Flux - in a state of

You could call it indecision and you'd probably be right.

I'm just having the wobbles about Help Me Choose. We've dithered and we've mithered and today Brendan and I took some half strength brave pills.

The thing is I'm not sure we've gone far enough.

I didn't roll over and I didn't relent without good reason though. It's easier, from the business perspective, to build complicated and strip stuff later if necessary than to build simple and add complexity later.

So on this one I'm sticking to the spec, but I'm not stuck like glue.

I can't wait for the gorillas to have a play (and yes I know it's guerillas but I don't get to make the chimpanzee joke unless I spell it gorillas).

The gender agenda

I've read 'Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus' and over the last week I've been aware of media coverage (particularly Guardian and Radio 4) of Deborah Cameron's book 'The Myth of Mars and Venus.'

It seems John Gray was writing a lot of tosh when he penned his book citing the many gender differences that are now part of our everyday vernacular.

Anyway, as I read around the subject I found a cool website.

The Gender Genie takes text (about 500 words) and analyses it so that it can guess your gender.I selected a couple of my blogs that didn't make it obvious I was female and cut and paste.

Guess what - I'm a man, but only just. The analysis produced a score of 652 for male and 640 for female.

I'm not quite sure what to think, or how to react.

Ireland

Ireland are our pilot market and I'm there now, having taken them through the 'where we are now' presentation which also starts to touch on the what we need to do next and planning for next year.

The term pilot market seems to be quite adventurous, quite exciting, quite daring.

And alternative term, and one I've encountered today is the concept of Ireland being guinea pigs. Now this has an altogether less glamourous feel. Being a guinea pig almost implies an element of being a victim. I wonder if the terminolgy reflects the level of nervousness being felt right now - the fear of the unknown. Maybe I need to work on improving confidence and a measure of my success in this regard might be to look at the terminology used.

If Ireland view themselves as adventurous pilots in six months time, I will have succeeded.

Progress

Well I've now caught up with the stuff that happened while I was away and I've attended numerous reviews of creative.

Homepage creative is agreed and looking spectacular.

Dealer Locator is looking amazing and the functionality is smarter than the current solution.

Help Me Choose is work in progress but is looking really good.

I have a flash demo of the homepage - if you want a walkthrough let me know.

I've got it

OK, I know it's nearly midnight and I should be getting my beauty sleep but, I've got it. Eureka!

Help me choose should be a wizard of some sort. A Selector Wizard, or maybe a Car or Commercial Vehicle Wizard. Anyway Wizard - cool word. Just saw it on the tfl.gov.uk site and had a blinding flash of the obvious.

Wizard of Doom anyone? Well I thought it was a good idea.

Maybe I've just read too much Harry Potter.

Choose-O-Matic advice please

Salespeople are told that they should qualify a customer and find out about their vehicle requirements rather than asking about budget.

This seems to make sense. Have any of you gone in to buy a car, or anything else, and been insulted with the budget question before a salesperson has even asked about how you plan to use the product, or what features you might be interested in?

But even if this is the case, would it be fair to say that you have a rough idea of the amount of money you will be spending on a purchase?

What I need to know, for Choose-O-Matic, is whether we should use a price filter to try and point the consumer in the direction of the right range of vehicles for them to consider. Additionally, if we do include it, should it be the first item in the list for consumers to adjust, or the last item?

The return

I'm back.

Apparently it's been an eventful few weeks. When I've caught up, I'll post an update.

I'm catching up on developments and trying to remember my password.

I'm also off to present to the FoB team this morning and have the pleasure of providing Mark Simpson's team with an update on Friday too. (I know - I don't do Fridays, but this is the exception that proves the rule.)