Intuitive user guidance - the parkometer

Some days ago we have been visiting a pitoresque little town in northern Switzerland. Having found a parking lot near the center. The parking lot was well equiped with a number of parkometers. Those little machines allowing payment for parking time.

Usual user guidance of such a machine is:

Start at the top. An old fashioned LCD display shows wether the machine is currently in use by indicating the current time. Bellow a slit to drop coins is located. Dropping coins makes the display to indicate the so far payed parking time. Pushing a usually green button below will print the parking ticket to be placed visibly in the car.

There is an other concept for the same purpose. The machines, probably second generation, exhibiting not only a display, a slit for the coins but also a numeric keyboard. This particular parking lot was one of those. Each parking field has a numeric indicator which needs to be entered to the payment machine. The ticket is only considered as a receipt.

However, the location of the interaction elements such as display, green button, slit for coins and numeric keyboard is not really adapted to the new concept.

Starting at the top the display indicates the current time and date. Next the slit for coins is waiting for input. - Really? - Below the coin entry element the numeric keyboard is located and at the very bottom the same green button can be found. So, how does this work?

Starting from the top we start dropping coins which will not be accepted by the machine. Why? - I would guess that you have to drop coins until the desired parking time is payed, enter the numeric identifier of your parking field, then push the green button in order to get a receipt.

Several attempts would not lead to successful payment.

After a while I would discover this little note at the bottom. A little sticker communicating the right process.

1. Enter the identifier of your parking field
2. Drop coins for the parking time
3. Push the green button
4. Take your receipt

Logical? Intuitive?

At least the sticker implies that I am not the only one...

MS Outlook: My daily struggle

As an employee I am forced to use the tools, such as MS Outlook, my employer provides. For my work I have to send a couple of e-mails per day. And I can not get used to the first fact, that the autocompletion function in the e-mail’s TO field is not very smart. Furthermore, I can not get used to the second fact that when using the search function for contacts in the contacts database, no matter if my personal or the corporate one, I will never find the contact I am searching for on my first try since some people I know by first name while others I know by last name, not speaking of the names I am constantly spelling the wrong.

Autocompletion: Why is it that MS Outlook can not search through the global contacts database in order to make meaningful suggestions? 

Search: Why is it that MS Outlook can not find an entry in its contacts database if I am not typing the name in the same order as the contact name is saved in the contacts database? In addition, why is it not possible to perform the search globally through the local and through the corporate database at the same time?

There are plenty of examples where both of the problems are solved. Even in other applications by the same vendor. Where the software does a good job in facilitating user interaction.

How to improve the situation of my daily struggle? - Here, some solutions to get around.

1. Define a rule in MS Outlook which forwards each and every e-mail to your google mail account where you have large scale archiving and extended search functionality for free. However, I did not yet find a solution to easily import the entire corporate MS Outlook contacts database to my google mail account. Only drawback is that your employer might not like it.
2. Connect your iPhone or Mac running OS X snow leopard - both will perfectly do the job - to the corporate MS Exchange server. Then use apple mail and contacts which provides you with all of the above missing functionality in order to do the job efficiently. It comes as a handy frontend.
3. Define a set of rules describing how you enter contacts to your MS Outlook contacts database and get used to the correct and only way of searching through them. Important caveat: define the rules the same way your employer does it. Follow strictly the rules and hope they are complete and that your intuition does not try to overrule them.
4. Learn the e-mail addresses by heart and do not rely on supporting software functionality.
5. Are there more?