Warning! Cool new feature!

Despite their best attempts to hide this sign on the filthy wall behind the ATM (is that a spider above it?), I noticed this the other day at the local Hy-Vee. Its pretty lame, but I unfortunately know what they are talking about. The Sprint campus had one of these, and its communicated even more poorly. Check it out: Danger, envelopes are prohibited. You jerk. Now, I know what they mean and why they are doing it. There's a not very new law that everyone is finally complying with to save money. Your checks are basically destroyed at the receiving bank; a scan (and a file of meta-data) flow electronically across the countryside to move the funds about appropriately. Scanning at the ATM probably means they can skip several steps, and just toss your paper check in the shredder. You do the scanning work for them, instead of the box of checks and envelopes going to a fulfillment center where they are opened, scanned and so on. Speeds payment also, which is always supposed to be good. Though I always like the delay in fund removal that giving someone a check affords me. In practice, to the end user, this is pretty cool, and you get to see your check on the screen before confirming everything, so its pretty clear the system worked correctly. But, as you can tell, I have problems with the way at least Commerce did this. I suspect most other banks did just as poorly, assisted with obtuse ATM designers.

1. As you can see above, the communications is awful. Take a feature, and turn it into a constraint. It practically reverses the standard joke to "its not a feature, its a bug." I am not a communications designer, but I am sure there's a way to communicate this technical requirement, without it being a prohibition on user behavior. Sure, it says please, but aside from the warning-like graphic, there's not a positive word on there; nothing about the new feature and just insert the checks alone. Its not even that close to the slot. Anyway, there are no envelopes, and I don't think they would even fit in the slot, so its not a huge risk.
2. Speaking of no envelopes, why not? No, I know its supposed to scan the check, but placing deposits in an envelope has been going on for...ever. Before ATMs, you were given little envelopes (or similar devices) for cash or check deposits thru the pneumatic tubes or power drawers at bank drive thrus. Almost anyone who has banked at all will be used to this system. So, why not a transition period? Provide envelopes, but encourage users to try the new envelopeless service. You have a full-color interactive system, so nifty interstitials or banners (better) can be loaded into the process. After 6 months, remove the envelope rack, and after a year remove the capability of accepting them at all.
3. And this envelope habituation brings up another real-world issue I, for one have. I never endorse checks going into ATMs. Its not required by law (I am very sure) and doesn't seem to be an issue in ATMs (never had one rejected). Also, I forget. I don't carefully prepare for my trek to the ATM, and they NEVER have pens on site. So, by the time I am there, its impossible to sign them. No, I am not a girl, so I don't have a purse with pens. Okay, see any pens on that Sprint location ATM? Neither do I. Yet, they seem to be scanning for endorsement, and get mad if its not present. This is just poor design. Provide a pen, or two for when it gets stolen. Provide a bucket of them like envelopes, and don't worry about the loss rate as its free advertising. Or, don't require it, and if some new anti-terror legislation does indeed require it, provide a way to authenticate in some other manner.

It pays to put your resume on the internet

It seems my new boss was looking for some office help, fill-in daycare, etc. While considering hiring me, she also looked at Alison's resume. She came with me to work today to interview, and now has a job. Now she can get around to the difficult work of putting her feet up and reading magazines.

Okay, she doesn't really start till Friday, and has nothing to do till I go home.

I do not think "font" means what you think it means

I am regularly asked to change the font size, or asked what the best font color would be. This bugs the crap out of me, but normally I keep my mouth shut as its just too much effort. I have too traditional a design background. I've specified stuff for guys on linotype machines. Hell, I've set lead type and run a letterpress myself. So, here's the truth (the short version): A font is a collection of typefaces. Originally, sorta like the "font of wisdom," as an actual thing. Here's a physical font: Or, a type cabinet. Okay, actually the etymology is the same as foundry, cause you cast all the type. But it works for me to remember it. Anyway, this case does not contain a single font, but ideally its in a production environment, and a cabinet or three is occupied entirely with being one font. Within that, you have a number of typefaces. Here's a selection of them from one of my favorites, Futura: Note that they vary in weight and tilt. A common weight is "bold." Ever heard it called "boldface?" That's because its a bold typeface. Even heavier weights are black, and half-divisions are usually "extra," like extra-bold, etc. Adrian Frutiger came up with a numbering scheme for his Univers face, but they are still usually labeled with the traditional names. Note the neat lighter and narrower faces that you probably didn't know existed. Italics don't really exist. Not sure where the word came from, and too lazy to look it up now. Oblique is what that's called in the type world where I come from. Now, another important thing is that all these faces exist. Selecting the bold face from the list is the right way to get pretty, accurate bold type. So, what happens when you just hilite a word, and press ctrl-B? Well, nothing good. The program applies a style to the face. It takes a guess as to what bold, or oblique, might look like in that sort of face, and just applies it, thickening lines or tilting forms. Its not bad these days, but its not right either. The type designer spent literally years perfecting his oblique face, and you just pressed ctrl-I and ignored all his work.

