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attempting to go to Urban Capital event about Architecture

Urban Capital is doing a 5-night series of events called Trends in Design.
They're a developer and in Ottawa the event is in their (small) sales centre for the "Central" condominium complex. I have a lot of respect for the fact Urban Capital has built Mondrian at the north end of Bank and is now building Central - they are really going to lift up the street and the entire area. That being said, they clearly have a strong self-interest in getting a bunch of people who are interested in urbanism and architecture into their sales centre.

I also have to say, for a series of events about design, the event info and signup is an example of a truly awful Flash user interface.

* You can't link to the event or individual nights directly
* The event pages don't list what night
* You can only see the event one night at a time (one night per screen)
* The signup page only lists events by night, not by description
* For sold out events the date simply disappears

So the workflow to sign up is:
* Go to Urban Capital
* Click on Trends in Design
* Click on 5 Nights
* Click on Next to get to Night 2
* Click on Next to get to Night 3
* Click on Next to get to Night 4
* Decide date looks ok, but there's no time listed?
* Click on Back
* Click on When and Where
* Click on Ottawa
* See it is "6:30pm cocktails, 7:30 event" (I would copy & paste this from the site, but it's Flash, so I have to type it in manually)
* Click on Tickets
* Click on Buy Tickets
* Try to remember what night it was you wanted to go to, since it only lists nights, no other information
* (Probably click back around through the nights in order to remember which one)
* Click on e.g. Night 3
* Enter a bunch of info Urban Capital doesn't need to know
* Click on $20 or $80 or whatever
* Click on Pay Now
* Go to PayPal and login or re-enter your name etc. for credit card

* Receive automatic email confirmation from PayPal (with no info about the event)
* Do not receive (at least so far) any automatic confirmation about the event itself, say listing the date & time as a reminder

I think it may be the worst event info / ticketing UI I've ever seen.

In any case, the events were/will be

NIGHT 1 | SEP 16 2010
Fashion Trends by Lara Ceroni, editor at ElleCanada.com

NIGHT 2 | OCT 28 2010
New Thinking in Designing Cities by George Dark, Partner at Urban Strategies Head

NIGHT 3 | NOV 25 2010
Where Industrial Design is Taking Us by Julian Goss, Program Chair of Industrial Design Department at the Ontario College of Art & Design

NIGHT 4 | JAN 27 2011
Architecture in Our New Century by Robert Claiborne, Design Lead at Cannon Design Lead Architect

NIGHT 5 | FEB 24 2011
Interior Design Thinks Small by Cecconi Simone, Partner at Cecconi Simone Interiors

(from Modern Ottawa - Trends in design coming to Ottawa)

The remaining ones are all
6:30pm cocktails, 7:30 event
at the Central sales centre
453 McLeod Street (at Bank)

Modern Ottawa also did a brief review of the New Thinking in Designing Cities presentation - Trends in Design : Night 2.

Labels: ottawa, urban planning

posted by Richard at 10:55 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)