Tom Hapgood

Social Networking as Business Watchdog

Eureka Pizza will continue to get my business. Vistaprint will not. Off The Press Printing won’t either. Cox Communications will. [Yikes. Sorry for the length of this.]

How many times have we been lured into buying a product or service that turned into a disaster, or just simply didn’t pan out? Were we persuaded by the promise of good “support” in case something goes wrong? It seems that the bigger and, perhaps, more geographically distant the business, the worse the experience can be. It can be incredibly frustrating to feel that you’re being taken advantage of and have lost money.

In the past, when we had poor results from a business we were only able to moan to a few friends at the party, or threaten to “call the CEO” or in worst-case scenarios sue the company, which very few people ever did.

I had a less-than-positive experience with the businesses listed above. In each case, a combination of promised services, ensuing frustration, an iPhone, Twitter feeding into Facebook, and the entitled modern consumer, led directly to a discussion with a representative of the business itself. A smart business today employs tactics to instantly head off any negative feedback by following Twitter’s trending topics or any reference to their business. The important factor is what the business does with any negative tweets.

Lately, I’ve been debating the relevance of social networking tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, as a “watchdog” of business performance. This hive-mind collective system we have of “friends” and “followers” who can receive instant positive or negative reviews to their phones and computers within seconds of the “broadcast” really changes the whole system of user and customer reviews. When the Web itself became a massive conduit of the judging of business performance on Web sites such as Epinions.com and on the retailer’s own site, the game of purchasing changed completely. I NEVER shop for something online without reading the customer comments/reviews and almost always base my final decision on the reviews of a product or service. Only problem was, these are random people with all kinds of taste, from even possibly a few years in the past, in various parts of the world, with possibly nothing in common to us. If they’re even real or sincere.

Enter social media: Our hundreds of friends, family and work acquaintances instantly receive our review. They know us. We know them. We undoubtedly share certain likes, disklikes, tastes. They sympathize directly with us. They believe us and there’s a good chance they’ll take our purchasing advice. Just think of the “stick-it-to-the-man” potential. If businesses promise results or good service, we should expect it and demand it. It seems that social media channels could be the tool that ensures good quality business.

At Eureka Pizza, a local, really good pizza place here in the area, I recently had, in the end, a good experience. It was three times the combination of an extremely busy week and a matter of minutes to pick up a dinner with the promise of “Hot and Ready” pizzas. The idea, as I understand it, is that you swoop in and buy a pizza that is sitting, waiting for you. For a good price. However, the last three times I went in, there were none ready and I had to wait, one time for 10 minutes. It feels ridiculous typing it, because it’s really not a long time. However, when you’ve got every minute planned with several kids at activities, someone usually sick, places to be, it turns out to be a long time. I was comparing it to the Little Caesar’s “Hot and Ready” pizza in Tucson, which had a stack of pizzas always ready and it took about a minute to go in, get the pizza, pay and leave, even at the rush of dinner time. The crucial part of the discussion is that the pizza is less expensive this way, and you know it’s been sitting there for awhile, it’s not fresh, and that’s OK. It’s cheap and quick and you agree to lose a little quality. For the record, Eureka is way better than Little Caesar’s, even in the “Hot and Ready” scenario, and when we order pizza we usually order from them. (I had a competing, delivery style pizza a few days ago and it was bad bad.)

It was only because of social networking that my “case” reached the owner of Eureka, a discussion came around and I continue to like Eureka Pizza. The owner, Rolf Wilkin, saw my tweet, contacted me, apologized, asked me for more details, and offered to refund my money. Amazing! That’s a great business owner. To do my part, I went in and deleted those tweets and will soon tweet about my continued pizza purchasing from them.

On the opposing front, I ordered a large banner for a one-time event from Vistaprint, along with some flyers and t-shirts. The flyers and t-shirt came, but the banner did not and wasn’t going to. It was massively disappointing and we were furious. I called, quoted the “satisfaction” language from their site. I sent out a tweet about never using them again, detailing my experience in opposition to their Web site’s claim of “Guarantee of Satisfaction” with all the normal “commitment to satisfaction if you’re not 100% satisfied” and all that rubbish. Someone from that company saw my tweet and asked me how they could “help,” and I eventually talked to some deadpan person on the phone in India who just basically said there’s nothing they could [would] do, there was a problem in prodution (not my fault they admitted) and there was no way they could have it to me. They wouldn’t even refund the shipping to make me happy or even talk about quickly printing the banner, Fed-Exing it to me for my one-time event. I could go on, but I won’t. I now use Print Place for everything else and they’ve been great.

