contingency design

IRCTC Calendar Design

3 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under contingency design

IRCTC.co.in is the Indian Railways’ ticketing website.

April has only 30 days. I still went ahead and selected 31st April and hit ‘Find Trains’. Guess what happened next?

If you know April has only 30 days why would you add 31st to it? Better than designing accurate error messages, is preventing errors. IRCTC seemed to have missed that part.

Recommended Books on Usability write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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30 Boxes decides how long my last name should be

3 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under contingency design, error messages, usability, user experience, ux

Oh well. That means a good chunk of Indians can’t use 30 Boxes. Big deal!

Recommended Books on Usability write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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Which version is the latest?

3 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under contingency design, error messages

Hey, maybe their versioning/numbering sequence is in an inverse sequence. But it is confusing to me Jack.

Recommended Books on Usability write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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Rediff Books: Spaced out?

4 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under contingency design, error messages

So did I enter numeric data or not? I did, only, I inserted a space. If I am not wrong, the field does not allow spaces between numbers. The error message should read “Spaces not allowed.” or something like that. But, this error situation should not occur in the first place. Why can’t Rediff tell the user BEFORE the user enters data that spaces are not allowed? Better still display an example of the accepted format? I wanted to buy the latest Chetan Bhagat’s book. But looks like I will shop else where for it.

Recommended Books on Usability write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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Happy to Help? Really?

4 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under contingency design, error messages

Vodafone claims it is happy to help. Take a look. Click on the pictures to enlarge them. It is not enough if you deploy a CRM solution that’s worth a zillion. How can you disable my account just because I didn’t log in for 180 days? You send me your bills, and I pay them too; So, why should you disable my account doggy? Sometimes a little common sense goes a long way.

Recommended Books on Usability

write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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What’s in a last name?

4 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under contingency design, error messages

If you try to download a white paper from http://www.comparecrm.com/ you need to fill a form (yawn!) before you can start the download (it fires the PDF on the fly and thus chokes my damned browser!); if you have initial(s) for a last name. God save you! The all-knowing designers of comparecrm.com think a last name has to have more than a single letter. What’s the big deal? Read this!

Recommended Books on Usability write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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Firefox VC++ Runtime Error

4 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under contingency design, error messages

One more for the Hall of Shame! Recommended Books on Usability write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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My STC India Annual Conference 2007 Slides

4 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under contingency design, error messages

Contingency design does not figure much in conversations amongst technical communicators. In these conversations, the emphasis is usually on the almighty manual. However, oftentimes, customers read error messages before they even think of opening a product’s manual. In this presentation, Suman Kumar introduces the key area of contingency design and answers questions like ‘How do we design for contingencies?’, ‘Can you use error messages to boost customer experience and loyalty?’, and ‘How does effective contingency design help in reducing support costs?’

Find out: Contingency%20Design.zip (2.28 MB)

Recommended Books on Usability write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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Length of the error message…

4 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under contingency design, error messages

The length of the error message is directly proportional to the user’s threat-perception. (Threat-perception = ‘Something’s wrong with this product’)

Does it make sense?

Recommended Books on Usability write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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I will be talking at the STC Annual Conference in Goa

4 years ago Posted by Suman Kumar Filed under conferences, contingency design, stc

Contingency design does not figure much in conversations amongst technical communicators. In these conversations, the emphasis is usually on the almighty manual. However, oftentimes, customers read error messages before they even think of opening a product’s manual. In this presentation, Suman Kumar introduces the key area of contingency design and answers questions like ‘How do we design for contingencies?’, ‘Can you use error messages to boost customer experience and loyalty?’, and ‘How does effective contingency design help in reducing support costs?’

Read more on the STC Website.

Another interesting paper is by Rachna and Shilpa of Cadence: Test plans as a source of improving documentation quality.

Sweet.

Recommended Books on Usability write to me: sumank [at] gmail [dot] com

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