I'm off to Boston in the morning for Week 2 of my Maynard Media Academy program. It's a leadership development program geared toward first-time managers. Week 1 was Boston in January - lucky us it didn't snow til we were leaving. I didn't get to explore as much as I would have liked.
For this assignment, I'll explore the Boston.com site and be looking for restaurants, bars, cool little shops in Cambridge around the Harvard campus. Seems simple enough:
1. Go to site. 2. Look for a word, link, button that says restaurant guide or dining or nightlife. 3. Once there, look for a way to sort by area, Cambridge/Harvard. 4. Click there to see a list of places, or find a searchable guide. 5. A map would be nice to locate things within walking distance of my hotel. 6. Best restaurants in the area another nice addition.
I didn't do this before I went the first time. Not that I had much time to go out trying new places. Here goes:
First off, the site's not responding. This doesn't bode well. I think maybe it's my network connection. Nope, that's looking good. All my other open links are working fine. I'll try Safari, maybe it's a Firefox thing that's not working right. And, maybe this is one of those sites that's not the name I think it should be. I'll Google just to be sure. Google 'boston globe' click on the link (name's the same I tried in Firefox) and wait in Safari, too. Hmm... not a good sign. Is there something big going on in Boston that's slowing traffic to a standstill? It's not timing out...bother. Stop page load. Reload. Woohoo! Finally.
1. (again) Many options. Should I try A&E or YourLife
1b. Distracted user - 34 and flurries!?! I should make sure to pack gloves. Gloves? It was 82 here today. Hmph.
2. Scroll down looking for something that says "restaurant" or "food."
3. Below the "fold" on the left side, under the A&E tab, two links: "Cheap Eats" and "Dining Out." Well, which one should I pick? I'll try Dining Out.
4. Pop up window. Bother, those should be turned off. Site's slowing down again. User getting frustrated. Considering looking elsewhere - maybe an alt-weekly or the campus paper?
5. Safari-side pop ups for the Dining Out and Cheap Eats are both spinning along. I'll swing back to Firefox.
6. Boston.com's loaded up on Firefox now. Click on the A&E tab at the top to avoid the pop-up window. Directs me to a user registration page. No! I don't want to register for yet another website! Hmm...
7. Look around for some way to avoid the registration. Doesn't look like it. I'm antsy. So I guess I'll register. Wonder how long this'll take.
8. User frustrated. I'll take a break and go pack and come back to this.
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9. Now back to the show... site seems to be running now. log back on. Head for the registration. Sign up. Then the pop up window comes back up for Cheap Eats. Pretty window with good looking food, but hard to tell what areas things are in.
10. Click the "Find Restaurants" button at the top. New tab opens... and we crawl to a spinning wheel again...
~~~~~
11. Back through the A&E section. Click on the Restaurants tab. Ah, much better. Just what I was looking for, a restaurant search. Options to search by a keyword or a location. Also, links to search by location, cuisine, reviews, ambiance. With sidebar links to recent Globe reviews of restaurants. Jackpot! (So why did it take so long to get me here?)
12. I'll try clicking on the Location/Harvard Square link.
13. Lots and lots of results. Lots and lots of information. And lots of ways to narrow the searches even more. I pick Local Favorites. 16 results. What's great about these listings is that it gives you the top of the information, the stars, awards and reviews all within a quick glance. There's an option to map the results.
14. After a long wait to get onto the site, and some initial trouble finding what I was after, I've found this to be one of the better restaurant search engines I've come across. It's interactive, intuitive and anticipated what I would want to to. I was presented with numerous options, but in such a manner that I wasn't overwhelmed and couldn't find what I needed.
Now, about that wait time... I'll grumble about that over drinks at one of these local places.
2 comments:
looks like an easier alternate would have been to ask your hotel concierge where a good place was to eat/drink/party.
True true... those suggestions haven't been always super, either. The best ones have been from my friend who did the program last year, my two classmates from Boston and the classmate who is a Nieman Foundation fellow this year.
Translation - trust the locals.
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