design | Piss and Moan

Make work

Posted on March 28, 2023 by backuphill

My job as a software analyst sometimes can be a real pain. Software is designed to do certain things and do them well. But, there are times where a client will want the software to do something it wasn’t designed to do.

I have a school district that is trying to do parent-teacher conferences next month. The software has the ability to create time slots and then allow the parents to schedule their conferences with the teacher. But, the software has some limitiations and the way one of the schools has done conferences in the past doesn’t fit the way the software is designed (yet). This was a huge issue for them last fall, as they were unwilling to rethink the way they do the conferences when they were told it wouldn’t work the way they would like them to (after many hours of investigation and problem-solving).

So, now it is spring and they are still insistent on doing it the same way as always, even though it didn’t work for them in the fall and it nothing in the software has changed to allow for the way they would like to do it. There is one caviate to that statement though. There are some rather inconvenient and labor intensive work-arounds that can be done to make the software kind of work for what they want. In essence, someone at the district figured out a way to trick the software and kinda sorta make it work for their needs.

Here’s where my problem comes in…in doing their work around, it doesn’t work well and there are issues with how the software functions. It doesn’t know you are doing a work-around, it just functions as it should. So, issues arise that are a direct result of the work-around. The district then calls me (after telling them, again, that it won’t work) to try to solve their work-around problems. I wasn’t fully involved in their work-around setup. I haven’t tested their work-around since it was advised they not use it. But, they want me to solve the issues when it doesn’t work like they would like it to.

I am being asked to “make it work” for something that isn’t supposed to work that way in the first place.

I am not sure how many times I can tell them it isn’t advisable and won’t work like you really want it to. If they are patient, and adjust the way they do conferences in the interim, it might actually work like they want in the future as we have been told it is being worked on (we are Tier 1 support so we have no control).

Anyway, that is my rant today. I don’t want to even try with this people.

fitbit – one last chance

Posted on December 12, 2019 by backuphill

This is a love/hate story. I can’t think of anything else to say about what you are going to read. I love the idea of the product, but the execution of said product hasn’t been great, nor good. Thus, I find myself loving the product and hating it at the same time.

Bear with me here. This is a long, complicated story with lots of history. I’ll do my best to condense it to a cohesive, frustratingly loud, “Aarg!” and head shake.

It all started with the fitbit Charge. It was small enough to wear comfortably but large enough to be helpful and readable. It had features I liked and it was convenient enough to wear. Then the troubles started…

The bands on the Charge were not holding to the molded plastic inside and the rubber started peeling away from the unit. Eventually the band would just wear out and would need to be replaced. I wore it as long as I could. Luckily the warranty from the store it was purchased from hadn’t expired yet. They replaced it free of charge. But, it didn’t last long and they were again going to have to replace it because of the same issue. This time I decided to pay the difference and upgrade to the Charge HR.

This time the band on the unit seemed to be much better and lasted longer. But, after about a year, the display screen started having issues and it got hard to read. I made it last as long as I could until is just up and died (at least the screen did).

I missed having it on my wrist and they had a new version of the Charge out, the Charge 3, so I bought it off of Amazon. I was happy with it. Bands were good. It had more functions than I had previously. All was going good until…about eight months into it the display screen started to do strange things. At first, it started loosing lines of pixels. As more and more started to drop off, then the screen turned almost a light white color – like someone had turned the contrast up and it no longer had much.

I contacted customer support after doing some research and seeing that other users were having similar issues. I took pictures (sorry don’t have those any longer) and they walked me through some reset functions and finally determined the screen was bad and since it was under warranty they sent me a new unit. I got the replacement, put the bands from the old one on it and off I went.

Less than four months later, I am contacting customer service, again. This replacement unit, which I highly suspect was a refurbished Charge 3, was beginning to display the same issues as the one it had replaced (see top of photo below). There were lines forming in the display again and it was losing pixels. We of course go through the whole process of “Did you try this? Or this? How about that?”

Now, I am starting to get irritated. Look, you have a bad product, parts, design, something. I want my money back. I don’t want another replacement of this product. The best they will do for me is replace it or give me a 50% discount on another product. As if my confidence isn’t already worn down, “OK, whatever. I’ll give you one more shot.”

So, I took my 50% discount to their products page and purchased the fitbit Versa 2. With the discount it was actually less expensive to buy it now than with any of the Black Friday specials the stores were offering. So, I’ll jump in cautiously.

Product arrives and I open it up to set it up. Immediately I am met with this thought as I go to charge the unit, “Who was the designer of the charger and how did this idiot get it approved for production?” Seriously, my confidence is already not real high on your product and then you send me this?

fitbit, you’re really gonna have a large faced product that will sit sideways on a surface so that it can’t be seen or used while it is charging? REALLY?

I was a little wary of getting a large faced product since that is the reason I don’t really like wearing watches, but so far the larger screen isn’t the issue. Design. Design is the issue, at least for the charger. Not a good start, or first impression. My confidence isn’t high in this product but we’ll see where it goes. This may be the final product I ever purchase from them.

I was already eyeing the Apple Watch, so it may not be far off in my future.