I suppose we all have things in life that feel annoying; like that small splinter in your finger you can't see, but you know it's there.

One of my "splinters" has long been "things that don't work properly."

Uhhh... What Happened?

Most recently, I was stopped in my tracks by a website on which I was filling out a rather significant and lengthy application. I worked for a while, got it all done, click "SUBMIT", and... nothing happens.

Can't really tell whether nothing happened or progress to a "next page" was blocked by an error of some kind, or maybe there was no "next" page, and I don't know whether or not the information I input actually went anywhere.

I didn't get an email conformation, either... but I don't know whether I was supposed to get one.

Brings me back to something one of my IT managers said, many many years ago: "If you don't know how to DO something, don't do it!"

What's more, if you are engaging/exchanging information with your user/customer, it pays to be painfully obvious about what they should expect... and then your site should work accordingly.

Incomplete Data...

"Click here to see your transactions!"

Well, that looks great — on paper — but why is the list missing a substantial number of transactions? And why does there not seem to be any discernable pattern to the choice of which transactions are displayed... almost like it is actually a case of "click here to your transactions that were processed while our transaction system was online!"

And you certainly don't get to decide — on my behalf — which transactions you think might be interesting to me.

This sort of thing is frustrating primarily from the perspective that it reeks of an organization being more concerned with its own convenience than with actual customer/user support.

Yeah, but We're in Beta!

I really appreciate it when major web properties actually have the integrity to point out that their product is "in Beta," so some errors can be expected.

I don't know if anyone here remembers the early days of Google... and how long it was before the word "Beta" was removed from next to the Google logo. Gmail took even longer; as I recall, it was in Beta for 4-5 years.

That's a long time.

Except... there seem to be more than a few companies and organizations who use the "Beta" label as a justification for all but halting development, and so the same old errors keep coming around, no matter how many bug reports you submit.

The worst of these, of course, is when the "bug report" function is one of the things that isn't working!

Why not just admit that you ran out of funds for a full time staff of developers and are just contracting it out to occasional college students... because — after all — the site is still "sort of working."

Who ARE You, Anyway?

Sometimes there's just a complete disconnect between those who have a web property, and their intended users.

The textbook historical example was the earliest iterations of the Sony web site. It was this amazing technological and feature-rich marvel, showing off slick web coding and amazing technology for people to wish for... EXCEPT the site was so filled with fancy scripts and sophisticated plug-ins that 99% of visitors' computers were completely unable to actually run the site on their machines. And even if they could? Unless you had a dedicated T3 line, it would take you 10 minutes to get everything loaded!

Total miss.

Of course, that was a famous extreme from the 1990's. But it happens on a much scale, all the time.

The problem?

Usually, it's fairly simple, and can be summed up as "Developers don't use technology the same way Aunt Myrtle in Omaha uses technology." Even though the developers sincerely believe they are "dumbing it down," it's usually still about three steps above the average user's grasp.

The "Familiarity Paradox"

What often happens is that those who are creating a technology product (or web site) have been around their creation for so long that they have completely lost sight of what a person might experience when they see it for the first time.

It's about understanding learning curves.

We might be lulled into the belief that something is "pretty simple to use," but we say that from the perspective of already having used it for five years!

And even if it is somewhat easy for someone who's already familiar with the genre, what about someone who's a total neophyte, but might become a dedicated supporter... IF they start off with a positive user experience?

It's tempting — but often a mistake — to jump to conclusions about "what people know!"

=^..^=

Curator Cat, February 9th, 2024
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