wendy house

Family House enjoyed breakfast  with the  live BBC  coverage of the  boys in the Melbourne F1 race:

It’s not over yet (lap 30 of 58)

Fisichella has missed his box,   Fisichella has  previous for missing the box

he’s just had a moment

we’ve lost a Renault

The Maclaren has clearly got the grunt,   it just hasn’t got the grip

he’s just popped a sensible pill

It’s a living thing an F1 race

Lots of excitement  was consumed and Tea spilt.    The outstanding performance by the former Honda Formula 1 racing team,    beautifully demonstrate how an asset sold-off by a retrenching multinational company (Honda) can quickly turn their product into an inspiration following a management buyout.       But then the shine was taken off the win by the subsequent announcement of substantial redundancies.  

Hoorah!… Oh!

 A fairly typical secondary school conversation  about my brother in the late 1970′s:

Secondary School Peer (SSP):   you know your brother?

Wendy:   yes, I know  both of them,   do you mean [name]?

SSP: No,   the other one,   what’s wrong with him?

Wendy:   What do you mean ‘what’s wrong with him’

SSP:   well,   you know he’s not normal…

Wendy:   how is he not ‘normal’?

SSP:   you know,   skipping down the corridors, laughing to himself and clapping his hands

Wendy:   Oh (signifying acknowledgement that my other brother does all these things), yes, he does that when he’s happy

SSP: he’s happy in the corridors at school?

Wendy: yes,   he’s always been able to entertain himself and find things to make him smile

SSP: He’s weird

He  is still a happy soul, able to entertain himself and skip down the street when he’s happy.   It’s as cute in a man in his 50′s as it was for a boy in his teens.   I just bounce,   I find that the less complex up-down movement reduces the likelihood that I will fall over.  

A deficit of skipping must be a very sad thing,   as indeed the beautiful, be-hatted, talented,  lip-synch-averse, wiggly, much missed Billie MacKenzie recognised:

The Associates sang Skipping

Stopping at  the AA approved dealership with the low mileage Mini One D for sale:

Sales:   there’s virtually no difference between the old and new model  Mini D’s,   except the styling and I prefer the styling in the old model.  

Wendy:   they have different Engines,   the old one is a Toyota Yaris,   I don’t know what the new one is.   A different  engine  seems like a  significant difference.

Sales: Coopper Diesel has a Peugeot engine

Wendy:   My last car in the UK was a 5yr old Peugeot 309    1.9 Diesel in 1992, an awesome Engine, the car took me for 46,ooo miles in 1 yr with nothing other than standard wear and tear.

Sales: [silence]

Later,   while driving the Mini

Wendy:   that is a VERY  clunky gearbox,  

Sales:   is it?  

Wendy:   No I was lying to get the price down, have you actually drivien this car?   its clearly clunky

Later,   on the forecourt after no beverage has been offered and no-one has asked to take my name, phone number,   other contact details or manage the conversation:

Wendy:   what sort of discount would you give me for  having no car to  trade-in part exchange?

Sales:   none

Wendy: what sort of discount would you give me if I could arrange a cash purchase

Sales:    none

Wendy:   do you actually  want to sell this car,   I know its been on your books for at least 3 weeks

Sales: we can’t get enough good quality second hand cars,   with the recession  the second hand business is good

Wendy:   I’ll look at the other Mini’s on my list and talk to the dealers  and might  get back to you if this one is still a possibility

One of a host of Jasmine plants that fill the Wendy Home  with a wonderful aroma.      No chemical air-freshener arrives with throw-away packaging,  immitates floral scents and requires  refills.     Lets hope that no guests have real pollen allergies….

Wendy:   Hello

AA Approved Car Dealership Sales Person (Sales):   Hello

Wendy:   My name’s Wendy and I’m interested in the used Diesel Mini advertised on your website.

Sales: Yes

Wendy:   It has suprisingly low mileage, do you know why?

Sales: The owner has 4 other cars and spends most of their time abroad,   its mainly sat in their garage, its in excellent condition.   I’ve known them for 25 years.

Wendy: Oh (signifying impressed by people with sufficient funds to buy a car to  store it)   could I book a time to test drive it?

Sales: Yes

Wendy:   I live 21 miles away, in Reading

Sales: If you tell me when you arrive I can pick you up from the local train station

Wendy: to catch a train I’d have to go into London and then come out again,   it would take more than 90 minutes, and at least 2 train rides.   Could you possibly bring the car over to Reading?