A local print shop, Off The Press, treated me rudely. The owner disparaged the quality of my work, my students, and ignored requests for a press check. It was bizarre. I tweeted/facebook-ed it and several friends and acquaintances agreed to not use them. They lost not only my future work but others.

Cox was to show up one morning to install high-speed internet. Their service is way faster than AT&T’s DSL and seems low-cost for the fast service. However, they didn’t show up. I tweeted/facebooked about the classic case of “waiting for the cable guy” who never came… Someone at Cox in Missouri Direct Messaged me with “How can I help?” and she meant it. She took care of it (they had it scheduled wrong on their end) and got me a quick install for the next day. Day of, she followed up. All able to happen because of these social networking tools.

So, to recap (anyone still there?):

Reasons I’ll keep going to Eureka Pizza

• Good pizza
• Good price
• Local business
• Conscientious and respectable owner

Reasons I’ll never use Vistaprint again

• Remote, faceless owners
• Indian tech support. I’m not sure what it is about the combination and our system of corporate capitalism and something over there, but the near-universal bad experience with Indian tech support is infinitely more frustrating than the malfunctioning product itself. The sly using of some American-sounding name. The attempt to speak with an American accent. The experience is riddled with deceit from the start! (Indian people? Always have loved all the Indian people and students I’ve met and worked with. And the food!)
• Unsatisfactory compensation when they screwed up

Reasons I’ll keep using Cox internet

• A nice, semi-local contact
• I have to — it’s the best provider of high-speed internet
• Good price for high-speed

Personal Goals Based on the above experiences:

• Continue to send out more and more tweets when I’ve had a positive experience with a business, such as the service, food and atmosphere that we’ve gotten at Geraldi’s restaurant. Every time I go, I’m practically sloshing red sauce into my phone “keys” as I can’t wait to spread the wonder of the food to my friends and “followers.” Many of my friends have gone to that restaurant based on my recommendations and have also loved it. Same with Petra Cafe.
• Try to keep perspective before I tweet
• Tweet ever more about positive local business experiences

Ten Career Tips

I recently got a copy of the new edition of The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects. There’s a nice little summary of “ten career tips for computer animators and digital artists,” and here they are:

1. Be prepared for change
2. Focus on a realistic goal
3. Know your digital craft
4. Update and customize your reel and portfolio
5. Be prepared to work as a member of a team
6. Develop an appreciation for preproduction
7. Focus on issues that may impact your health
8. Learn about the history of digital creation
9. Learn about the business aspects of your career
10. Continue to develop your artistic vision

Is The Office real?

I’ve had two students in two days come in and, with some surprise and consternation, relate their new work situations to either Office Space or The Office. Apparently, there is some belief out there among the younger crowd that those shows (movie) are somehow fantasy. It’s fun to think back on all of my work experiences and the people with whom I’ve shared a cubicle farm as I confirm to the students that those shows are based completely on reality and the characters are all based on real people all around us. I have absolutely worked with an Angela, a nightmare secretary who refused to do anything to help me with my job and was outright witch-ish, with a Phyllis, a mad Pagan woman who insisted on saying “God Bless You!” every time I sneezed and thought that changing the file extension was the same as converting a file, with a Michael in the form of a boss who would follow me into the bathroom and stand behind me whilst at the urinal, and flat out reject my (good) ideas to save the business, and it goes on an on. If you get into talking about office romances or client stories, they’re just as nuts.

So to my students who are headed out into the workplace, remember: do not take these people seriously, have fun with them, get to know them and do things for them, don’t talk about them behind their backs, don’t get involved in the office gossip, and if the people are just inaccessible and you’re way too stressed out, find another job.

Wait. when?

Every house was wired

“Photo-telegraphy allowed any writing, signature or illustration to be sent faraway – every house was wired.”
- Jules Verne, 1863, speaking of the distant future

How Should You, the Student, Design?

