steve kwan user experience designer

Don't buy anything from the Sony Store

(September 28th, 2007 - 2:13PM)

I bought a pair of Sony Fontopia earbuds several years ago (no link because I'm mad at Sony). I purchased the extended warranty because I tend to beat these things up. I know what you're going to say about extended warranties, but I've had good luck with them in the past - particularly from Future Shop.

To be fair, I'd already exchanged in these headphones under warranty several times over the years. However, my extended warranty was still valid, and I'd paid to extend the warranty for another two years. So imagine my surprise when I took my headphones back to Sony and they told me that my warranty didn't exist.

I provided the Sony Store with the broken headphones, the original packaging, and the receipt. The manager told me that my receipt didn't have any warranty information on it. I explained to him that the Sony Store representative who handled my warranty last time must have kept it. He told me that my receipt wasn't sufficient, and upon looking in their database he couldn't find any proof I'd paid for the warranty. Apparently they only keep about a year's worth of transactions locally before they ship them all off to Toronto. What a brilliant system.

So the only way for me to prove I had a warranty would be to have the Sony Store dig retroactively through their logs in Toronto, which could take weeks. I wasn't about the wait that long. The manager refused to believe I had a warranty without proof, and I suspect he was looking for any reason not to honour it. There's nothing I hate more than being accused of lying because a store wants to save money.

I even offered to pay for an extended warranty for a third time, but the manager refused to let me. So I wound up going to Future Shop to buy a new pair of headphones, which is an extra $200 I wasn't planning to spend.

So the lesson here is that you shouldn't do business with the Sony Store, especially the one in Metrotown.

I bought a pair of Harman Kardon HK710 in-ear headphones. So far I don't like them. They go too deep into the ear and they hurt. I might exchange them.

A failed UI overhaul

(September 25th, 2007 - 4:02PM)

The other day, my mother told me that she noticed I hadn't updated my website in a while. Bearing in mind that my mother rarely visits the site, this is awfully disturbing news. After all, if she thinks I'm not updating enough, then I'm definitely not.

The other night I attempted to overhaul stevekwan.com's UI. Some preliminary user testing revealed that almost everyone preferred the current design, so I've stuck with it. There are a few changes I'd like to make - in particular, removing the ability to comment - which will clean up the interface.

Richard mentioned that I should explain the importance of comments on this site. I don't view stevekwan.com as a Web 2.0 site. This isn't a community. Although I'd love to hear your feedback, I ultimately don't feel like user comments are an important part of this site. If you want to publish content, get your own blog. There are plenty of other community sites out there that do a much better job of it than I ever could, so use them.

The purpose of stevekwan.com is for me to talk to you. Again, I'd love to hear your feedback, but I see no reason why I should let others contribute to my content.

My heart grows colder with each day.

(September 23rd, 2007 - 12:59PM)

Here's a great song I discovered while browsing Metacritic. It's called What's A Girl To Do, by Bat for Lashes.

Bat for Lashes is distributed by EMI, meaning that their music is available DRM-free on iTunes Plus. So buy their album here:

Buy Fur and Gold, by Bat for Lashes

Review: Medal of Honor: Airborne

(September 16th, 2007 - 1:38AM)

(4 / 5 stars)

One sentence summary: A polished game with some nice touches, but I can't help but feel like it's just another WWII shooter.

Things I liked about Medal of Honor: Airborne:

• Excellent single player campaigns.

  If you've read the Metacritic reviews for this game, my review should seem familiar. That's because I agree with a lot of the points in the other reviews and have repeated them here.

  Airborne consists of about a half dozen lengthy campaigns. Although the first few are unremarkable, the last three campaigns are unique and a lot of fun.

• Parachuting into the level is a nice effect.

  You begin each campaign by parachuting onto the map. This allows you to start the level wherever you want, rather than in a fixed place. Although this barely makes the game less linear, it adds a new dimension and is certainly a positive development.

• The weapon experience system works well.

  As you use the weapons in Airborne, you get more experienced with them and gain upgrades. These improve your aim, damage, reload speed, and more. Although the weapons get more powerful as you use them, they're still powerful at the beginning and don't feel crippled.

  Upgrading your weapons adds an RPGish element to the game. It also increases replay value, as you'll want to replay the game to upgrade your weapons.

• Great duck and cover system.