Sales: No, we don’t do that

Wendy: Oh (signifying suprise at the sales person’s lack of conversational charm or any effort put into  actually attempting sell the car)

Sales: we can’t leave the office unstaffed.  

Wendy:   I can get there on (date/time) would that work for a test drive?

Sales:   Are you interested in buying it then?

Wendy:   No, I just fancied a day trip out and a free drive in someoneelses second hand mini for the hell of it

Wendy:   yes

why I love England #8:   flippancy

Liberal indulgance in flippancy.   Often there is no apparant  effort to dress-up,   or dress-down, conversations to be anything other than a wee bit of mutual indulgence in minor entertainment.   No nonsense nonsense.   In my experience flippancy is more common, valued,  in England than in  the NW US

Mary:   Wendy?   that’s easy,   we don’t have any Wendy’s here.

Wendy:   Oh, (signifying surprise that I’ll be the first and only Wendy here) I’ll be your first Wendy!

Gill:   everyone is called Gill or Mary…   …I don’t know why….

Wendy:   Even the Simons and Geoffs?

Simon:   What?

Geoff:   Leave me out of this.

Please tread carefully while  addressing your comments and cupboards appropriately.  

Thank you.

WES ©:   Wendy Experience Scale*

What is this?

This is a tool for assessing product and services experiences.   The tool uses a questionnaire  developed with the help of Excel and 84 pots of tea.   The  WES © can be administered to any Wendy  that uses a product or service that you want to assess.   The WES © will tell you whether that product or service meets the stringent, to be published, Wendy  International Standard of Experiences (WISE).    Unlike assessment tools such as the SUS which focuses merely on usability with  Likert scales**,   the WES ©   focusses on product and service relevant experiences including usability with  9 semantic differential scales*** .     The scales tap into the following experiences:

1. Fabulousness
2. Aesthetics – Visuals
3. Fitness for purpose
4. Financial value
5. Aesthetics – Tactility
6. Usability
7. Complexity
8. Engagement
9. Predictability****

 Also known as ‘ FAFFAUCEP’   (pronounced faff-Oh-sep)

The WES © is currently in a Beta release stage and is available for use* by product and service developers on condition that they ask advance permission and provide me with a full report of the product, service,  assessment conducted including the results which will be used to build the  WISE standards.

Administering the WES ©

Let a common all garden Wendy use your product or service  to complete a common task that it was designed to enable.   Provide a unbroken supply of tea during use.   Observe the Wendy complete the task collecting usability style observational data.   When the Wendy has completed the task,   or given up  provide her with a copy of  the WES © and ask her to mark an X on the line between each pair of experience  descriptors that indicates her experience on  this continuum.   There is a practice item that you should encourage the Wendy to complete then discuss her answer to make sure that she understands how to use the scale.     As the Wendy completes the scale ask her to describe examples that have lead to her reporting this experience.   This information will be extremely useful for either developing marketting materials or deciding what to change to improve the experience.

Below is an example of a WES ©  completed by my marking X’s on each scale item describing my experience of my wireless radio.   You can make your own practice scale that covers some dimension of the Wendys or the product being assessed.   In the example below the practice item asks about whether the Wendy considers the product a worthy conversation piece.

Practice by identifying  where you are  on this scale:

Where is the Wireless Radio on these scales?:

Analysing WES © Results:

Allocate the location maked on the line with a weighting number between 1 and 10.    

For even number questions the weightings increase towards the left,   for odd number questions the weightings increase towards the right.     Sum all the weightings.       The total possible score is 90.   Higher scores indicate better Experiences.  

Coding the example provided above looks like this

 Total score = 62/90 = 69%

The  average of multiple  WES © scores can be  used  to provide  overall Experience score for the product.  

The   normalisation data to enable comparision across different products and services  and  indicate the value of the score relative to a benchmark will be published as part of WISE.   Note that without the normalisation data it is possible that all procucts receive scores in the 80′s (a  roof effect)  or below 20 (a floor effect).     Our expert, on-site, Wendy (me)  recommends that prior to the publication of WISE we should assume that any score under 60 is at best a mediocre product or service and any score under 45 is an experience that should be avoided.