Hello student designers! I’m excited to teach three classes this semester, Web Design 1, Elements of Animation, and Typography. I started thinking about what needs to be said to you as you enter these classes, in the interest of enabling you to get the most out of this experience. So, instead of saving it for the first day of classes, with your accompanying blank stares, I hope you read through this.

You’ll be assigned projects in each class that are designed to make you think and work through problems, initially without the computer. It’s true. As you begin to work on a design project, as well as during the design and production, keep these things in mind.

Worth the time.
Has what you’ve designed been worth the time to make it? Will it be worth the viewer’s time to look at it? Spend enough time to make it so. You’ll never have enough time, so use it wisely. Successful design graduates who stand far above their peers in both work ethic and portfolio strength, will have slept very little during their college career. These students spend every possible moment learning, experimenting, sketching, investigating and observing.

Is it new?
Is what you’re doing new? Have you seen it done before? Once? A thousand times? Has the viewer seen it a thousand times? Should you use the very trendy floral or plant-like graphics in the background of your work, combined with the ever-hanging-on subtle one-color gradient? Should you continue to use all lowercase letters, since it seems so rebellious and “designerly”? Should you run words together with one of them bold? Should you use handwritten, illustration-style letter forms instead of the “Type tool”? Look through the latest design mags and blogs to see what’s trendy, both for inspiration and as caution.

Be clever.
As you start the design process with research, word brainstorms, sketches and storyboards, keep in mind the reaction of the viewer. Are you striving to change his or her perception of an issue or idea? Very few ideas seem to be entirely brand new with a population that doesn’t read or discuss many issues at great depths, so many times with your design, you’re attempting to change or reinforce an existing concept with a very time-limited viewer. How to best do it quickly? And don’t design for design competitions. What is a design competition? Isn’t design a very strong vehicle of specific communication goals many times? When a design is entered into a competition, it tends to be abstracted from the process, target audience and success statistics and runs the risk of becoming nothing more than non-contextual, computer-based art.

A good method:
So, how do you make your class and production time work to the best of your ability? Research, discuss and critique. Look into what you’re doing. Take a little time to figure out the issue or idea. Talk with your friends outside of class about your ideas. Put your work up for critique. Listen to the feedback. Give honest, carefully worded feedback to your fellow students. Go into the design process with confidence: make word lists, do sketches and at some point, sit down at the computer and make it digital.

Woe unto you, non-hard drive backers-up

Woe unto you who do not back up your hard drive, for your time is soon at hand. Back up even the lowliest of your files, lest ye be smitten with the scourge of magnetic emptiness and despair. Replicate your songs, your missives, your graven images and your magical moving graven images, for all hard drives become subject to ruin. Sackcloth and ashes will be your master as your cursings signify your miserable and fallen state of file-lessness, much like Job of old. If only you would listen to and read from the words of the great users manual you would come to understand that the life of the hard drive is brief, indeed around three to five man years, and that all drives will surely give up the ghost. I testify unto you of these truths so that you may know wisdom and live with joy and rejoicing in your archival state.

PS – My experience amounted to a quick trip over to Best Buy, a drive swap, a complete Time Machine restore, and back in business. I was imagining what it would have been like to lose all of our pictures and music, not to mention my projects.

‘Bloody Finger’ Performs at 80s Party

My new band, ‘Bloody Finger,’ played our first gig the other night at my birthday party. On my right is Allen “Anim-eater” Renfroe, and on my left Tommy “Insane in the Membrane” Loya, who played a bit with Cypress Hill in the 90s. I haven’t picked up a guitar and played with any serious intentions for 15 years and the three of us had never played together once. I probably shouldn’t have tried the guitar solo… (The hair was the closest I could find to the original mullet (below) and ended up a cross between Dee Snider and Bette Midler.)

Maybe some video coming soon.

The Passing of the Last of Disney’s Nine Old Men

Knowing the advanced years of Ollie Johnston, the last living member of Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men” team of animators, I set up an automatic Google Alert that would let me know when his name passed through the major news outlets. I knew that it would probably be news of his death, as he was in his mid 90s. Surely enough, the Alerts started coming in today and it turns out that Ollie Johnston, one of the main animators on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Bambi and Pinocchio, has passed on. I just told my animation class earlier this semester about Ollie Johnston and his presence on the Disney Team for all those years, and last semester we watched “Frank and Ollie.” I just checked Wikipedia and it has already been updated. Long live Ollie Johnston!

