Groceries, Graphics and Grumblings

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  CRM   Stakeholder Management  

Grocery shopping for me is a source of angst.

It's not the actual shopping part that bothers me (actually, I find it kind of relaxing and the new product and marketing campaigns I constantly see are quite interesting), it's the payment part. You see, I pay for my groceries through a debit card and always get thrown by the less-than-intuitive interface that pops up as I slide my card in the reader.

No matter which store I go to, the message says right off the bat that I need to enter my PIN. Since I don't want to incur a fee and instead want to use the credit card option, I look for another onscreen selection to help me in my transaction--trouble is there aren't any. Of all the buttons I see in front of me, none of them provides any clue to how I can continue with the process and take me to my desired outcome.

Frustrated and feeling stupid as I do every time I run into this situation, I ask the attendant for instructions on what to do.

As I kindly thank them for their help and realize that there is no way I could have known how to perform the task by means of the onscreen steps, I quietly curse the developers who neglected their responsibilities of designing a proper user interface. I also take a moment and write a poison pen letter in my head that tells them how they have wasted my time and the time of other confused customers…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.