Light Up The Rain

For a few months now I’ve been an evangelist for the Inbox Zero philosophy.

Inbox Zero is all about keeping your inbox clear by dealing with e-mail quickly and – above all – efficiently.

One of the key lessons I’ve learned along the way is probably one of the simplest: to avoid e-mail clutter, make sure nothing redundant gets into your inbox in the first place.

That hotel mailing list you signed up for by accident? Those offers you get sent every week by that e-tailer you used a year ago? Don’t delete each one by hand – instead, take a moment to unsubscribe once and for all.

So far, so good. But the real power in attaining e-mail Zen can be found in filters – or as MS Outlook calls them, rules.

At work I belong to dozens of distribution lists. Some are 100% useful. Some are partly useful but need human intervention to sort the wheat from the chaff. Rules can’t help with those.

There are several d-lists, however, which regularly send me messages of a predictable nature which will never be relevant to me. And given enough predictability, even a dumb old computer can figure out what’s important (i.e. needs to land in my inbox) versus what isn’t (i.e. needs sticking into a folder, or just deleting altogether so it never troubles me).

Over the last few weeks I’ve slowly been accumulating these automated rules.

Some are simple (if an e-mail arrives with subject line “x”, delete it immediately). Some are more complicated (if an e-mail arrives from address “y” whose subject isn’t “z”, forward it to a chosen person, move it to a selected folder and mark it as read).

The result is that my work inbox has been gradually, perceptibly quietening down. The important stuff is still there, clear as day. But the noise is receding.

Sometimes there’s a curveball which means I have to fine-tune my filters. Maybe person B has sent out an irrelevant e-mail which person A normally sends out. No problem – just edit the appropriate rule accordingly.

This process has continued to the point where – as of this morning – I had 27 rules diligently working away on my inbox, around the clock.

Today, I tried to add the 28th. And got this message from Outlook:

One or more rules could not be uploaded to Exchange Server and have been deactivated. This could be because some of the parameters are not supported or there is insufficient space to store all of your rules.

Confused, I searched Outlook Help for assistance. I found this:

The storage limit for your rules is 32 KB. If the total size of your rules exceeds this limit, some rules may be disabled. To reduce the size of your rules, do one or more of the following:

• Delete rules you don’t need.
• Combine rules when possible. For example, if more than one rule moves messages to the same folder, combine the rules.
• Use a shorter name for your rules.
• If one of your rules moves e-mail messages to a Personal Folders file (.pst), move the .pst file to a location that has a shorter path. For example, instead of using C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\MyFolder.pst, use C:\MyFolder.pst.

What?!

This is the stupidest thing I’ve read in a very long time.

I’m using the world’s more prevalent enterprise e-mail solution (Outlook/Exchange). My archived e-mail alone clocks up 1.03GB.

And I have to arse about changing the names of my rules, moving my archive folder somewhere with a shorter path, or – the most likely option – deleting rules and forgetting about adding new ones altogether… because Microsoft has allocated an arbitrary fixed limit for rules which is lower than the RAM of my 1982 ZX Spectrum?

Pathetic.

I gather, from searching online, that there’s no patch or workaround for this – at least not without installing third-party add-ons (and that’s never going to happen in a locked-down IT environment).

Thanks, Outlook 2003, for preventing me from properly streamlining my inbox and working more effectively. You suck.

Recognise this thing?

I certainly do – in fact I seem to spend half my life looking at it, jabbing it with my fingers, or swearing at it.

Yes, it’s a ticket machine. But not just any ticket machine. If we’re being anal (and we’re all friends here, so why not?) it’s a Scheidt & Bachmann Ticket XPress.

There are apparently over 700 of these things around the UK rail network. At least seven train operators have deployed them. (If you really want to, you can spent €4,600 doing a four-day course in Germany on how to nurture, cherish and repair them. You get a certificate and everything.)

But you know what? I’d like to propose an urgent maintenance programme for these machines, involving the business end of a large axe.