Michael Geist shows me the true meaning of Web 2.0

Social networking sites are often the very definition of web 2.0. But an editorial this morning describes many of these services as walled gardens, and calls to open them up. And now that I think about it, I agree. As usual, I think I always have agreed, and just didn't know it. Of course all information should be free, and so on. However, in the real world, there are other problems. Disregarding technical difficulties, I see two:

1. Monetizing it: An excessively open structure is hard to make money off. How is twitter gonna make anyone rich? Okay. Skype, Flickr, etc. do have a plan, and are (for as much as I follow things) possibly going to profitable with their businesses for the long haul. This model won't work for everyone, of course, so it takes a forward-thinking company to just be nice enough to start opening their data. It took some effort to just get Sprint to move all their help info in front of signon (and people are still suspicious of it). Feeds and tagging and other "2.0" features are a step beyond, and "to be nice to customers" or "its cool" will not sell them to the guys with the checkbook.
2. Legal restrictions: Or at least, security restrictions. I've dealt with scads of them, but how about Netflix? They recently discussed why they cannot disclose your rental info. Its a law, and is what has caused the extra burden of customer-acting disclosure, and limits on how far their social network technology can go. Similar concerns (or, if we're unlucky, laws) will dog the pure social network services, especially when we think of the chidren. Sure, its mostly theater and hype, but there are some risks to just releasing all your info for search, or getting RSS feeds, or allowing any schmo to build a plugin.

Like everything, it seems we've gone too far, and not far enough all at the same time. So, how to do it on a legacy product?

1. Pray you are not in a highly regulated industry.
2. Okay, even then its not a huge deal. Customers can release information, delegate others, etc. Within limits, but its possible. Everyone needs to get used to this sort of security what with increasing fear or the increased maturity of the internet (take your pick)
3. Find a value proposition. A direct one is best, some way to either sell the service, sell access to other services as a result, or find some part of it to be sold as a premium service.
4. Improve your brand. If there is no direct way to monetize the new features, sell the improvements in trust, stickyness and interaction. Some marketing guys will object to missing their goals for page views in their current model, so you will need to work around that to make sure other sorts of interactions count, and get them the traffic they need to support your case.

P.S. The lists above are supposed to be numbered. The are showing as bullet lists to me though, so just pretend. Or tell me if they work for you. Bah, blogger!

Selectors & Labels

Disregarding handwriting, counting on your fingers and even typewriters as being just methods of indicating, the first method of selecting information for use or further processing is the abacus. This is a direct selection method. The selector and the indicator are joined, or in this case, the actual same object (the bead). The slide rule, to include various manual rotary computers, are of course very similar. There is no further removal of the user from the interaction than by moving the relationship bars or grabbing the edge of the indicator slider. The magnetic compass similarly has a manual dial which allows establishing relationships of position and azimuth, and when coupled with constantly updating magnetic information allows monitoring of bearing and heading during travel. Such interactivity continued thru to relatively technical, computerized systems such as the 1960s-era flight simulator control panel shown here. The radio frequency selector (a similar method was used on aircraft of the era) is a single dial for megacycles (the 100s, 10s and 1s place from a limited list) and a dial below it for the tenths place. An arguably similar method is most early adding machines (and some early cash registers). In the pre 10-key days the were of the direct-entry type. A typical layout is an entire row of all 10 possible digits for each place in the total number. Selecting a value per place leaves the key depressed, serving as an indicator. Eventually, registers (lists of the numbers selected) started appearing. This led to the 10-key pad allowing an indicator separate from a selector. The adding machine evolved into the current form with a single set of entry buttons, and a register of entered values (or a printer). Really all 10-key devices (even aviation radios these days) use this model. The desktop computer is more or less the ultimate extension of this, with the keyboard and mouse often not even attached to the display device. And now, for some time really, there seems to be a push to move back to directly connecting the input and display, or action. One good example is that bastion of selectors and indicators, the light-up elevator button for each floor. Which is being reconsidered as a 10-key system, with its predictably unpredictable results. Touch screens are the most obvious and dynamic of these though, from Cintiq-like products, to of course mobile devices. I have seen two things that bug me about touch screens. One is that the electronic tying of the functions is rather tenuous; display-thickness induced parallax and processing delays means the pointer is near where you are indicating, not at the tip of the stylus (or finger). The other problem is the tendency of practically everyone to forget their history, so any good designs (or bad) from the past will not be applied. As I've touched on before, the iPhone has this issue in several regards. See a video of how the user's finger (okay, its me) covers the indicator/selector, so you have to try, then move out of the way to make sure it worked, or fix it. For all my whining, a solution might emerge over time. Eventually some good design standards will be developed for these products, mergers and product failures will cause consolidation and with any luck the good ideas will rise to the top, relatively universally.

