Having a chat

Chewing the fat, shooting the breeze, having a natter - call it what you like, talking to people is darn important and everyone should do it as often as they can (except in libraries). We talk to our members as much as possible, through our blog and discussion board and by getting people to email contactus@zopa.com if anything's on their mind.

May 22 2006

Bad design?

Posted by Dave at 12:19 pm

So Richard and I are back from San Francisco, and delighted to be experiencing the best of the British summer!

One more photo from the US though - again from the offices of our PR company (The lovely Edelman). Looking out over the bay, on a stunning day, I couldn’t help but notice the office next door. The one where all the windows face away from bay and that amazing view.

How gutted must you be to work in that office, and know that just…over…there… is some incredible scenery, but you can’t see it.

Now the question this raised for me was - is this just bad (criminally incompetent!) design…or was it deliberate? (Reasons why on a postcard please)

Personally, I blame incompetence, but it’s a pretty major flaw.

Having spent over a year helping ‘design’ the Zopa screens and interface, I am more than happy to accept that good design is a true skill, and that it is very easy to come up with something that makes perfect sense - until you actually build it.

What bits of Zopa make you go “Doh”?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 22nd, 2006 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Design, America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 comments

Steve Thompson

Posted on May 22nd, 2006 at 4:53 pm

The failure to produce tax certs for lenders, now 6 weeks into the next tax year!

Dave

Posted on May 22nd, 2006 at 5:00 pm

They’re being printed out as I type, and will be stuffed into many, many envelopes over the next few days…you should see them landing on your door mats by the end of the week, or early next at the latest.

Better late than never?

SwissCheese

Posted on May 23rd, 2006 at 10:02 am

The lending screens (especially the “current lending offers”) - because I cannot alter an offer (partially lent out) for money that bounces back when the borrower is refused and so am forced to lend at a rate which I previously offered but would wish to amend for subsequent lending. Only an offer which has no lenders attached to it can be amended (or so it appears to me, correct me if I’m wrong). This makes me go “Duh, why do you do that?”. I could make lots of smaller loans but then I lose control over how much one borrower can borrow from me as they can then access the limit amount from each loan since there is not an actual limit per borrower but per loan offer. I’d like to see:
1. access to the remainder of the money not yet confirmed as being lent out
2. an additional limit per borrower and not just per loan (since as money is returned from existing borrowers and offered out again it creates more offers and control over how much to any one lender becomes increasingly diluted).

JMac

Posted on May 24th, 2006 at 1:50 am

Zopa’s really cool, but it lacks a lot of things that Prosper has. For one, Prosper’s site is a lot more personal. People post about themselves, have pictures, and it reminds people a lot more of eBay, a site they’re already familiar with. Secondly, Prosper has groups, a concept that where now probably isn’t that great, when refined will be something else. It seems their site is a lot less mac-ish. Just something to think about. -JM

Roger

Posted on May 24th, 2006 at 1:56 pm

When I saw the picture I considered that it maybe good design as it would reduce the amount of solar gain from the sun - your phone is taken looking to the east (looking towards the bay bridge). Looking at the building from a picture on Google map, it looks like all sides of the building are designed in the same way - so more likely its a design that look good on paper, but did not take into account the needs of its users.

PhilG

Posted on May 29th, 2006 at 4:25 pm

Hi,

OK, I’ve already posted on this topic in the discussion board but am happy to add something here. If I were to pick a favourite piece of poor design on the zopa website then it would be a toss-up between two of my personal bugbears. The first is the disappearing tabs that should show you how to navigate between Lending, Borrowing, News etc. The second is the strange letterbox design that allows you to see only around 5 lines from many of the most interesting screens. Every time I use zopa a little voice in my head is going Why, Why, Why ?

Rgds,
Philg

Justin

Posted on May 30th, 2006 at 2:01 pm

Mine too, PhilG. Mine too.

NiceGuy

Posted on June 1st, 2006 at 7:30 pm

One of the really nice things about Firefox (my primary browser) is the ability to right click and open up a new tab.

When looking at the “Offers to borrowers” page, I used to be able to right click the date for any particular offer, and open it in a new tab, thereby retaining the original page (in tab one) to refer back to.

It seems that ability has been stopped for some reason and if I right click now, all I get is bookmark, copy or properties. In fact, to get to the same information, I have to click on the date, click on the drop down window and select “your borrowers”. Then to get to the next offer, go back and repeat the whole process. There should be a much faster way of getting to that information, as it is the key to who’s paid what and when.

Uh!!!

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