  Most recent WWII shooters allow you to zoom in by looking down the sights on your gun. Airborne improves this by allowing you to lean while you're zoomed in. Most FPSes that allow you to lean have separate buttons for leaning left and right. In Airborne, you lean by just pressing left or right while zoomed in.

  I'm a big fan of minimizing the number of controls required to play games, so removing two unnecessary buttons is a good idea to me.

• Pretty graphics.

  Although Airborne isn't as pretty as games like Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, it has great lighting and character models.

• Great gunfire sound effects and voice acting.

  The sound in this game is quite good. This is to be expected from EA.

Things I disliked about Medal of Honor: Airborne:

• Enemies don't react when you shoot them.

  This is one of my pet peeves in shooters. When you shoot a guy, he should react. When you shoot a guy in the head, it should jerk back. When you shoot him in the knee, it should buckle. In Airborne, when you shoot a guy he doesn't even move.

  As if to correct this problem, a little red marker appears on the screen when you shoot someone. This seems to me like a workaround. You should be able to tell if a shot's registered by looking for blood or movement.

• You can't skip briefings.

  This irritating if you're playing a campaign for the second time.

• The compass is a cheap advantage.

  You have a compass that acts as a radar by showing you where your enemies are. This is an incredibly cheap trick, as you're better off looking at the compass than looking ahead. This pulls you out of the action.

• It's difficult to distinguish between friend and foe.

  I know that this is a historical thing, but it's difficult to tell your allies from your enemies because they look similar. It would be nice if the character models were a bit different so you could tell who to shoot at.

• Your teammates run into your line of fire.

  This isn't a huge issue because there's no friendly fire in Airborne, but it's a pain in the butt when you're lining up a shot and your teammate runs in front of you.

• Lousy explosions.

  The graphics in this game are generally good, but the explosions are weak.

• Single player campaign is short.

  I don't know if this is a bad thing, as WWII shooters are a bit old, and I don't need to play a 20 hour campaign.

• Ultimately, it's just another WWII shooter.

  Although Airborne has a few nice touches that differ it from the competition, at the end of the day it's just another World War II shooter. It would be nice to see some diversity.

Docmetrics 1.0

(September 14th, 2007 - 3:22PM)

Docmetrics 1.0 has been released!

Actually, it was released last month on August 15th, but I've been too lazy to post about it.

Docmetrics is a Web app for marketers who distribute PDFs. It tracks unique readers, document opens, prints, and much more. Think Google Analytics, but for PDFs.

In addition to tracking basic document usage, docmetrics also tracks depth of reader engagement. So we can tell how far people have delved into your documents and where they dropped off.

Docmetrics should help any PDF-oriented marketer gauge the success of their documents and campaigns.

Here are some screenshots of the application:

Adding a PDF document to docmetrics.

Managing your documents.

A sample report.

Editing a document.

So what was my role in docmetrics? I was the requirements and user experience guy.

I'd appreciate it if you'd sign up for a docmetrics account and give me your feedback. Signup is free, and you'll get a $250 credit for doing so. This should last the average user about two months.

Overall, I'm happy with the UI. If you dig deep enough, you'll find some oddities in the UI that we couldn't fix due to time constraints. These will be fixed in future versions. If you have any feedback, suggestions, or comments I'd certainly appreciate it.

So please sign up for docmetrics!

How do people keep up the energy to blog?

(September 13th, 2007 - 2:00PM)

I'm nearing my 700th post, and recurring readers will have noticed that I've been posting less and less lately. It's not that I don't want to, and it's not that I have nothing to say. It's just that there are only so many hours in a day and I have trouble finding the time to blog. I'll try to speed up the frequency of posts.

I've been going to the gym every day for quite a while. 118 days so far.

I'm also excited about the new forthcoming Jimmy Eat World album. These guys released a song called 23, which could be my favorite song of all time.

We're hiring marketers at work, so if you've got a background in that area and want to work for a small software company let me know.

So there's another brief "what I'm up to" post. I hope that tides you over.

Usability testing

(September 12th, 2007 - 6:02PM)

At Vitrium we've been doing usability testing for our new product. So far it's been going quite well. I'd grade its usability at about 85% , which is quite high for a first run. We've had a few marketers (our target audience) come into the office and walk through the application, which has been very helpful. It's difficult to coax feedback out of people while not giving them instructions and keeping it casual.

It's also nice to work with some real marketers, as up until now I've been gathering requirements from internal managers.

Soon I'd like to get your feedback on the product, so I'll post details up here.