I. Want. This.

Of course, everyone in the room with me assumes it means "drug users." Just like they don't find the Jacob Nielsen drinking game f!@#$ing funny as hell either.

Confirmation messages

Two things today made me think about how nice a confirmation message is. First was activating a new credit card. You get this in the mail: And call. Welcome to the Commerce Bank Card Activation Line. Please enter your sixteen-digit account number...

Beep, beep, beep, beep. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Beep.

To confirm, please enter the last four digits of the primary account holder's Social Security number...

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Thank you for calling. Goodbye. What? What happened? Is it activated, or is that a fatal error? It sounds like an IVR with a fatal error. And they really did hang up. I had to call in to a person to make sure I had a payment method as I wandered town this Saturday. Turns out, yes, it activated, so aside from my dissatisfaction, they are loosing money on live call handling over a simple lack of an IVR message. Second, I am ripping in a whole bunch of the wife's CDs we never got around to, using iTunes. Not too painful as I have determined that it can handle multiple disks in queue, so both my drives are loaded at once. They cannot both be ripping, but it still saves me time OTOH, I cannot tell if its done without walking in and looking, fairly carefully, at the computer. I have some other processes (a manual cleanup thingy, some CD burning software) that defaults to beeping when its done. When those are running, I just crank the volume, an only wander back in when it beeps "complete." iTunes doesn't even have a complete strip or anything like gmail. You just have to notice that everything is green and checked, and nothing is orange and animated.

Updated 8/21 --- Case # 07-002069

Update 4: Picked up the truck today. It stinks. Apparently, the windows were down while it was abandoned in Missouri, as all the snack debris, paperwork, dog treats, etc. on the floors and window cubbies has gone bad. And, the villains smoked and left beer cans, so that's all great with the hellish sun. Also, it was out of gas, so I had to spend an extra half an hour at the fix-it place while they looked for gas for it. Apparently, it was at least partially a pointless joyride, abandoned when out of gas. Yeah, deductible kicked in, so I had to write a check for $300-something today. This feels wrong that I have to pay for something wildly not our fault, and after never making another claim, ever. Update 3: The events you are about to read took place between 2:35 pm and 6:05 pm on August 13th. Yes, it was a trip back to the 50s. All paperwork and physical appearances. Well, unless you want to mail in notarized copies. And no one tells you what to do, so we had to drive across the whole damned city... twice. Anyway, saw the truck. Weirdly, the box sorta hidden in the back seat with the tarps, bungees and FAK is missing. The ladder and vaccuum out in the open in the bed are right there and unmolested. Explain that. And, Alison shares no musical taste with those who drink malt liquor in stolen trucks and leave the cans behind. The truck starts...ish, and has no damage the insurance guy missed, but there's something else wrong with the ignition mechanics, so the steering wheel only sorta turns. Not really drivable in any safe manner, so its being towed tomorrow morning. Still much insurance to work out. Not sure, in the end, how much out of pocket there will be. Oh, and also I loved how this was a number originally. As we move thru the system, I have more and more numbers I absolutely have to refer to: - Police case number 07-002069 - Claim number UMD6293 (yes, they call it a "number" despite the 3 alphas) - Tow reference number 705-105 Update 2: The Mission detective wandered over to Missouri first thing and gave us a report, paraphrased: - The vaccuum is there! - The ladder is there! - That's all weird as the doodlebug is not! What? The small, specialized item is gone? - The dash is broken, and the steering column (not a suprise, as it was stolen!) - The CD player is gone. Shocker. - The CDs are still there! So, stupid thieves. Insurance guy needs to go next, and evaluate it for repair and money. I suspect its screwed up enough we cannot start it with a key, so it'll be a bit before we're driving it. So, status is: Waiting for the insurance guy to call. Update: Its been found. There will be more updates, as we haven't seen it, and cannot till some time Monday, but it was found in KCMO, and is in some impound lot out off Stadium Drive. Alison is pissed that it seems we'll need to pay for the impound lot charge ($75/day!) even though we are the victims here. I'd love it if there was a great story around this, but even if so, I am a pretty mediocre storyteller. So, our truck was stolen, from in front of our house. Apparently, at 4 am this morning, as the dog was trying desperately to wake us up at that point. But she's annoying often enough anyway, so we blew it off. Naturally, it was also filled with my nice Fiberglas stepladder, and Alison's beloved Doodlebug and cannister vac. She's much more upset about those than the truck. Tomorrow, I'll call the insurance company and find out the true nature of the disaster. I have poor hopes for paying out usefully on a 1994 pickup. Hopefully, we'll find the truck abandoned soon enough.

