Here we have FlightTracker Pro, a generally great application… except when you need it most.

There’s been some inclement weather around San Francisco and FlightTracker informs me that a flight to Vancouver, Canada has been delayed by 1h50m.  About an hour later, FlightTracker updates:

I know what you’re thinking, “Four bars?  With AT&T?!”  Don’t let it distract you :)  A flight departing early?  I mean, let alone on time but early?  Amazing! Time to hustle to SFO!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Checking the Air Canada site clued me in – nope, it was still delayed.

FlightTracker might be pulling “40 minutes early” from its web service although the iPhone application is certainly free to report on that data as it sees fit.

Ticket fine print states that you have to be at your gate (and therefore checked in) some amount of time prior to the scheduled departure, usually 15 minutes.  Now, through some strange runway antics, you might have been bumped up in the takeoff order but that would mean your boarding time would have been ridiculously early (again, not possible) for this to happen.

I’m surprised the logic exists to report an early flight.  It had to be in there because the determination was made to color the message green.  Is there value in reporting an early departure?  Should I leave early for the airport? If not, it would seem as though FlightTracker has (at least) three options:

1. Report “on time”.
2. Suggest that I check the airline’s site.
3. Present a link in place of the message that calls the airline’s automated flight check line.

Of the three, I would prefer the first.  If there’s no need to change my behaviour (because the chances of a flight leaving materially early are nil) then I prefer to be blissfully unaware of the strange information FlightTracker is getting about my early departure :)

The study, published in PLoS Medicine, looked at four preventable risk factors: smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood-glucose levels and being overweight. It then examined how these risk factors reduced life expectancy in eight population groups. … (or, put another way, could expect to gain those years if they were to live healthier lives).

Here is the original graphic:

From the title of the chart, I was expecting lifetime measured in years.  Scanning the horizontal axis were numbers in the single digits, off by a factor of 10 however they were close enough that it could be part of a surprising conclusion – perhaps life expectancies for some segments of the population were far smaller than I had imagined?  At the bottom of the chart, this would mean some life expectancies in the 30s and 40s, which is clearly incorrect.

Now searching the chart for clarifying data, I read the subtitle which explained the bar chart values.  Although to truly understand the values one has to do the math – add the “at-birth” life expectancies (shown in the left-most column) to the potential years gained (“value” of the bars).

It also seemed the exception that the male/female difference was significant enough to warrant adding so much contrast to the chart (the blue/yellow per-gender breakdowns).

Having just finished Wong’s Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics, I challenged myself to simplify the chart and improve the understandability.

Lots of changes here:

• The major difference between the two charts is that I’m using a stacked bar to represent the additional life expectancy gained by mitigating the preventable risk factors.  It allows the chart to be expressed at a scale one might expect when thinking of life expectancies in America (i.e. total years, somewhere above 70).  It also helps you understand the baseline life expectancy for the group combined with the relative potential improvement.
• The national average is now presented with additional contrast, so it’s clear where each group stands relative to the baseline.
• I chose not to label the horizontal axis from 0 – 60, assuming that readers  would understand that life expectancy is given in years.
• The male/female discrepancies are averaged out, which caused one change in the sort order.
• Potential gains are called out on the rightmost side of the chart, as I wanted it to be clear that the sort order was from the most potential gain to the least.

Room for improvement:

• The most important area for improvement I see is that the title implies the “how” will be prominently featured, when it’s a footnote (literally).
• There is no legend for the chart.  I’m relying on the implication that life expectancy is frequently communicated in years, and that the rightmost label is linked to the size of the darker-shaded stacked bar segment.  This appears to be the riskiest part of the overall change?

Having spent a few hours on this, I have a new-found respect for those info-graphing as a day job!  Very fun, very challenging.

A quick Google search landed me here, at what appears to be a pretty standard “store locator” on Comcast’s site:

(1)  I’m a Comcast subscriber, accessing the Internet from my Comcast Internet account. Comcast knows I’m physically inside of their network and it knows my modem is associated with my account (to activate your modem, you have to provide your account number). If Comcast knows who I am, and where I am, then why do I have to provide any information?

(2) Is the apartment number query necessary? Do service centers split service down the middle of an apartment building?  I realize it’s marked as optional although I can’t see why providing it helps the person filling out the form.  Taking it one step further, only the zip code might really be necessary.

(3) Whenever you see this option you have to wonder in what context the creators of this form imagine you to be using it. At a coffee shop? In school? When would it be appropriate to forget the information someone provided in a form, unless it was their username or password, neither of which are present here.

(4) (not numbered) What purpose do the gigantic colon characters between form fields serve?

Points (2) – (4) are not as important as (1) because they are improvements that assume prompting you for your address is necessary.

Given what Comcast knows about me from (1), this is what I hope to see the next time I’m looking for a service center.

