Trial today
If you happen to be at the WCAB in Stockton, stop by and say hello.
Chance are I’ll be there most of the day. Any good spots for lunch?
Category: PDRater
I Just Make It Look Easy
A company once told me someone had offered to build permanent disability calculators for their website in three months for $7,500. One said six months and $20,000. Recently, another suggested it would take them a year and $40,000. My response is usually some variation on “You’ve got to take that deal. You’re wasting your time talking to me.”
It’s no big secret that building a great product takes a lot of work. The important thing to remember is that just because something is easy-to-use, that doesn’t mean its easy-to-make. ((Visit the link for a PDF of a cut-and-fold iPhone. Thanks Gizmodo!))
Let’s take the iPhone for example. Everyone will concede its an easy phone to use. However, it was released more than two years ago on 6/29/2007. ((Wikipedia link.)) In that time the other players – BlackBerry, LG, Nokia, and Palm have all been trying to catch up. If this easy-to-use phone were easy-to-build everyone would have their own version.
Look, there’s no special magic to building a website like this. Really, anyone can do it. All you have to do is learn the calculations inside-and-out, deconstruct the math involved in the various calculations, learn some client and server side programming languages, learn a content management system, make it all work together, keep current on changes in the law, start all over again each time the law changes, and earn the respect of the workers’ compensation community. Once done, you’ll have your very own workers’ compensation calculator website!
To return to the lesson of the iPhone, building a touch screen phone that can play music and surf the web is totally doable. Doing it right is another matter entirely.
Ogilvie II, Almaraz/Guzman II – More En Banc Opinions!
Need a FREE sample Ogilvie analysis brief complete with citations?
The Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board is back with their en banc decisions on Ogilvie and Almaraz/Guzman after reconsideration. ((Photo courtesy of arturodonate)) Download the Ogilvie/Almaraz/Guzman decisions all in one place:
Each of these four is about 50 pages. Read them carefully, there will be a test later.
A Man’s Got To Have A Dream
And my dream is to do four walk through settlements at three different WCAB district offices in one single day. ((Photo courtesy of robertrice)) ((I told this dream to a co-worker yesterday and he laughed and called me a nerd. Pssh – tell me something I don’t know, Steve.))
I’ve given this a lot of thought and I even have a plan as to how to get this done. If I ever got the chance to do four walk throughs at four Boards in one day, I’d do it like this:
- Get up early, arrive at the Santa Rosa WCAB at 8:00 AM and attempt the first walk through
- Head to San Francisco over the Golden Gate for the second walk through
- In the afternoon, do the third walk-through in San Jose
- Hit the road for Oakland and do the fourth walk through
- According to Google Maps, that’s 234 miles and 4 hours and 26 minutes
I honestly don’t even know if this is possible. ((Perhaps this might be easier in Southern California – there’s as many as seven Boards within about 15 or 20 miles of one another.)) There are a million things that could go wrong. I could hit traffic, I could be missing a page from a benefits printout, someone could change their mind about the settlement, a doctor could issue a supplemental report. I also know that I would need a LOT of things to go right. Here’s my tentative checklist:
- Four walk through settlements ready to be approved at four different Boards (this is easily the toughest part)
- Four claims examiners standing by on speed dial
- One full calendar day
- A fully charged GPS, two fully charged cell phones
- A full tank of gas
- $55.00 or so ($10 for bridge tolls, about $5 for photocopies, and easily another $40 for parking)
- A bag of snacks (I’m probably not going to have time for lunch)
- Call ahead to all of the Boards to make sure I can do a walk through that day
- The good will and cooperation of the Board staff and my colleagues
However, having done two walk through settlements in a single morning gives me hope.
Its not you, its me
Yesterday I received an e-mail from a beta tester, Jeff Duarte, who was having trouble with one of my calculators. He said that he didn’t really understand how to use a particular calculator. My response was:
The problem is not you, its me. :) If I designed my calculator better you wouldn’t have any questions.
Seriously – sorry Jeff, its my bad. My goal is to make these calculators so easy and intuitive to use that no workers’ compensation professional would have any trouble figuring out how to use them. If you don’t figure out how to use it just by looking at it, I designed it wrong. ((Photo courtesy of TreMichLan. Terrible pun – all me!)) Getting feedback is a very important and instructive process for me. It lets me figure out what works for people and what doesn’t.
The good news is that Jeff”s suggestions have given me an idea on how to make two calculators easier to use and for two entirely new features!
The problem is not you, its me. :) If I designed my calculator better you wouldn’t have any questions!