Actually Affordable Chairs

Our deck has been lacking one thing. Well, aside from a reasonably smoke-free neighborhood, and a lack of oppressive heat. Chairs. We do have a number of these slatted wooden folding jobs from World Market my family has given us, but they are sensationally not all weather. One rain and they are inclined to warp, or turn black. And yes we do leave things out by accident. Plastic seemed the right way to go. Don't get me started on the $3 white plastic lawn chair (where did they all come from... and what do they want?). But we've seen a series of neat, sturdy, well-desiged roto-molded chairs that seemed right. Turns out, they start at about $100 per chair. We spent quite a bit of time when we were in the bay area, then online, trying to justify items from DWR (within reach of who?) like the Air Chair or even cooler things like the Bubble Club stuff. But its just not possible. That's stupid. We want to be able to use these things. Lots more searching was in order. Unusually, I cannot find some secret retailer with great prices, or some chinese knockoffs. But I do stumble across office furniture. Swooping office folders, but in boring colors. Then another random google link and... a revelation! The classic steel folding chair, on clearance ($11 each!) because they are fire engine red. IMAGE of our nice chairs... This is perfect. Though accused of being in KU colors, alison just likes red accent items, and everything else tends to be blue as the trim for the house is blue. So red did it. Couldn't be happier. This is our dream for most of our home design or function solutions. Perfect fit, form and function for less than we would have dared dream.

Clever watering stuff

Enough with the exclusively work stuff. It'll come back with morphology and polymorphism and other big words soon enough. There's exciting stuff around the house also. As usual, its still equipment. We used to love the Simple Soaker. Essentially a sprinkler system without the Ditch Witch, new water pipes, and general expense. Until a few weeks ago, the biggest problem was finding them. But after three years, they are starting to fail. And, they were never exactly the right size. Always too long or too short. So, when messing around the hardware store trying to find replacement 3/8" tube, and other stuff, I instead found out about the current state of drip systems. They are way, way more exciting than they used to be. Mostly, they don't just drip anymore. Drip systems have always been simple. Cheap 1/2" poly tube, ends are closed by folding and clamping without tools (undo it all you want to relieve pressure seasonally, or for maintenance) and the drip lines are attached by punching holes and just stuffing 1/4" poly tube adapters into the side of the line. The new part, to me:

• They have sprayer heads. A lot of them. We got the 180° heads, and its true, they are truly 180, with 5 foot range.
• They are designed to attach to hoses. Adapters are plentiful, so no more need to run them off a full-on sprinkler system.
• They are sensationally cheap.

I installed 100 ft of line (basically, 100+ feet of garden bed along the side of the house and drive), several 1/4 extensions to cover more area, 12 sprayer heads, and all the bits I need to support this, in like 1 hour, for under $50. And the flow rate is astonishing. They spray wonderfully, so everything is wet and happy, but its at 10 gal/hr per head. With all 12 heads on the two runs we did, that's 2 gal/min. Our house puts out somewhere over 6 (hard to say exactly due to flow constriction at faucets). In practice, you cannot tell its on if you take a shower. Or run another full-flow sprinkler. All in all, when I can spend a few more bucks and spend the time in the 115° heat index, I'll rig up every garden bed we have with these. UPDATE 8/22: Do not hit the hose or head with a weedwhacker. At least they are cheap and easily repairable.

A few days with an iPhone

Yes, I don't own this, so I might have a different opinion after a month. I have used the device a dozen times, so was pretty familiar with it, and just spent the whole weekend using it. I used it as much as I could for all my weekend tasks, legitimately taking notes, mapping stuff to get to it, timing things, browsing when I would otherwise have to haul out a laptop, etc.

