With little fanfare the library introduced a print management solution successfully today. There were relatively few glitches. The successes really came from a phased in roll-out of the new technology for the entire system. Bugs were worked out as each library was brought up. Plenty of helpful staff willing to be patient and train was really the key to a successful customer perception. It didn’t hurt that it is pretty easy to use and the old printers were lousy.
The major complaints came from unfriendly jargon and terminology embedded in the interface and dialog boxes. Communication is the most important thing when it comes to new technology. What makes sense to a user interface engineer is undoubtedly not going to make sense to the average user. In fact half of the stuff barely makes sense to me. If something doesn’t work or match, I would love to see a pop-up or dialog say, “That didn’t work. Let’s try again. Enter your password twice. Make sure they match.” or
“You didn’t change the name of the file you are trying to print.”
“Let’s try again. Enter a shorter name for the file, one that is easy to remember. ”
“Now enter your password. ”
“Enter your password again just to be sure that there wasn’t a typo.”
“Great!”
“Now your file is ready to be printed at any print station. You have 3 hours to retrieve it.”
My favorite user interface is still the Jet Blue self check-in. Somehow they word it to feel like its actually friendly and trying to help rather than purposefully trying to make things harder for you.
Why do we call it password if we call it your PIN everywhere else? Why do you have to put your pin in twice when you register for the time management software — its not like you are creating your pin for the first time and have to be sure you get it right — its already there in the system. Why does it come up with the default long file name rather than a blank line since if you leave it as the default you can’t get your file to print? Why don’t we test our interfaces on real users before rolling them out?
Sigh.