For in depth analysis each item should be verified with the  observational measures taking during the use phase and the comments made by the Wendy’s when completing the questionnaire.  

In this example we can clearly see that the tactile aesthetics (score = 5) provided the biggest opportunity for improving Wendy’s experience.   Wendy talked about the radio being a bit too big to put in her pocket,   she liked the bouncy rubber bits but all the little buttons were a bit too small and pointy to enjoy pressing them,   she prefers rubber-buttons (who doesn’t?!) and the industrial-safety feel for portable.    

Next Steps

The WES ©  development team haven’t decided whether to gather normalisation data on the vo version, refine the  item labels before collecting normalisation data  or just chuck the semantic differential format and  develop  WES © (v1) based on a creatively cunning perverison of  Kelly’s Repertory Grid technique.  

* Use is permitted by prior agreement with the inventor (me,   Wendy!)

** the linguistically pedantic should note that Likert scales tend to use split infinitives such as ‘strongly agree’ which can irritate those completing the scale undermining its efficacy in cases where people choose not to select any options that include split infinitives for purely curmudgeonly reasons.   This makes the scale unreliable for responses from educated people from Yorskhire.

*** The semantic differential is based on the assumption that everyone interprests the scales in the same way.   Unfortunately,   this assumption is not true rendering the WES © useless to anyone other than Wendy.

**** For some products or services predicatability is not a positive experience quality (e.g. games).   Administrators are advised to either scope the item to refer to the service or product  controls.  

During 1980, like any self-respecting UK punk, I would indulge myself in freeform meandering  around deserted warehouses.  

In those days who didn’t?    

The right  warehouses were quite good places to hide from the strange people that send messages describing our past in ways I don’t remember.   Gradually, deserted warehouses became harder to find as rampant film crews,   homeless people, musicians and punks  sought their particular ambience.      

OMD sang Messages

Trevor Bayliss is an inventor of   heroic proportions  here in the UK.   He invented the wind-up radio.   Portable and with no need for chemically based, environmentally damaging, batteries.

My fabulous hand-crank radio also includes a solar panel.   I’ve never yet had to wind it up because the light in the Wendy House conservatory keeps it going longer than any duracell battery would….    

I do occassionally wind it up because, like the gravity-powered exit,  the action is very pleasing.   Pleasing is more than the ‘satisfactory’ experience required to establish conformance with usability standards.

I tried to complete a ‘System Usability Scale’   (SUS) for my fabulous radio    incase I meet and usability people that would like to know,   in numbers, exactly how fabulous it is.    Unfortunately I was  unable to complete the SUS because  I don’t know what ‘integrated functionality’ is and am confused by the concept of an ‘inconsistent’ product,   so I couldn’t answer questions that included  these things.      I’ll just tell the usability people its a 7000 on the SUS scale,   they’ll get the general idea.

This is a summary page from a UK Equifax credit report on me.    Accurate and incomplete.        

Equifax  credit assessment covers 6 years in the UK,   US excluded  .   Having been resident in the UK for just over one year    means that I don’t have a visible credit history for 6 years.  

I was unpleasantly suprised that neither my recent UK Morgage  nor credit card payment history  were evident in the report.  

I requested a copy of my credit report online and received an email confirming receipt of the request:

Your incident has been successfully received

A request is a subset of incident?   Successfully received as oppose to received unsuccessfully?   Do humans really write this stuff?   How long does it take those humans to loose the skill of communicating with people as if they are people rather than logical systems.    

I will take to using this language whenever anyone asks me for something…

Wendy House guest:   can I have another mug of that yummy Earl Gey?

Wendy: your incident has been successfully recieved.   Version 2 tea will be downloaded from the pot then installed in your waterproof receptical.   Do not unplug your enthusiasm or press the ‘I’ve changed my mind’ button.

  During a week littered with  uncharacteristically fabulous sunshine I’ve been wrecklessly wandering out without a coat or a vest.  

Wandering nowhere in particular.   Directionless in the garden.    

Planting bulbs and border-blooming plants  for the summer, digging-up weeds, drinking gallons of well brewed  tea and generally admiring the arrival of spring blooms from bulbs and bushes  planted last Autumn.  

It’s leave from normal work.   It’s in my garden.

Its not technically gardening leave.

How silly is that?

