Mike Altman | Personal ramblings and adventures

ING’s web interfaces have long been the textbook definition of intuitive and innovative (see?). After years of being a customer, the great conveniences of the site start to fade into the background of an overall amazing user experience. Isn’t that the goal after all? One of these small intricacies popped out at me recently.

I was setting up a reoccurring automatic transfer from my checking account. I wanted it to take money out every pay period. In my case, this is always the 15^th and last day of the month. Having set this up with other bank sites in the past, I was prepared to set up a transfer every 15^th and a separate automatic transfer on the 1^st of every month. Because of the nature of the calendar, every 2 weeks wouldn’t work in my case and selecting a specific date at the end of the month would not apply to every month (since they have different number of days). 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that ING had done their research on when people get compensated and how they manage their money. A custom solution of “Fifteenth and End of Month” saved me from trying to mold the functionality the best I could to my specific need. Instead, the opposite happened. My specific need was natively supported by the functionality.

I often hear clients struggle to fit their process into a CMS (Content Management System). I have some opinions on what a CMS is and what a CMS should do.

• A CMS should fit an organization’s needs and improve the overall process without causing the organization to reinvent the wheel for existing processes that aren’t broken. This can mean:
  • Fitting into an existing CRM system;
  • Hooking into a current database, or helping to improve data collection.
• A CMS is a tool to help manage a website that reflects the organization.
  • The same way your materials should reflect what your are building;
  • It’s still going to rain regardless of how you build your house, so don’t skimp on the roof.

If your CMS is hurting the organization’s process or the end user’s experience, then your CMS does not work. The CMS should be able to bend and mold to work as a tool that reflects your needs and alleviate kinks in the chain. Not the other way around.

… End Rant

With the beta of Axure RP 6, one of the things that I noticed (intentional or bug) is that the locking behavior has changed from the current release. This prompted a strange super dorky discussion with my colleague on the implications the term “locking” has on its interaction. It became apparent that we had different interpretations of what locking should do.

In previous versions of Axure, the user could select an object and still copy/paste it. The pasted duplicate would not inherently be locked. The new version does not allow for this.

What are the reasons why a user would lock an item?

• To ensure the attributes of an object or group of objects
• To be able to manipulate nearby objects without cursor hinting interference
• To be able to select all intersecting objects while excluding the locked one

It comes down to our definition of what “locked” is. My colleague’s interpretation is that a “locked” object is locked from all manipulation besides “unlocking.” When I think of “locked,” it means that the object is locked from all destructive manipulation. I use destructive to mean anything that changes the object in any way from its current state. This would include any interaction besides unlocking and copying.

Maybe I’m just cranky I have to change.