keep up the good work.

*send*

Thank you for your e-mail.

The ‘Over the Rainbow’ trail in ‘Doctor Who’ should not have played out on Saturday and we apologise to all ‘Doctor Who’ fans whose enjoyment of the show was disrupted. We recognise the strength of feeling that has been expressed and are taking steps to ensure that this mistake will not happen again.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us with your concerns.

Regards

BBC Complaints

Well, they might at least play along.

Because this particular combination of things is unlikely to ever become this topical for a third time, I’m posting a very slightly updated version of a sketch I wrote during series two of Newsjack and wasn’t used. You may draw your own conclusions as to why not:

“The Dinosaur” is considered sufficiently descriptive of Barney, Denver and Bob that no further classification is ever attempted. And nor perhaps should it be, because they aren’t easily identifiable as members of a specific dinosaur species.

With that in mind, allow me to present my new character, Maurice the Mammal:

“Vote for policies”, we’re told, “not personalities”.

The Conservative Manifesto says:

[Our] economic vision… is a vision of a truly modern economy… where Britain leads in science, technology and innovation.

and

We will make sure that… commissioning decisions [are made] according to evidence-based quality standards

But then,

[The] Minority Report on abortion [is] a rollercoaster ride of pseudoscience and dubious data, signed by one Tory MP with the support of one other… If you want a good example of how spectacularly weak the evidence behind this “Minority Report” is, then you need look no further than the bit where they talk about, er, well, me, bafflingly:

We were greatly concerned to read… detailed information… which could only have been passed on to the journalist concerned by a member of the Select Committee. There should be an enquiry about how this information got into the public domain…

All the facts came from the written evidence published openly and in full during the select committee hearing. … I totally downloaded the PDF.

The Conservative Manifesto says:

[Our] economic vision … is founded on a determination that wealth and opportunity must be more fairly distributed.

and

We proposed legislation so that anyone wanting to be a member of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords will need to be treated as a full UK taxpayer.

But then,

[Former Conservative Party Leader] William Hague was said to be aware 10 years ago of a deal struck by senior Tories that eventually resulted in [Conservative Deputy Chairman and billionaire] Lord Ashcroft secretly remaining a [non-tax payer] after obtaining his peerage

The Conservative Manifesto says:

We will review and reform libel laws to protect freedom of speech, reduce costs and discourage libel tourism.

But then,

The BBC has shelved a Panorama documentary about the business affairs of the Tory billionaire Lord Ashcroft, because of a threat of legal action.

The Corporation has received what one insider described as “several very heavy letters” from Lord Ashcroft’s lawyers. There is now little or no prospect of the investigation being broadcast before the general election, if it goes out at all.

And the Conservative Manifesto says:

A Conservative government will ensure every vote will have equal value…

But then,

[They] support the first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections, “because it gives voters the chance to kick out a government they are fed up with”.

In fact, that quote is also from their manifesto. Which says:

Government has been far too profligate for far too long. … The explosion of unaccountable quangos, public sector ‘nonjobs’ and costly bureaucracy is an indictment of Labour’s reckless approach to spending other people’s money. …

A Conservative government will bring in new measures to enable the public to scrutinise the government’s accounts to see whether it is providing value for money. All data will be published in an open and standardised format.

But then,

Senior Conservative MP… Derek Conway, a former government whip and an MP for 23 years, paid his son, Freddie, a third year geography student at Newcastle university, £981 a month for unspecified work. …

The disclosure comes as the Tory private member’s bill to exempt MPs from requests under the Freedom of Information Act makes its way through parliament.

The Conservative Manifesto also says:

Wherever possible, we believe that personal data should be controlled by individual citizens themselves. We will strengthen the powers of the Information Commissioner to penalise any public body found guilty of mismanaging data. We will take further steps to protect people from unwarranted intrusion by the state

But then,

I couldn’t see any of this in the Conservative Party [iPhone] app. And in fact, it’s not [the user's] details being submitted – it’s [a friend's]. Who doesn’t get a say in it at all. …

It’s possible that personal data is being stored or processed by the Conservative Party, without them having any contact with the person whose data is being processed. There is no verification that the data is provided with the consent of the person that data refers to. The app doesn’t give a clear indication of what the data will be used for. Neither the app nor its supporting web sites contain a privacy notice describing how the data may be stored and used.