Except that no one had the number so I received no calls on it, I feel I worked it out pretty well. The iPhone is one of those products that has a visceral, emotional response. Its so pretty that using it tends to make you happy. There are quite enough glowing reviews from fanboys of all stripes, that I won't proceed further. Oh, its better shaped than I thought. Maybe mostly the thin-ness, but it was a snap to carry, even with a wallet, knife, flashlight, KRZR and so on already in my pockets. Miles better than the Treo 650 I previously borrowed from work for a few weeks.

 Its got at least its share of flaws. Now, I'm gonna disregard all those I've already read, and focus on things I alone think are lame, or which I was surprised to find to be true all these weeks later. You are, as always, free to disagree.

• No LBS - I went out and googled this one; with maps on the home deck I was sure I had just missed some setting, but indeed, there is absolutely no location service at all. Even sector would have been enough to make me happy. This changed my opinion of the whole thing as a network device. It felt like a big iPod after this.
• Browser crashing - Safari likes to crash, sometimes 5 times in an hour. And when it crashes, it takes you back to the home deck. Maybe, it saves your window list, maybe not, but in all cases they are all empty. So I've waited forever to load up info into 5 tabs, and they are all blank. Even if the device is gonna crash, better state preservation would be nice. Also, note there are no error messages. It took a while to make sure it wasn't me hitting something wrong.
• Safari zoom in weird - Its a pure zoom. By the time I have zoomed enough to comfortably read most text that needs a zoom, line lengths are too long to fit on screen. Either I pan constantly (difficult to track) or have to carefully scale and peer at the slightly-too-small text.
• Many not finger-based selectors - My favorite of this is the "odometer-style" rolling number selector for changing time on the alarms. Changing the number involves putting your finger on the number directly. This might work fine for a pen or mouse, but I can't see anything past my finger. Many other functions are like this.
• Many dumbed-down, phone-like interfaces - Again, lets talk about alarms. You get an alarm. And you can dismiss it. That's it. Large, empty screen without extra functions, or even a way into extras. 5 clicks and some dragging can get you into the appointment itself, and set a different alarm time, but why can't I snooze, or reset the reminder time directly? The wife's cheap LG phone has more, perfectly easy to use, features than this for its alarm modes. I expect more than a button or two from a device like this.
• Inconsistent interface - A few interface elements are beautifully designed. The pulldown or combo-box (or whatever you want to call it) in Safari is clearly designed to be worked on a tiny screen and is a snap to use. Many other places have the same basic selector need, and use something else, or, essentially nothing and rely on desktop metaphors. Sometimes, within the same process. Some elements (e.g. settings) have a clickable breadcrumb, others do not, and none give you a way back to the home deck. I know there's a big home-deck button, but I feel (and felt when clicking the device) this broke the breadcrumb paradigm for no great reason.
• Network connection unreliable - I don't mean the "EDGE sucks" part, which is true, but that all my network sockets kept... expiring. Even at home, with full EDGE and full WiFi, it would loose connection. The only way around this seemed to be to cycle the WiFi. Whether using WiFi or not, this action caused the network to wake up and I could continue. I can live with slowness if I have to, just not no connection at all.
• Very poor map searchbase - And, most of all, senselessly so. After a while I started actually doing searches on both the iPhone and the desktop, thru googlemaps directly. Simple searches, like houses in Lenexa could not be found on the iPhone, at all, when using precisely the same search string.
• General lack of affordance - Many items, like the zoom by doubleclick or zoom by multi-touch, are reasonably learnable, but there is no way to discover them except by reading the manual (or deciphering a commercial, or googling "how to..."). I was disappointed in the lack of backup modes and how stripped-down GUI won the day every time.

Think Design - Live Design

The Adaptive Path folks are in the process of interviewing everyone who is presenting at UX week this year. Good stuff in general, but today it was Bill DeRouchey of Ziba Design and the History of the Button blog. Lots of good stuff, but he made one great point that is so obvious to me I never really formalized it, much less said it:

Interaction designers, of course, should be trying to deconstruct everything around them to better train themselves as interaction designers. And the fun thing about that is we’re completely surrounded by examples, it’s all the devices in our daily lives. It’s the cell phones, microwaves, ATM machines, computers, printers, and so on. We’re surrounded by buttons and icons and little blinky lights that can give us examples of how people think about devices and interaction design because there’s one thing that’s definitely true, people don’t approach the product from a void.

