> At UI13 Jared talked about how many usability problems are rooted in lack of > foreknowledge. I wonder who didn't know what in this example.
This story strikes me as a tale of the mathematics of bureaucracy. One imagined explanation is this: whoever at corporate headquarters who decides what marketing posters go into all stores doesn't mind the fact that 5% of all stores can't sell whatever is in the posters if the other 95% can. The hell created for those in those 5% is outweighed by the win for the 95%. Or even more cynically, the dude at HQ who picks the posters doesn't really care about the stores, since his/her performance reviews don't include any evaluation for how well their marketing materials help or hurt sales at individual stores. > At UI13 Jared talked about how many usability problems are rooted in > lack of foreknowledge. I wonder who didn't know what in this example. I think much of what we point out as design failures (e.g. thisisbroken.com) has more to do with organizational failures (cause) than it does the lack of design quality (symptom). I'm sure there are people at T-mobile who know better, but the organization hasn't put them in a place or enabled them to do anything about it. And this includes the sales guy at the store Neil went to: I'm sure if he was given a big red button labeled "Marketing HQ has screwed my local office" to push that would alert the CEO and reward the sales guy for making a stink about such things, he would have. -Scott Scott Berkun www.scottberkun.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alan Wexelblat Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 10:03 AM To: IxDA Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Bad interaction experiences, blogged nationally In the blog entry titled "A fine wensleydale?" (http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/10/fine-wensleydale.html) Neil Gaiman relates his experiences attemping to buy a G1 phone from T-Mobile. I'm tempted to give this as a sample case to my first-year students and ask them to enumerate all the things wrong with it. Not least of them seems to be the left hand not knowing what the right is doing. At UI13 Jared talked about how many usability problems are rooted in lack of foreknowledge. I wonder who didn't know what in this example. Finally, I'm having trouble tracking down the origin of the "general wisdom" that people are more likely to write about, or tell people about, bad experiences than good ones. Last I looked, Gaiman's blog was getting somewhere north of 1.1 milllion unique visitors per day. If I was a T Mobile exec, I'd be cringing severely right about now. Best, --Alan ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