The Conservative Party, as an entity, is saying all the right things, but the actual people who comprise it are not yet showing any apparent willing to live by these lofty ideals. And these aren’t backbenchers, councillors and researchers. This is a former leader, a former whip, the Deputy Chairman, their manifesto, Select Committee members and their official iPhone application.

I agree that we should lead in science and technology, base NHS policy on evidence, distribute wealth fairly, exclude non-taxpayers from the Lords, reform libel law, ensure everyone has a fair say in elections and increase openness and accountability in public spending. And if I thought for one second that the Conservatives would actually do any of those things, then maybe I would vote for them, but it looks to me like the Conservatives are the people we need these reforms to protect us from.

Asking them to “fix our broken politics” would be like asking a bull to glue together all our broken china.

On March 17th, my local MP, Labour’s Gerald Kaufman, wrote me a letter regarding an email about the Digital Economy Bill which I sent using 38 Degrees’ website. His letter said:

Thank you for your letter dated 16 March. I agree with you that laws of such sensitivity ought not to be rushed through Parliament. I have taken up these issues with the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and assure you that I shall remain alert on this issue.

On April 7th, the Digital Economy Bill was voted into law and if Gerald Kaufman MP bothered to turn up, he didn’t vote.

That is not “remaining alert” and on May 6th I will not be voting for Gerald Kaufman.

| 6 Comments »

In news that doesn’t mean anything, Mattel are changing the rules of Scrabble so that proper nouns such as brand names will be allowed. I’m not sure of the specifics, although “Mattel said there would be no hard and fast rule over whether a proper noun was correct or not”. It sounds to me like basically any combination of letters you happen to draw is a legitimate move.

But more to the point, nobody plays the official rules of boardgames. You buy them, read the rules, play them a few times, and alter them to suit your play styles. Then you visit a friend and discover that not only do they play different rules to you, but have a wildly different theory as to what the official rules are. We use the spinner to choose categories in Articulate. A friend puts tax money on Free Parking in Monopoly. Nobody uses the Mission Cards in Risk. Mattel can write whatever they please on the bit of paper that comes with the game and gets accidentally binned on Boxing Day along with all the wrapping paper; it won’t make a jot of difference to what actually happens. The only people who play Scrabble strictly adhering to the official rules are tournament players, and they need “a hard and fast rule” about what words are allowed. This change will simply be ignored by everyone in the world. Mattel simply don’t have the power to change how people play Scrabble.

They don’t even have the authority. Scrabble is owned by Hasbro in America. Even if everyone does adopt the new rules, they won’t apply in the US or Canada. It’s difficult to split the userbase of a board game but Mattel are having a good try.

They say,

This is one of a number of twists and challenges included that we believe existing fans will enjoy and will also enable younger fans and families to get involved.

This is not a good plan. If you want to enable younger fans to get involved, make Scrabble available in a way that makes sense for younger fans. While EA (of all people) have the electronic rights in both territories, the US version of the Scrabble Facebook application can’t play against the International version, and the app itself is clunky and awkward and generally a bit pants. Before the game was launched, a far better Facebook Scrabble app, Scrabulous, was available. This was forced to shut down by Scrabble’s rights holders shortly before the official one was launched. So now the userbase of 2 million is split across Scrabble US (900k), Scrabble International (700k) and Lexulous, the reanimated corpse of Scrabulous (450k).

The same situation exists on the iPhone. The official Scrabble application, which costs £1.79, has an ugly, non-standard interface, and doesn’t support asynchronous or local multiplayer — you need two phones but you can’t play in different buildings. Essentially, it’s everything you expect from EA. And it’s not compatible with the Facebook version, even though it was advertised as compatible. Meanwhile, Words With Friends does allow you to play against anyone in the world, and has a nicer interface and (if my Twitter followers are anything to go by) a far larger userbase. And it’s free. But it’s not allowed to use the official Scrabble board layout, presumably because EA have exclusivity. There’s also a Lexulous application which actually does offer Facebook compatibility, again splitting the userbase.

So here’s my advice to Mattel:

Young people are involved in Scrabble. They just aren’t playing your version of the game, because your version is only available in “boxed” and “crippled” formats. Ditch EA, and try to license the game to the fans who have already made far superior electronic versions of the game for a share of their profits. If you want to engage younger people, employ one. The boat has probably sailed on Facebook and iPhone, but get to future platforms before young people write their own brand crossword game. Write a third tweet. This does not count as a Twitter presence either.

