[Sigia-l] Do Make Me Think!

[Will Parker]

Indeed, the missing piece in 'let the customer do it' designs is  
accountability. In our profession, that translates to 'lack of  
feedback'.

I'm in the early stages of a usability analysis of the website of a  
mid-sized political organization. They've been receiving complaints  
from visitors who haven't been receiving the newsletters, event  
notifications, etc. for which they signed up. Since these folks are  
often volunteering for get-out-the-vote efforts, that failure is a  
Very Bad Thing.

I have to look into what's going on at the back-end, but I'm going to  
recommend that people signing up for important services receive two  
items:

1. a pre-posting summary of their signup data, including instructions  
on how to deal with 'dropped' signups (phone number or email for  
support contact).
2. an after-post confirmation page or email giving a summary and  
transaction number for the signup, with similar support contact info.

Both of these documents would also include clear instructions to  
'Print this page for your records'.

In general, if we're going to ask customers to do data entry, we also  
need to help them recover from failures at critical points in the  
process. Part of this requirement involves creating understandable,  
reliable systems. The other part is giving the user methods of  
proving failures aren't their fault.

- Will
Will Parker
wparker at channelingdesign.com

"The only people who value your specialist knowledge are the ones who  
already have it." - William Tozier





On Oct 15, 2006, at 1:03 PM, cheryl kimble wrote:

>>  Having inherent/unexpressed needs and being able
>> to articulate what they are in the form of a potential product/ 
>> service are
>> two different things.
>
>
> great point ziya. i also feel that we're in an age where
> responsibility for "everything" falls on the individual. well, how
> convenient is that? doesn't that place the "blame" on someone else if
> it doesn't work?
>
> what a cop out!
>
> ck
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