Sarah DeAtley » beer http://www.sarahdeatley.com information + analysis + design Mon, 17 May 2010 06:29:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Pimp Post #2 and a Google Analytics Rant http://www.sarahdeatley.com/blog/2009/08/03/pimp-post-2-and-a-google-analytics-rant/ http://www.sarahdeatley.com/blog/2009/08/03/pimp-post-2-and-a-google-analytics-rant/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:02:44 +0000 Sarah http://www.sarahdeatley.com/blog/?p=380

It’s time to pimp out events that I am a fan of again.

  1. Monthly IA Meet-up at a new location, Rendezvous! It’s the 2nd Tuesday of each month (in Seattle), and usually has lots of cool/interesting people in attendance like librarians, iSchool peeps, and UX/IA professionals.
  2. Its Web Analytics Wednesday again! This time I hope to not have an epic fail again, and will stay the whole time. Hopefully I can put faces to handles for some followers on Twitter! Once again, POP is generously hosting.
  3. And Houghton Market in Kirkland is having a beer sale for 20% off as they are going out of business. Sad times, but beneficial to beer lovers.

GA Rant

OK, I hope that Google Analytics was having some random, never-will-happen-ever-ever-again technical issues going on today, because I was really annoyed. First, I kept getting compiler errors for the graphs that are automatically generated. Then, GA had all these horrible error messages that were not informative and did not assist in user recovery. The first error message I got was: “There was an error fetching data for this view.”  So, you know, I didn’t know what to do other than refresh the page. Next, I got another error message on a different metric that read “An Error Has Been Detected. Please try again. Thank you for your patience.”

Besides the fact that they used incorrect capitalization on the 2nd error message, it clearly violates one of Jakob Nielsen’s 10 heuristics for interface design:

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors. Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

I generally really like the UI and UX of the Google Analytics tool, I think its easily manipulable and employs clear, simple design. However, the errors were frustrating, and I didn’t know how to fix any of them. I still don’t know what went wrong! #UXFail.

Also tomorrow is ZAAZ kickball and I’m on Team Tom Selleck. I hope to represent well.

]]> http://www.sarahdeatley.com/blog/2009/08/03/pimp-post-2-and-a-google-analytics-rant/feed/ 5 good weather and bad sandals http://www.sarahdeatley.com/blog/2009/06/28/good-weather-and-bad-sandals/ http://www.sarahdeatley.com/blog/2009/06/28/good-weather-and-bad-sandals/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:58:40 +0000 Sarah http://www.sarahdeatley.com/blog/?p=92

Such good weather in Seattle today! Totally makes up for the last couple weeks.  I did nothing productive except tan at Greenlake and drink tasty beer. Tonight I’m going to taste home brewed beer that my friends make. It is (usually) surprisingly good. My friend Cailey also successfully completed her first marathon today, and finished in 4:27:51!  She is far more awesome than I for doing that.

And R.I.P. to my favorite sandals. You have lasted since 2002 in Berkeley. Way to break right as I was running to catch the bus. Also what is it with guys and nice weather who think that whistling at me is a classy way of communicating?

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