If you want young people to play your game, improve and unite the electronic versions until they are a genuinely better offer than any of the knock-offs. Don’t cripple and divide the boxed version in a desperate appeal to the illiterate.

The latest version of Skype believes that the ‘pin to taskbar’ feature in Windows 7 is so wonderful that it does not allow me to use the program any other way. This is achieved by dint of a rather ugly kludge: the main window cannot be closed; merely minimised. There are separate minimise and close buttons, but they are are exactly equivalent. Skype so resent the idea that I would want to pin Chrome to my taskbar but not their IM client that the only way to close their window is to run it in compatibility mode for Windows Vista, which didn’t have ‘pinning’ and so couldn’t offend Skype’s delicate sensibilities.

The problem here is that while Microsoft have spent the last 25 years building Windows, tweaking its usability, testing it, and building interface elements for application designers to use, application designers often reckon they know better. Even if that was true, the inconsistency would still be confusing, just like DVD menus are that bit harder to use for all being laid out differently. Nobody likes DVD menus. They’re spoiler-filled, self-congratulatory exercises in form over function designed by failed Flash-game developers. There isn’t one user in the world who wouldn’t rather have a straightforward list of options in a clear font on a plain background. Media playing software  is particularly bad for this, second only to laptop manufacturers, who invariably think they need to make usability a unique selling point, and so write their own software to control wifi and touchpads and so forth. It’s always fucking awful, with shitty, blurry buttons made in Paint Shop Pro 5, scrollbars that don’t quite work, oval windows that look like an MP3 player from 1998 when a native square one would suffice… But it’s more annoying when big, dedicated software companies do it. Here, for example, is McAfee Security Centre, which came preinstalled on my otherwise lovely new Dell laptop:

If it was me, this would look like part of the Windows Control Panel. But, no. Its labyrinthine navigation city can only be explored using a mouse, and if there’s an option to just turn the wretched thing off without uninstalling it completely then I can’t find it. I suspect there isn’t, since it describes turning itself on as ‘fixing’ a problem; an action which is ‘required’. To me, a seasoned geek, this is simply patronising. To a novice user, it’s intimidating. I would go so far as to say it is deliberately intimidating, bullying the user into paying the subscription using threatening language and graphics. I say this in part because of the email Ben got from them which reads

Internet thugs are motivated, ruthless…and silent. They use stealth to invade your computer system. It can happen so quickly, you won’t even realize it—at least not until after your credit score plunges.

But my issue here is not their Mafia-style marketing techniques, but the interface. Keyboard shortcuts allow the user to ‘click’ the left hand menu and the logo (which doesn’t do anything) but not any of the actual controls. I can only assume none of it responds to Windows’ accessibility options. Certainly none of the controls feel familiar. Look at the ‘minimise’ and ‘close’ buttons. Look at the title bar (or, more accurately, the bar). Three of the entries on the left hand menu are weblinks, the rest are menu items. You think they’re the three at the bottom that look different? You’re wrong. The software tells me I’m using parental controls to protect my children from online threats. I haven’t got any children (precisely because I’ve always been careful to use “parental controls”).

My employer kindly supplies the infinitely preferable Sophos package, so rather than take up McAfee’s kind offer of a year’s free protection, I’m going to remove their software and install a competitor’s, purely on the basis that their interface is nicer. I would have disabled Skype entirely had I not been shown how to circumvent its dismal interface choice. My favourite iPhone apps are Tweetie 2 and Instapaper Pro, largely because they feel like part of the phone. While I like that my phone can run Gmail or the tvguide.co.uk app, it feels like it has in-built Twitter and read-later functionality, and that gives me a better overall experience of using the phone as a single coherent device.

The point is that interface design is a hugely complex and fascinating subject about which most people know literally nothing. And as a general rule, the best thing you can do is to use the native interface elements everyone else uses because they’re tried and tested and even when they’re not ideal all your users already understand how to use them. But no. Everyone wants their application to look different and special and interesting, and what actually happens is that their application is difficult and confusing. More to the point, your application is not special. It is one of many I run on my computer and it should look and feel that way. If it doesn’t, then I can’t be bothered using it and will find an alternative.