When you last used your debit card at a grocery store, what was the message the debit machine gave you? Or how about when you filled up your car and used your credit or debit card, what was the message the machine said to you? Unless it said “Declined”, I am guessing you do not remember. If so, that was a well designed system. You would be surprised the amount of effort, studies and testing that is put into designing user messages that are seamless to the user. It is an area called Usability. I once met a gentleman with a PhD in Usability, who knew? He was extremely passionate about it. He explained to me you should never say thank you or please in a user message, especially when requesting a user to enter required information, please makes it sound as if it is optional. He pointed out, a stop sign does not say Please Stop; it just says Stop. When I was developer I was notorious for long user messages that would always get edited down in user acceptance testing (UAT). I prided myself on my thank yous and pleases, I had no idea I was violating several “usability laws.”
Well, there is one user message that should be written a big fat ticket for completely violating “usability laws.” If you have driven over any bridge in Northern California, you know this message. For my FasTrak riders , what does it say when you go through? Valid ETC. I get the “Valid”, but “ETC”, really? What is ETC, estimated time of completion, etcetera? This is such a poorly designed message, it is not intuitive and it stays with the user waaaay to long. I mean, “Hello, I am blogging about it!” I remember when I first saw it; I was completely confused and upset, thinking that makes no sense! So, I finally researched it and found out what it meant, ETC – electronic toll collection. Ooooh, ok now that makes PERRRFECT sense, what was I thinking. I am sure some developers are giving each other high fives thinking wow this is so cool. Well, they clearly did not do UAT, because there is no way anyone outside of the toll collection industry would make that connection. I would rather go through the cash lane and have the toll taker throw my change at me after I say “Thank you, create a great day” or roll their eyes when I give them a hand full of nickel and dimes ; while these are not necessarily user friendly messages, I completely understand them.
Here is a user message that has something for everyone
“Happy Chriskwanzaka” *
*(combination of Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah)