Weather widgets

I’m a weather afficionado. I actually sit and watch the weather channel. I watch the local weather during the local news broadcast on tv. I check various weather web sites to keep updated. I check the accuweather mobile web page on my phone. I look at the newspaper charts and maps. I look out the window continually to see what’s going on with the cloud patterns and precipitation chances and will sit and watch the rain or snow come down as if I’ve never seen it before.

One method that I’ve really come to enjoy and rely on is hitting the F12 key on my Mac and watching my weather widgets come open in Dashboard. As you can see from the thumbnails, I have about nine that I watch. These widgets come from mostly differing organizations and individuals, from what I can tell. Many of the widgets are well-designed and work otherwise very well. Most include nice design elements such as “shininess,” elegant transparency and a straightforward layout, using the normal css, html and javascript. Most of the time I have them set to the same location: Fayetteville, AR, where I live. Other times, when weather around here is “slow,” I’ll set them to various locations where I’ve lived or spent time, such as Framingham, Massachusetts, Tucson, Arizona, Karlsruhe, Germany, Naples, Italy and London, England.

The widgets usually include the following: static and animated maps imagery (radar, satellite, infrared and combinations), daily or hourly forecast graphics and temperatures, a large real-time temperature display and atmospheric icon, interface animation, webcams and weather photos.

One problem is that none of the widgets seems to work perfectly. It’s a fun time trying to sort out the truth from all the widgets when they don’t match up in many ways, such as on the radar map. For instance, the AccuWeather.com widget tends to always display a very outdated doppler image when compared to the weather.com, WeatherBug or the others (see my screen grab). It could even be considered dangerous when you see that we’re under a tornado watch box in most of the maps except for the AccuWeather one. I have reported this a few times but it doesn’t seem to be fixed yet.

Another annoyance, which one eventually gets used to, is deciphering which links/buttons on the widget will affect another state or section of the widget versus links/buttons that just jump out to the browser. As far as i can tell, the widget makers don’t consistently distinguish, with the sometimes exception of Weatherbug. Their “tabs” open sections in the lower pane, while their links in the lower pane tend to look like standard underlined hyper links.  Even their consistency has a limit, though, with the upper pane “More Observations” and “Alerts” buttons, which open the browser. Point being, when I’m in widget world I’d like to stay in widget world, or know exactly when I’m going to be thrust back into browser world. They could probably solve the problem by throwing an underline on the “More Observations” link and somehow on the ALERTS. The constantly moving wind speed and direction indicator on the WeatherBug widget is nice. They could probably lose the red mercury thermometer at the left as it amounts to clutter for me.

Many of the widgets have animated interface elements with click-inspired drawers that open and close, or collapsing/simplifying looks (default Apple weather widget), or an expanding weather map. The animation “award” probably goes to the NOAA round widget for having animation happen at just about every click. Click one of the four tabs and they circle around and disappear behind the round body of the widget, then animate out to reappear when the reset button is clicked. A nice touch, which shows they’ve done their interface/usability testing, is that when I click the Radar tab, it shows me the radar from a high altitude, then automatically zooms down closer to my actual location for a few seconds before slowly zooming back out to a regional view. Very slick.

The “Cams” or webcams features are pretty OK, but I don’t use the “Photos” much as they seem to be random photos of flowers and bugs.

The “Aviation Weather” widget I include just because I am also an aircraft freak and like to pretend that all of the data on that widget makes complete sense to me. The major problem with that widget is that it won’t remember my location and defaults constantly back to Switzerland. The developer Pascal Dreer seems to have made available an update that I’ll install, which might take care of that problem. I include the BBC’s widget because I like the economical design and pretending I “might be going” to London soon. (It has only settings for England.)

One of the reasons we moved out of southern Arizona was to live among seasons, green, water, weather and Arkansas has proven to be just the place for all of it. Here we have, as they say, four distinct seasons, which has made it a very fulfilling place for a weather-phile like me.

Where to get the widgets:
Aviation Weather Widget
NOAA Weather Widget
Weather Channel widget (and gadgets)
Weather Underground Widget
WeatherBug Widget
AccuWeather Weather Widget
BBC Weather Widget