The Ticket Xpress, you see, does my head in every time I use it to collect tickets I’ve ordered online. Read on and I’ll explain why.

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Screen 1

So here’s how the ticket collection process starts.

I’m guessing this welcome screen is the only part of the machine’s look and feel which East Midlands Trains can control. It’s quirky and fun.

It’s also consistent with the company’s stylish use of three stock graphic elements: a palette of light blue, dark blue and light grey; tightly-tracked white Futura type; and a red dot. *

Looks like collecting our tickets could be a friendly, visually-appealing experience, right?

Screen 2

Uh-oh.

I count 114 words on this screen. This begins to make me very annoyed.

For one thing, I don’t need to see about 110 of them. If I’d been given the simple options Buy tickets or Collect tickets to begin with, the machine would’ve realised I didn’t need to see any of the fare options at all.

(One of the most popular alternative machines, the Shere FastTicket, has exactly this binary choice on its opening screen. It’s way simpler to use.)

For another thing, why split out each of the six listed destinations into two separate buttons? The different ticket types aren’t explained, and the prices displayed are wrong for anyone except adults paying full fare – hence the sexy caveat Railcard and child discounts can be applied later in the ticket selection process.

Why not just let users drill down to the correct ticket type – then see the fare?

Also, why have one button which says More Popular Destinations… and another which says Any Destination? Are we supposed to be able to guess if our destination’s popular?

As if that wasn’t enough, those randomly-sized buttons look like I designed them on Paint. Not a good look.

But let’s push on through, and tap the Collect Pre-Paid Tickets button.

Screen 3

OK. At least the word-count has dropped significantly now. We insert our card into the slot and await further instructions.

The next thing that happens is the LCD panel above the card reader displays the message Card authorisation declined.

Uh? What was it trying to authorise? I thought the card was just for identification purposes? And yes, that is indeed the case – the machine just displays that message by default, every single time it goes through this process.

Why? Who knows?

Screen 4

Now, I know the QWERTY keyboard isn’t the be-all and end-all. And some would argue a typewriter-style layout on a public kiosk is potentially unfriendly for less tech-literate folks.

But really. On balance, is there any defence for an alphabetical display like this? Especially when the Z is left stranded to the side of the, um, otherwise really-well-thought-out 5×5 matrix of letters?

And the first usability checklist for kiosks I found online ranks “Keyboard has QWERTY layout” as number 1 in its list of vital attributes for input devices. Too right.

Screen 5

This is where I really start to get irritated.

These are the tickets I’ve ordered – so now I’m given the option to Print All Journeys. As opposed to what? Print some of them? There’s no other button!

And how about that matrix next to my tickets, kindly outlining their details? Adult(s) and Child(ren) – OK, understood those.

But AAA.(s) and Supl.(s)? What the hell are you talking about? What are they, and why are you showing me them on this screen?

Screen 6

Finally we get to the printing stage. We know this because there’s a little picture of an inkjet printer under the sexy legend Print State. Get on with it!

Screen 7

Oh look. The first thing on this list is a Type SGL. The second is Type SPL. Glad we cleared that up.

Screen 8

Tum tee tum… The fact that my seat reservation is COMPLIMENTARY is very useful information at this point – to differentiate it, presumably, from those paid seat reservations we all make these days. Were the designers of this interface paid by the word?

Screen 9

Finally the usability steeplechase has been completed, and we conclude with perhaps my favourite screen of all. In a metaphysical sense, aren’t we all at some point taking our receipt, yet waiting for it simultaneously? I know I am.

So there you have it. Ever used a worse public computer interface than this one? I’d love to hear from you – if only so I can avoid unfortunate displays of rage by steering well clear of it.

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* In ads elsewhere this red dot has been everything from a car headlight, to an olive, to the middle of a  - presumably very rare – joint of beef. This time around it’s some Space Invader-type dude’s head. Peculiar, but each to their own.