[Sigia-l] Usability Horror Stories

[Whitney Quesenbery]

At 03:00 PM 9/18/2003 -0600, Todd R.Warfel wrote:
>>As
>>part of this, he has asked us to find examples of
>>"usability horror stories" where a product or site's
>>lack of usability has cost a company on a
>>near-catastrophic level.

There's always the billions (I think it was $3.4 billion) lost when the IRS 
abandoned a project, on discovering that the technology and software was 
making the processing of tax forms SLOWER. Turns out that they didn't 
understand how the typical intake office worked, and had done no work to 
analyze the current tasks and timings.

Don't have a reference - it was a few years ago - but I'm sure you could 
find it in news archives.


Whitney Quesenbery
Whitney Interactive Design, LLC
w. www.WQusability.com
e. whitneyq at wqusability.com
p. 908-638-5467

UPA  - www.usabilityprofessionals.org
STC Usability SIG: www.stcsig.org/usability