…and by some, I mean two. Three if you include the Slideshare pic from a few days ago, which I’ll lazily repost below.
First, here’s one from Mr. Tweet:
Cute, funny, capitalizes on a well-known existing meme. It’s not too objectionable, meaning it’s not going to piss anyone off in a major way. Overall, a good user experience in a crappy situation (i.e., you’ve tried to browse somewhere or save something, and it didn’t work.)
Next, here’s an RSVP and profile “completer” from eVite:
The context is different of course; this isn’t an error message. I get the fact that they’re trying to help people learn more about each other. Still, the “If I found 1K” question is whimsical but bothersome.
I don’t know why it sticks in my craw like it does; maybe it’s that there’s a disconnect between their intent (connecting people and helping people know each other better) and the execution. I guess it’s just that knowing the answer to that question is a crappy way to build connections between people.
So here’s my bottom line: Mr. Tweet w00t, eVite fail.
Oh, and here’s the Slideshare error message that I liked:
Y’know that last post of mine where I pointed out that I didn’t know what to do with the “Yes” button?
I discovered what that button does. It’s probably the second-worst case scenario. (First worst-case scenario is that it makes you lose data or a setting you’ve selected.)
It CLOSES THE WINDOW.
Classic. You just can’t make up stuff like that.
Not exactly a usability post. But still worth a chortle. Or maybe a guffaw. OK, how about a titter? No? Alrighty then.
And while we’re talking Amazon.com, I need to post someday soon about how fantastically great Amazon’s “Amazon Recommends” marketing emails are. They rope me in more than I’d like to admit. Why? Because they’re just so damn accurate.
Amazon has clearly done the hard work of tuning their recommendation engine.
And when you get down to it showing me stuff I’m likely to want is the critical difference between spam and email I want to actually read.
So I was looking for a good price on a little Honda I’m interested in. I stumbled across a site that pings all the dealers in my vicinity for their best price.
One thing I do when I’m not sure of how trustworthy a site is…is use my initials instead of my first name. And usually I accompany it with “plus” addressing, which is simply a way to identify if an organization is selling your email address to third parties. You put “pjsherman+[something else]@gmail.com”, and Gmail will still deliver it to your base address. If you start receiving spam at that address, then you know that the company sold your address. And, you can easily block it.
So I fill out the form, and enter “PJ” – short for Paul Joseph – into the first name field.
And the form barfs. Plus, it gets all scoldy with its CAPITALIZATION of CONTACT and VALID. In my head it sounds like a smarmy schoolteacher.
Then I got curious and entered in some variations to see if the form would accept certain two-letter first names.
Nope.
So the upshot is…if you’re Bo or Al or Ty or Jo, this company isn’t interested in your business.
Illustrated in this simple dialog are three common errors that software producers make:
- Assuming that users know what the heck their acronyms mean,
- Not helping users understand the implications of selecting/not selecting an option, and
- Using a single selection control to perform what appears to be a combination of two actions (e.g., “run WinSAT” and “enable Windows Aero desktop theme.”)
Here’s the context: I was finishing up a Windows 7 install, and found an updated driver for my laptop’s video card. When I started the install, I was presented with this dialog.
Honestly, I have no idea what “WinSAT” is, what it does, or why anyone would (or would not) want to run it.
And the second half of the sentence is even more perplexing… is it presenting me with an independent action, or is it referring to a consequence or outcome of “running WinSAT”?
Hey Intel, I love your SSD drives and I’ve been happy with your hardware for years…but you need a bit of work on your software UI’s.
And don’t even get me started on Intel’s software app for handling multiple monitors…it’s the epitome of frustrating software.
