Or, is it that designers making decisions in a vacuum are ruining software in general?
One huge problem with interface design in industry segments for which I am a heavy/detailed user is that the major design choices are made by people who have never actually used the system in question and seek no input from those who have (e.g. Focus Groups, or simply observant-to-potentially-annoying-degrees users like myself).
Case in point: ticket management and sales systems. Example 1: Ticketmaster's mobile resale interface that was replaced in 2014 or so. It was so stupid that if you were seeking, say, 3 tickets for an event, it would show you all listings offering 3 or more... even if you could not possibly purchase 3 from those sets! Many customers unknowingly bought more tickets than requested.
Any knowledgeable user would have spotted that; I did in 10 minutes. It remained unchanged and without warning until the whole site was redone.
Example 2: Tickets.com "My Tickets" account interface. In the general case, a given ticket has a barcode; they changed the mobile site to display the barcode when you drill down to ticket detail. Nice idea, since you could then just show your phone at the gate if you forgot your hard tickets. Anyway, also, in many cases, a ticketholder may want to make a note pertaining to a given ticket, e.g. "Given to Dave and Carolyn for anniversary; don't resell these, you idiot."
So, in Spring of 2014 (I think), they decided to have the desktop system allow display of barcodes as well. Um, OK. However, they implemented this by having that overlay/replace the Notes, so therefore you could not only not see any given note, you could not even see that any note had ever been entered. See the hazard here? Poor Dave and Carolyn get shut out at the gate and embarrassed because you later resold their tickets because your careful notation was silently disposed of.
Anyway, after I pointed that out to them, their solution was to roll back and give up on the barcode display feature altogether, rather than provide access to both.
All of these problems (and many others) could have been avoided simply by inviting and encouraging feedback from your power users before tearing out your load-bearing walls of code.
One huge problem with interface design in industry segments for which I am a heavy/detailed user is that the major design choices are made by people who have never actually used the system in question and seek no input from those who have (e.g. Focus Groups, or simply observant-to-potentially-annoying-degrees users like myself).
Case in point: ticket management and sales systems. Example 1: Ticketmaster's mobile resale interface that was replaced in 2014 or so. It was so stupid that if you were seeking, say, 3 tickets for an event, it would show you all listings offering 3 or more... even if you could not possibly purchase 3 from those sets! Many customers unknowingly bought more tickets than requested. Any knowledgeable user would have spotted that; I did in 10 minutes. It remained unchanged and without warning until the whole site was redone.
Example 2: Tickets.com "My Tickets" account interface. In the general case, a given ticket has a barcode; they changed the mobile site to display the barcode when you drill down to ticket detail. Nice idea, since you could then just show your phone at the gate if you forgot your hard tickets. Anyway, also, in many cases, a ticketholder may want to make a note pertaining to a given ticket, e.g. "Given to Dave and Carolyn for anniversary; don't resell these, you idiot."
So, in Spring of 2014 (I think), they decided to have the desktop system allow display of barcodes as well. Um, OK. However, they implemented this by having that overlay/replace the Notes, so therefore you could not only not see any given note, you could not even see that any note had ever been entered. See the hazard here? Poor Dave and Carolyn get shut out at the gate and embarrassed because you later resold their tickets because your careful notation was silently disposed of.
Anyway, after I pointed that out to them, their solution was to roll back and give up on the barcode display feature altogether, rather than provide access to both.
All of these problems (and many others) could have been avoided simply by inviting and encouraging feedback from your power users before tearing out your load-bearing walls of code.