–Engage

The question of ugly design has been haunting me for a few weeks now. Well, the blank space in my blog is what has really been haunting me all this time, and this topic was approached to me at the beginning of my blog blackout and it hasn’t left me.

Recently I have been asked to think about why My Space is a success. To be honest, I really don’t know that much about My Space. I’m not a user of it. I’m not a user of a lot of standard successful Internet sites. For example, I have never successfully bought anything on eBay. On the flip side I blog, I read blogs, I have used every major north American travel site, I buy things from Amazon, buy.com, barnesandnoble.com and many other stores … and Oh! Of course I use Google and Yahoo services.

But the question of My Space, isn’t really a question of My Space. It is much more a question about “what is design?” At least that is how my interviewer really implied the question and definitely how I inferred it. It was really couched in the whole idea of “ugly sites” and the success of ugly.

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Now some in my life may know that AMEX and I have not always been on the best of terms. I took my SkyMiles card and maxed it out only to go bust on them. In return they tortured me for a year of me trying to get ride of some major fraudulant charges on Corporate Card.

Well, They have shown me that they can be the better sport this time around. When it came to changing my name, most companies many that should be in the same league as American Express had me send in documentation and copy all sorts of IDs and write custom leters.

American Express?

I called, I got someone on the phone, and they checked my name against my social secruity number and VOILA! “You should expect your card in # weeks.”

Now, I did have to wait a bit to do it because the computer network they use for Social Secruity information didn’t propogate as quickly as the SSA said it would. Once it did though I was not on the phone more than 5 minutes and I was all done.

That was worth an honorable mention for each of use from a Financial Institution in the category of name change!

2nd place still goes to Fidelity, who had the forms online and allowed me to easily change multiple accounts with just one form and one set of documentation.

The looser goes to Citibank for requiring me to come in twice, and one of those times I had to bring my wife. This should be a tie with the Aspire Card for having the worst my annoying Telephone Voice system I have ever experienced.