archive.Joe Lamantia.com

Usability issues pop up in the strangest places. For example, Monday night, while I was sitting in the Lisbon Tourist Police office, filling out a report on how I’d just been robbed. The officer handling my report took a moment to apologize for how long it took him to complete the process. He said, “We have a new internet based system to fill out all the forms, and its very confusing.” Seems that Accenture created a .net based environment for the Portugese police to record assaults on travellers, but they didn’t pay proper attention to user experience and usability concerns. The officers use all the classic workarounds: composing text in a word-processor before pasting it into input fields, post-it notes for shortcuts and passwords all over the workstations; and they live in fear of hitting the wrong navigation button and losing all their in-progress work.
It’s not as good as getting my wallet back, but it might make a good anecdote at the next IA cocktail hour.

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