I'm thrilled to discover new trends, share ideas, meet web 7.0 guys at the conference. At the same time, I keep in mind that "normal" people are constantly annoyed by little details that seem rubbish... like the shape of the regular USB plug that doesn't tell (or doesn't tell sufficiently clearly) the users how to plug it.

A poor design hasn't always dramatic consequences (plane crash, nuclear power plant accident, etc.); however it impacts millions or billions of people everyday and participates to the general level of stress, frustation and (thus) social acceptance towards technology.

Millions of users wouldn't have need to fight against their USB cables and keys if their designers had the good idea to observe real users... using their plug prototypes.

Let's keep our feet on earth!
See the video of Sylvain Sauvage, customer experience designer @ Logitech about this issue (in French I'm afraid).

Hi,
Have you ever struggled to find a real open & free wifi network while browsing the list of available networks displayed by your notebook or mobile phone?

Wifi networks that are not identified with a locker (and that look like free & open networks) are not necessarily free and open: some are protected by another mean (MAC address list) or require a paying login. That's why the user has no other choice than trying, trying and trying again.

To make things easier, I've though of one simple idea: to identify the open & free networks with a common sign. This sign will be added before the wifi SSID network name.

((o)) is the sign that has been chosen. Its "o" should evoke openness while the parenthesis are here to symbolize the waves and to distinguish the letter "o" from the other letters composing the SSID name. -> A given network could have the following name: "((o)) network_name".

I plan to launch this idea during the 3rd world usability day that will take place on November 8th. A Swiss event is planned at Technopark in Zürich at this date (with showcases and conferences).

What do you think of such an idea? Do you have ideas of potential partners that could spread this free idea?