{"id":1217,"date":"2009-04-09T05:52:39","date_gmt":"2009-04-09T10:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2009-04-09T06:04:09","modified_gmt":"2009-04-09T11:04:09","slug":"usability-failures-part2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2009\/04\/usability-failures-part2\/","title":{"rendered":"Usability failures, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

2.1 and 2.2: Usability is customer service (aka: Why geek speak should never make it to error messages and why a single path to problem resolution should never be the option)<\/h3>\n

Usability failures can come in many flavors when the interface mechanism involves a computer. Most of these failures are directly attributable to a defect in the process: someone without the experience and flexibility to understand that people don’t all think the same way is allowed to control what is essentially a customer service process. Or, to put it another way, some manager let the programmers decide what the best method was and let them write the error messages.<\/p>\n

I have to travel at the end of May and I will need a rental car. Avis is my preferred outlet largely because their at least 15 year-old policy of waiving the second driver fee for two people who live at the same address regardless of their relationship is a low-key way of supporting lesbian and gay couples. Primarily it’s the “as folk” crowd that gets the benefit from this rule but it harms no one else in the process. So, when I need a car I typically go to Avis.com to rent one.<\/p>\n

My insurance company has a special deal where you can become a “preferred member” without any fee but the catch is you have to be logged in to your Avis.com account to do this. Now, I rent a car three, maybe four times a year which means my knowledge of my Avis.com account particulars dims rapidly.<\/p>\n

I’ve got a “wizard number”<\/acronym> which I dig out and use to try to log in. Then I realize…I have no idea what my password is. I try a couple of things using my standard password format. No love. So, I follow the “Forgot your password?” link and this is where the trouble starts.<\/p>\n

\"I'm<\/a>
I'm lucky. I have my Wizard number, I know my name, and my birthday. It's in the password information box where the trouble starts. I can't remember the answer to my secret question so I guess.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
<\/a>
Technically yes, this error message is correct but from a functional perspective it's a mess. The most important bit of information, that your password must have a number in it somewhere, is hidden behind the at best opaque phrasing of &quot;passwords should be using at least 6 alpha-numeric characters&quot; (yes, programmers and math geeks know this means a mix of letters and numbers but when the average user can't even remember the rules on how to use a comma you're stretching credulity to say this is transparent language). Additionally, the design here is a nightmare with alpha broken up by layout.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Then<\/a>
Then there's this error message. On it's face, this means nothing - which information? my name? my wizard number? my birthday? - when in reality what this means is that I can't remember the answer to my secret question. This is where usability as customer service comes into play: this is the only process besides picking up the phone during normal business hours that is available for me to retreive information to access my account.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unlike 99%<\/acronym> of other businesses out there, Avis has rejected the process of sending a randomly generated password to the user’s registered e-mail address so that when someone can’t remember the answer to her secret question she can still have access to her account without burning time during a work day. This is a key indicator that programmers controlled laying out this customer service path. They did what was easiest for them on the front side of the process with no regard to what would be easiest for the customer or better for the company in the long run.<\/p>\n

So, piss poor usability makes for bad customer service. And yes, I will be asking them about now that I finally have time to call them during business hours (two weeks after I already made my car reservation over the phone).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2.1 and 2.2: Usability is customer service (aka: Why geek speak should never make it to error messages and why a single path to problem resolution should never be the option) Usability failures can come in many flavors when the interface mechanism involves a computer. Most of these failures are directly attributable to a defect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-thoughts","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1217"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions\/1228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}