Google Mail UX – Good but not fool proof

User Experience is an increasingly big deal in web apps. I use the Google product suite for pretty much everything these days and, when exposed to that kind of usage, a lot of WebApps UI’s start to show the strain.

Generally, Google Apps have great UIs, clean, fast simple and intuitive. But even they aren’t perfect. Take this example from the new Gmail theme:

In a normal mailbox view the “Delete” button is at the far right of the main action buttons:

In the Spam view, the “Delete” button is on the left of the cluster:

Now compare the positions to the end user (the red indicates the position of the normal delete button):

What Google have done is a classic example of poor UX – same button, same action, two very different locations.

This is a rarely used button in the system and, as such, I normally end up marking Spam as Not Spam (and having to undo) when I actually meant to delete the damn thing.

It’s a simple fix but seems to have been overlooked by the Google team this far.

The joys of the Jersey Taxation System

Warning – <rant> ahead

Despite the fact that the Jersey tax year runs January - January I just got my annual tax return through and, true to form, the States of Jersey have fucked up my tax rate … again.

Allow me a moment to fill you in on the backwards, shambolic chaos that is the Jersey Taxation system. A few years ago, in order to address the massive numbers of people “slipping through the tax net” the States introduced a monthly payment regime known as ITIS.

But, rather than  starting over with a Pay As You Earn system* they decided to settle for assessing last years tax liability and trying to “guess” the rate of your current salary needed to offset this on a month by month basis. In other words Pay As You Earned!

So to switch back to the current day, I’m not going to post details of my salary (I’m pissed off, not stupid!) but suffice to say I’ve been paying 15% tax for the past 6 months and have just been given a new rate of 14% by the tax office based on my 2010 salary / 2011 income … which will take effect from my July pay packet… and would leave me with a 3 figure shortfall at the end of the year.

A quick spreadsheet later and I’ve worked out that I need to continue to pay 15% for the next 4 months and then increase my rate to 16% for 2 months to almost break even. In fact it leaves me 77 pence in credit.

Given that my salary hasn’t changed this year (and even if it had they could base the calculation on my salary as declared quarterly) how the hell did they manage to get things this wrong?

Fortunately I’ve been burned by their incompetence in the past and so have managed to avoid having to find a few extra hundred pounds for the tax man at Christmas time.

My only remaining question is who do I bill at the States of Jersey for my time spent doing their jobs for them?

</rant>

* The reason they gave for not switching to PAYEarn  was the risk that they would lose a year of taxation if people left the island despite the fact that it would initially lead to an increase in tax revenue (due to cost of living increases in salaries year to year) and the loss would actually be staggered as people left the island or retired at different times.

As things currently stand they face the same staggering effect as, when I were to leave Jersey, I would be left with last year’s tax still to pay … as I said – Chaos!

The iPad – Less than it should have been

It has to be said that, in my search for Gadget Nirvana, I’ve frequently flip-flopped over which vendor or sector was more likely to provide the ultimate, all in one solution to … well … everything!

Circa 5 years ago my money was on open source (hardware, software, flapjacks, whatever!) to combine my massive list of entertainment, communication and connectivity requirements into one, affordable, hackable, workable device.

With the purchase of my first MacBook Pro I shifted over to Apple as the possible saviour of we the fickle, techno devout members of the Nintendo generation.

With the release of Android, Google OS, the Nexus One and their awesome web-based tool kit, my allegiances shifted to Mountain View for a while – they promised the answer to all my needs (well, almost all) in a shiny fun a clearly “Not Evil” package.

And now?