Of note:

• What you don’t see: No prompts for location.  Comcast should figure this out from the modem/account pairing.
• What you didn’t know: The nearest location for each type of service center is shown.  Previously you only learned that there were different types of service centers once you started searching.
• What you didn’t know: Your nearest service center might not service you.  Each service center only “serves” different accounts.
• What you didn’t know: If you have a Comcast voice account (as I do), you cannot exchange your hardware.  In that case, this page would show a different message rather than your nearest service center – a UI to schedule an appointment for a technician to replace your modem.  I drove from Mountain View to Sunnyvale with my modem to find this out.
• Thumbnail map view should be zoomed out enough such that you can make gross location decision making (“Oh I see Sunnyvale there, that’s 2 hours away.”)
• If the guess is accurate, one-click access to directions (although I could see directions provided here too).  If the guess was inaccurate, one-click access to finding additional service centers.

There’s certainly room for improvement here.  What are the service center hours?  Are they currently open?

All of those improvements assume Comcast buys into the notion of not asking their customers for what they already know about them.

- Councillor Hamann to Neo

For the uninitiated, Netflix takes a guess at whether or not you’ll like a movie and indicates that guess by the number of red stars present below a movie (yellow stars represent your ratings, none of which appear in the image that follows).

Here’s an example (note: I have no idea what these movies are, or what they’re about).

Let’s imagine Netflix as a helpful assistant, and how that conversation would go.

Rob: “I have a few hours to kill for a layover and free wifi.  Computer, I’ve told you what I think of 1,004 movies and I’m not sure what’s been recently released.  Can you suggest some?”
Assistant: “Sure Rob, I’d be happy to.  Here are 5 movies.”
Rob: “Thank you computer.  Actually after looking at these movies, I’m not sure I’d like to watch any of them.  Gallipoli isn’t quite the war movie I enjoy.  The others aren’t even close to the types of movies I would be interested in.”
Assistant: “That’s what I suspected before I showed them to  you.”

An awkward interaction.

Rather than display 5 movies it thinks I’ll rate “Hated It” or “Didn’t Like It”, is there another alternative?

According to Wikipedia, in November 2008 there were over 17,000 titles in the Netflix Instant catalog.  Netflix is certainly willing to show me older movies that have just become available instantly (e.g. 1981’s Gallipoli).  How about continuing backwards in reverse chronological order until it finds things five items (to fill one page width) it thinks I’d rate at least three stars?

Put another way, I’d like to say “Computer, when you think I’ll rate something one or two stars you’ve been correct so often I wish you wouldn’t second guess yourself.  I’ve already hired you and put in the effort to tell you over 1000 of my preferences.  That’s a vote of confidence that in your ability to recommend movies.  Have the courage of your convictions to avoid showing me movies I won’t enjoy.”

I’ve taken the time to rate over 1000 movies.  If I didn’t at least somewhat find the Netflix recommendation system helpful, I wouldn’t have done that.  I’d like Netflix to respect that time by choosing to avoid showing me movies it guesses I will either “Hate” or “Not Like”.

Back to Valparaiso and the Hampton Inn: one thing every hotel guest does is figure out how to take a shower or bath with a specific set of controls they likely haven’t used before.  Here’s a picture of the faucet from our room.

Would you think that the shower is dispensing hot or cold?  I say “cold” as the larger hand closer to me is pointing towards the blue notches on the dial with the blue “C” prominently displayed.

Let’s take another look at the dial, this time head on:

From this angle, the dial forms an arrow with the tip narrowing towards the red “H”.  Looking at the dial head on, I would have correctly guessed that hot water was on tap.

When you turn on the shower, do you stare straight at the faucet?  If so, you are also the kind of person who likes to be sprayed in the face with ice cold water.  You probably aren’t that kind of person :-)

Why do we have faucets whose behaviour is not predictable from both in and outside the shower stall?

What’s strange is that I doubt faucet designers haven’t bathed before.  Is it possible that our own experiences as designers aren’t sufficient for the task of design?

First unfold the Metadata panel in the Library module, with the Default metadata set.

Second, locate the Capture Time (it’s about halfway down) and click the Edit Capture Time button.  The capture time is shown as <mixed> because I have multiple images selected.

The Edit Capture Time window appears:

Select the second option and select the appropriate time zone modifier.

If you’re traveling to the family reunion in Ohio, it’s a straightforward conversion from Pacific to Eastern (Eastern is 3 hours ahead).  When you’re traveling halfway around the world, it’s not quite as obvious.

So how did I arrive at +16?  To get from PST to HKT, you need to fast-forward 16 hours.

• Pacific Standard Time (PST) is UTC-8. 
• Hong Kong Time (HKT) is UTC+8.
• -8 + ? = +8.
• ? = 16.

I realize this dialog is doing double or triple duty, allowing you to modify the time in various ways although I don’t understand the inflection.  How many times do you want to modify the capture time to a specific time, especially in batch selection?

If you’re selecting the “Time Zone Adjust” option, where are the time zones?  Or even better, a map like when you choose your time zone in the Windows or OS X date/time settings?  Really, that’s what time zone selection is – a poor man’s “Where I am” and “Where I was”.

It’s probably safe to assume the original time was captured in the (incorrect) Lightroom time zone.  We have to make this assumption because the EXIF capture time is ambiguous, as it does not allow recording of the time zone.  There is no reasonable default for the corrected time.

Fixing time zone offset is one of those things I do rarely although when I need to do it, it’s VERY important to me.  Forcing me to do time zone math seems out of place in a streamlined environment like Lightroom.