The following conversations happened within a 5 min time frame:

person 1: would you like a lift home Wendy?

wendy: thanks for asking,   I just live around the corner, I’ll walk

person 2:   Wendy,   can I give you a lift home?

wendy: thanks,   its so lovelly out and I live so near that I’d like to walk

while walking home a convertible car with the top down and an Oakly sunglasses-wearing driver  curb crawls by me

person 3: can I give you a lift anywhere wendy

wendy:   thanks for offering,   its such a lovely day and I only live round the corner so I’ll walk

There are clear signs that my social life would improve if I lived further away or accepted lifts for distances of less than 500 yards on a sunny day.

person:   I’ve got a ticket to see Michael Jackson,   tickets are now selling on the  Web for over £1000.

Wendy: Oh!    I’ve got a ticket to see David Byrne,   it was much cheaper and,   for  me, will be a more fabulous experience than a Michael Jackson concert.

person:   Who’s he?

Wendy:   (gulp)

Your task,  should you choose to accept it, is to convey the essence of who David Byrne is in less that 500 characters, without the aid of sound or graphics.

In the early 1980′s student’s didn’t have mobile phones.  

I lived in downtown Birmingham on the 18th floor of a towerblock full of students.   The towerblock  had one,    ONE,  public phone in the entrance way.   Always a long queue  and no soundproof surround.     I rarely phoned mumsie.   Only when I was near a phone booth that didn’t have half a dozen people queuing  to use it.   Normally this would be  in the early hours of the morning at gig’s.     I would use the change I had saved for the bus home to call mumzie.     She wasn’t always best-pleased by my sense of timing.   The calls went something like

Wendy:   Helllllloooooooo mumsie!

Mumsie: do you know what time it is?

Wendy: It’s TIME to call mumzie!

Mumsie:   Have you been drinking?

Wendy:   could well be!

Mumsie:   Oh Gwendolyn!   Are you eating properly?

Wendy:   Chips and curry sauce fresh, ahem,  from the van,   YUMMY!

Mumsie:   we worry about you darling

Wendy:   ARRRRR!   You’re so sweet,   there’s no need to worry mum,   I’m nearly all grown up but I’m fast running out of change…

beep-beep-beeep-beep-beep-beep

Mumsie:   goodnight dear, take care…

One such call happened  after listening to the live version of this little gem…

Spear of Destiny sing They’ll never take me alive

The Reliant Robin is a design classic.   Some of my early courting experiences were in a Reliant Robin.   This one appears to be in need of more than the average tender loving care as it is taken off the streets of Reading.

Getting an English home in order involves all sorts of equipment including a  carbon monoxide alarm and a radiator inhibitor.  

My radiators are now fully inhibited.   You’ll be glad to know that there is no more bleeding necessary,   or is that necessary bleeding?

Emergency exit from a Northern English office building.  

Using the helter skelter  is an anytime activity, not reserved for emergencies.  

I didn’t check if there was a helipad on the roof for emergency entrances.

The title of this architectural style certainly captures my experience of its implementation.  

Why would architects want to impose brutalism on their users?   I’ve not quite grapsed the subtlety here.   Maybe there isn’t any subtlety.   Any public building that requires it’s users undertake a training course in order to understand it is a public building that has failed on at least one experience level.

The Royal National Theatre on London’s south bank is a Grade II listed building,   a brutalist building.  I do not appreciate Brutalist buildings.   It reminds me of Portsmouth’s now defunct Tricorn Centre.

These are the search results produced by Googling    ’Women’   and then ‘men’  on International Women’s day (8th March 2009).      

What do you (not) see?  

How much tea did I consume while  restructuring my budget for health, beauty then pregnancy and applying for a job as a naughty hot cheating chatty woman  ?

Words of wisdom from  either  a  specialist* or in this case a very friendly person at a bus stop who asked me what bus I was waiting for and where I was going.   I told her I was waiting for  the X32 to Harwell innovation centre.   Based on this brief information she gave me a couple of tips:

you’ll be wanting the 32 to Chiltern,   not to Harwell,   there aint no atomic place at Harwell.  

Don’t get a taxi,   it costs 20 quid.   I’ll ask the taxi driver,   you’ll see.

The friendly person had a seasonal all routes bus pass and rather than sit at the cold bus stop waiting for her own bus she decided to get on my bus to make sure that I got off at the right stop then catch her own bus home.  It never ceases to impress me how  caring and conscientious bus users are.

