[Sigia-l] challenging users vs. revealing that content/products are unavailable

[richard_dalton at vanguard.com]

Samantha writes:
> One of the senior folks on our team feels *very* strongly that a
challenge
> is virtually always inappropriate in public/unauthenticated space and is
> very much opposed to the challenge approach, arguing that we should take
the
> alternate approach and have users browse the information even if it means
> that in some scenarios they'll learn that the product being described is
not
> available in their state.

When this senior person goes to a restaurant does he/she get upset when the
greeter asks him/her if they'd prefer smoking or non-smoking? ;-)

Seriously though - i'd be in favour of the challenge - we've done it before
(probably for similar types of products) - a key thing to do is to portray
it in as helpful a manner as possible - telling people why you need to ask
and using phrasing like "in order to show you the right information we need
to know what state you live in ..."

      Richard