Here's a pic ruthlessly stolen from a friend's iPhone last night. It's the main drag in downtown Lawrence, Massachusetts St.
I've heard rumors that some of the bars are not going to be serving bottles of beer next weekend to keep the amount of sprayed beer to a minimum. Unfortunately I wasn't partaking in the partying. Next week though. By then this cold should have run its course and I'll participate in the mob-making... :-)
I often complain too much. Just to remind myself that all is not bad with the world, I thought I'd share an awesome user experience I had today.
Today I had a dental appointment at a new (to me) dentist, Les Miller, DDS. I had already been there once before with Megan where they worked her in with just a few hours notice as a new patient for an emergency consult. I was extremely impressed with their operation as an observer, but today I got to experience it from the end-user perspective.
I had some paperwork to fill out, so I showed up about 15 minutes early. As soon as I walked through the door the x-ray tech greeted me and told me to come on back and we could get those started. No looking at the clock and waiting until the last possible minute to help me. When was the last time you got in early to see anyone in the medical industry? Once we finished up the x-rays, the dental hygienist was ready and got me right in. Turns out I've taken a little too long since the last time I was in, so she recommended a slightly different course of action than the standard cleaning to get my mouth from 95% back up to 100%.
Here's what was different from how it could have gone. The dentist has you stuck, essentially. At this point all the dental hygienist has to tell me is "we've got to do X" and most people—well, at least I'm going to go along. She's the expert. I'm coming to her for a service. If she tells me we need to do something, well, we need to do. Instead of taking that approach though, she walked me through the entire process, then went over the options right along with what she recommended.
She involved me in the process by engaging in a conversation rather than just telling me. The flip side of this is now I bare some responsibility for my choice. Since a conversation works two-ways, I've got to keep up my end to make sure we get to my desired outcome.
Those extra ten minutes invested today will pay off though. They got an active participant which will help ensure a positive outcome and a walking, talking advertisement. Because my UX was so good, I'll definitely be recommending them to anyone I know in the area who needs a dentist. And here you though UX was all about software. :-)
Wow, is it already next week? I meant to post this the next day, but one thing lead to another and another and - well, now it's the next week.
We ended up moving the time around a bit and met at 7 at the Eldridge Hotel to catch none other than the (in)famous Greg Beaver and the Chiara String Quartet. After forty-five minutes of chamber music, we hit Rudy's Pizzeria for a few beer and shop talk. In total, we ended up with 7 people, which was approximately 5 more than I thought we'd have when I first announced it... ;-)
There was definitely an interest, so the plan is to try to meet on the 4th Tuesday for a few months and see how it goes. The discussion turned to TDD and PHPT and since there were a lot of guys who hadn't been exposed to it at all, the other Travis volunteered me for an introduction to TDD for next month's meeting. I haven't focused in on the specifics of the presentation yet, but I'm thinking something patterns oriented like how to roll your own MVC framework using TDD instead of the standard "how to verify that 2 + 2 equals 4" style of tests. Might be too much for one hour, but I bet I could do it in 90 ;-)
If you're in the area on February 26th, be sure to stop by the Lawrence Public Library around 7.
