Most of the conference calls that I’m involved with go pretty smoothly. People dial in, the system says something like “The leader has not yet arrived”, and you hear music until the organizer shows up. Give or take five minutes, the call starts on time and without any major hassles. Occasionally, though, there’s a hiccup. […]

As I picked up the mail the other day, I was greeted by a small pile of catalogs. Each one was addressed to me “or current resident”, indicating that the mailings were at least partially based on zipcode. And with summer just around the corner, each catalog prominently featured the store’s outdoor furniture line. However, […]

A few days ago, I got a flyer in the mail from a nearby restaurant. The flyer itself was fairly well-designed, with coupons on the front and a partial menu on the back. At the top of the flyer, there was a call to action encouraging people to visit the restaurant’s website to view the […]

I needed to print out a few photos, so I headed to the local pharmacy to use one of their photo kiosks. The user interface wasn’t very intuitive, and the touchscreen was in pretty dire need of a recalibration. But those weren’t the most frustrating parts of the experience. When I got to the point […]

A few days ago, I noticed that one of my recurring bills was a little bit higher than usual. So, I went to the provider’s website and tried to sign in. I was virtually certain that I typed in the right information, but it kept giving me a weird and unhelpful error. Figuring that it […]