*  past tips provided by Alan the hairdresser.   Lucia the hairdresser, an anonymous  manicurist, a Jackson’s sales assistant  and Reading Police

In 1983 a poster in the local Student’s Union said ‘The Housemartins are quite good,   London – 0, Hull – 4  .   Being as the ever sensible and caring mumzie hails from Hull and ‘quite good’ is well-worthy praise I popped along to enjoy an unexpectedly outstanding evening of hip wiggling, cardigan-wearing, socialist music of fitting proportions.        They also had a fairly prophetic perspective on bankers.

The Housemartins sang sheep

A  senior chap wearing a flourescent yellow woolly cap and fleece is leaving  the DIY store where I am going to  purchase  a  carbon monoxide warning device.    Unlike his clothes,    the senior fellow’s fascial muscles are so relaxed he looks sad.   As he turns onto the Thames towpath he catches my eye, sees my hat,  and his face rushes upwards as he sings out

Wondeful hat!  

my cyberdog (circa 2004) hat and I reply in kind

Yours too!

Do people on the ground, looking-up, get vertigo?

If so don’t look at the adjacent picture.

Also,   the picture could be considered a little risky if you take the perspective that you are looking up between the legs of the body.   Given it’s risky nature I recommend  that you take adequate safety precautions such as bathroom tissue, knee-pads  and cloud-filter spectacles.

Cranes are business confidence indicators.  

Downtown London is currently measuring 20 on the crane-scale of business confidence.     It’s unclear if the British crane exhibits the same migrational tendancies as the North American crane.

Sad,
Forlorn,
Trailing blood from seemingly perpetual knee grazings, my life a stumbling emotional fall-out zone.
That’s just today.

Screaming,
Tragedy,
Expression at17 involved indiscriminate waving of stained and sodden hankies.
Now I type it.

Silence,
Façade,
Sometimes the expression is so convincing it becomes real, the smallest detail hinting at an actual need.
Wear knee-pads.

Falling over redefined as a prelude to life’s pleasures.

who me?

I’m a client of Google services,

I made an error in my request,   really?   ERROR?!

I do make mistakes.    The word ‘Error’ is not one that I use to describe my mistakes.   This message is agressively accusatory and not particulalrly helpful.   Google could easily adopt a more user centric tone of voice,  less personally offensive,  if gramatically flawed,  by saying something like:

”Ooops,   Google doesn’t understand what you just did.   Can you check  to see if you made a mistake please?‘

I suppose I should be glad that I didn’t have to abort, kill or delete anything though I have occassionaly been caught aborting a kettle,   deleting cat-poop, and killing my laundry.     Shit like that does happen, and not by mistake.

Yesterday a BBC article posited the influences contributing to the ‘slow death’ of  handwriting.  

A  gradual metamorphosis, not necessarily death.  Scrawl and scribble can convey a message without well formed, legible words,  as many a toddlers parent and their fridge postings will attest.   That a message is penned is a message of significance in itself.     The significance may change with time, but it will remain significant.   Keys on boards can convey  a clear and consistent letter form reducing the variety of messages conveyed by the personal and environmental quirks of pen-personship.   My own  left-handed scrawl gets worse in cold weather and when I get a tad over-excited,   these things are not conveyed by the clear system of key-strokes.   Pen or keys will always imply different messages and the messages with change with time.   Just as the messages of  ’hand made’ and ‘factory made’ have changed from the initial high value associated with the consistent quality of factory made to the subsequent high value associated with the craft-skill required for  hand made.

The art of pen wielding will be maintained by people who take the care to love and use and explore it well, and I may shift from these keys to further pen a wobbly  thing or two for your merry bemusement and befuddlement.   Consider yourselves warned.

I remember the early 1980′s

• not understanding the Falklands war.
• the recession.
• living off root vegetables, tea, and hope that unemployment would reduce.  
• Being mistaken for a ho when walking home alone…. …any time of day.
• Mortgages requiring a 10% minimum deposit and being a maximum of 3x your annual income in a job you’d demonstrated committment for  at least a year.

Everthing considered,   I thought The Beat put it quite politely.   An understatement.   I cried everytime Thatcher was re-elected.   It was personal.

The (English) Beat sang ‘Stand down Margaret’

(Warning:   contains Sax)