Since I am not sure everyone else does this, here's just six things I have done recently that inform my understanding of our world as an environment someone designed:

• Note everything bad about the ATM interface. Is there any reason its bad? Are there any security flaws? Is a warning sticker the best way to inform users of a feature (envelopeless deposits)?
• Compare and contrast pinpads. You know, the payment interfaces at stores. Why does the hardware store have one, but you cannot swipe? Why does Target think its a good idea to suck you card in? Why do almost none of the softkey devices use them, and none use them consistently? Why are they all so different?
• Replace the mirror on my car, with a similar but not identical one from a junk yard. Figure out how the relevant pieces come apart. Figure out how to modify it without destroying the base object to fit the new part. Think about how the design is optimized for ease of factory assembly. Note the construction, materials, structure, wiring and assembly method and try to determine how much this influenced the layout of buttons and lights. Does there seem to be anything sub-optimal in the control placement that seems to arise from these considerations?
• Build a birdhouse from materials on hand. Find the specifications (hole size, position, interior dimensions) for the type of bird. Consider environmental issues (outdoor use will be hard on the materials and construction). Make provisions for repair, ventilation, mounting.
• Compare the manner in which the quick-start options work on the two microwaves at work, vs. the one I have at home. Why are they different? Which is better to me? Is it a result of habituation or is it truly easier to use?
• Look at the way barricades and signage are placed for a construction zone. Is there a better way to route traffic? Is there a better way to label the change? Is it more confusing at night, or less?

What have you observed lately?

Costs of Data Retention

Does anyone remember the good old days, when developers were called "programmers" and used to pride themselves on the quality and brevity of their code? There's a distinct dark side to capacity, speed and data being increasingly free at any small increment; the cost is invisible to the individual programmer, so its disregarded. We all know about bloatware, and its impact on the speed of your computer. Less reported, but increasingly clear to me are the costs of network traffic. The internet, your LAN and your phone network is faster all the time, but its not unlimited, especially as transaction counts rise due to more users, more devices per user and more bloated software wanting to know more about you. But what about the cost of data retention? Now that space, even on the smallest device, seems free, too much is retained, and far too much information that should be considered secret. Yes, there's retries, preserving for the session, etc., but as a result of this, data is being retained forever. An ID badge I use every day has the SSN sitting there in plaintext. Why? Okay, so isn't that secret anymore. How about my credit card? The industry has some solid metrics and standards that were supposed to be implemented in 2005. How are they doing? Visa has been running a series of polls. Remember, this is self-reported, not an audit by Visa. It could be much worse than this. eWeek: Retailers not exactly where visa wants them to be

But given that Visa has said that there are 1,057 retailers in that group (327 Level 1 U.S. retailers and 730 Level 2 retailers), that four percent suggests that about 42 major retail chains aren't even claiming that they've stopped retaining that data. Visa estimates that the 96 percent relates roughly equally to both groups, suggesting about 13 retailers in the Level 1 group (with the very largest retailers) and about 29 in the Level 2 group.

This is mostly things like retailers retaining the entire contents of the magstripe, forever. I can only imagine why, and I'm hoping the more I write the more I get towards and understanding of how good requirements become bad specifications, and business rules just get lost.

Now, the story can be told

Now that my boss has told everyone at Sprint, I can post about my new job! I'm going to be the Interaction Designer for Little Springs Design. They do mobile design, mostly software and "WAP" site work, I gather. Mobile means handhelds, like cellphones or whatever you know it by. Somehow "mobile" doesn't resonate with everyone I tell about it. The FAQ about my job, based on the 50+ emails and IMs I have so far:

• Last day at Sprint is 8/17. First day at Littlesprings is 8/20.
• Its located in Lawrence, and I'm not moving. Its an observed 35 minutes door to door, so that's no big deal.
• Some telecommuting. Not sure how much yet, but some. Maybe lots.
• Some travel. Barbara wants to stay home more, so I'll get to be the face of the company sometimes. Maybe I'll be able to get interviewed and all that sort of stuff.
• Its less money. Not moving for the cash, but for the work. (and, until further notice, dinner is on you)
• Of course I'll answer the phone or maybe even email if anyone has a question about old Sprint days. I cannot, however, be contracted back at all for a year, so no actual work at Sprint after 8/17.

And everything else is TBD. I haven't worked the job yet, so its hard to say exactly what's involved. Presumably, broadly what I do now, being a designer of interactive systems, just for (mostly) mobile and handheld devices.