Greetings. I am the Global Product Manager for Trading Grid Online, the GXS web portal to the Trading Grid. For a while, I have been communicating inside GXS with a marginally work-related blog and have made this leap to the external world. I have been blogging in different contexts and businesses for 8 years now. I thought I should say a bit about myself, briefly and then try to convince you to keep reading

I am one of those funny people in Marketing who have a degree in Software Engineering and experience building web applications. My primary functions at work are gathering customer requirements, designing the Trading Grid strategy and producing plans for the engineers to carry out. At home, my wife and I raise two boys. On the first Sunday of every month, I read poetry and short stories at a little tea house in my not-so-little-anymore home town in West Virginia. Those are the highlights. I also like to debate philosophy, love learning phrases in different languages and eating new foods.

Regarding this blog, I thought I would give you a little list of the things I am likely to blog about as well as give you an example of my writing style (or lack thereof) that illustrates one of the likely topics.

• Trading Grid anecdotes - from time to time I will probably talk about projects or thoughts related to the design of the Trading Grid, although John Radko already does this better than I will.
• Reviews of good-looking web products and services - I like to stay in tune with the usability community and with new and interesting web applications to keep professionally current and to drive more improvements into the Grid.
• Thoughts on interface design and usability - I have a tendency to think about design in both likely and unlikely contexts and love to hear what other people think about building good human interaction.

To illustrate that last bullet, here’s a thought from my last flight. I am currently in Bangalore reviewing a portal upgrade project to move customers on to our new portal. I took a Lufthansa flight from Dulles International through Frankfurt. This is a rather long trip and so I had several opportunities to use the reclining seat. I found the controls for operating the chair to be clunky. They were analog, imprecise and didn’t give very good indications of what would happen when you pressed them. Frequently, I would hold down a button too long and end up in akward positions because I assumed that I could lay down flatter than the chair would let me. Maybe you’ve had similar experiences.

So I started thinking about how it could be better. That is, after all, why I’m here. So, what are the problems that could be solved?

• The buttons were mechanical and had been used long enough that they weren’t as accurate as they had been designed to be.
• Although different parts of the chair had their own controls, the whole chair would move even if I only wanted to move one part.
• There were no presets, only adjustments. I suppose if you always fly the same airline (which I don’t) you could get used to it. I was flying blind.

Step 1 - replace the buttons with a touch screen pixel display. Controls should stay precise longer and it’s possible, if the controls need to change, to change the code rather than rip and replace the whole physical unit. This is more cost-effective over the long term and stays easier for the passenger to control.

Step 2 - display on screen the parts of the chair as draggable within their range of motion. This way, it’s possible to see what the full range of motion is without having the chair push you around in uncomfortable ways and spilling your Masala Chai (which Lufthansa offers exclusively on flights to and from India, by the way). Move the parts to a comfortable looking position and then press a button to have the chair gradually adjust into shape. That way, you are not contorting yourself around like a Cirque du Soleil cast-member trying to figure out how the chair moves.

Step 3 - provide some presets for positions like “eating, reading, sleeping, snoozing while sitting.” Choose one from a menu on the screen, preview it on the display, and turn it on. You could then, supposing you wanted your head a tiny bit higher, just tweak from there. Although, it would be a bad idea to display “brace for impact” in general. You would only want that one to show in case of an emergency

What do you think?  Don’t hesitate to leave comments.  I love to read them and I am good about responding.