ED HAYES

I just read an article in the Chicago Tribune about the different types of beeps CTA fare boxes make on buses.  After reading it, I could not stop thinking about the decision making process the CTA used when designing the form and functionality behind the fare boxes, Chicago Card readers, and fare acceptance process.

If I were designing the bus fare system and process I would have done the following:

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The US Government has embarked upon a mission to convert all US TV broadcast from analog to digital. For more information on the history and details on the conversion go to Wikipedia or to the Government DTV site. Here is my analysis.

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At USG we have many white boards in our conference rooms, and most of them are accompanied by Egan brand dry erase markers. Every time someone starts to use one of the markers, I get rather agitated; the odor of the markers is nearly unbearable. This is not just my thought, it is a belief that I share with others; I have witnessed my boss commenting on how badly the markers smell as he crinkles his nose. The strangest thing is, my coworkers who use the markers use them like they have no idea they smell so badly.

I decided to take things into my own hands, as I usually do, and I sent a letter to the manufacturer of the markers. It appears as though they couldn’t care less how badly they smell, as long as they produce “maximum satisfaction” when erasing. Now, I don’t know what sort of person only rates a marker based on its erasability, or what person only asked the focus group to rate its “erasability” and not anything else, but the ENTIRE experience of using the marker should be factored into the “satisfaction”. I’ll tell you this; I will not be investing in Egan if their thought process is so convoluted.

Here is the e-mail chain:

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The other week I wanted to set up a direct deposit into my Roth IRA through work, so that a portion of every paycheck went into my Roth IRA. The experience was interesting, to say the least. It got me thinking… Why do large corporations make erroneous decisions?

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I usually put up my “Privacy Please” hanger on my door handle at the hotels I stay at because they always want to clean when I’m still sleeping and because I really don’t need my room cleaned every day. When I have that sign up, most hotels will slip something under the door telling me that I can call the front desk and ask them to clean the room if I want it cleaned later in the day. This hotel here in Norfolk I blogged about the other day has this letter that has been copied so many times, it’s getting to the point that they need to replace it. I think it’s very unprofessional. Take a look at it, this scan looks EXACTLY like it does in person:

I am on a slightly new project at work now. I have been working heavily on my old project getting labels applied to units of board by hand and all that goes with that in our ERP system. Now I am working with plants that have a lot of robotics get these labels applied and ERP transactions performed automatically. The plant I am at now in Norfolk Virginia is one of USG’s newest plants, well, newest board lines. Since it is so new, it has pretty much the most robotics of any of our plants, so that is really neat. We are scheduled to turn the board line on within a month, and we need to have our labeler all set by then. I am the one that is responsible to get the labeler online and transacting by the time the board line gets started.

The picture above is the printer (Zebra 170PAX4) that is part of the whole labeling system. I don’t have a picture of the entire machine, but it is really quite amazing.