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.”