I’ve had to switch the phone on my Verizon account a few times in the last couple of weeks. Verizon has an online tool that makes it pretty easy. You login to your account, click on “My Phone”, click “Activate a Phone” and then enter your ESN or MEID. The ESN or MEID is the unique identifier of the handset and is typically found in very small text underneath the battery.
All in all it is a very good experience and makes a fairly arcane task pretty easy. However, there is one bit of explanatory text (highlighted in red) that offers an opportunity for an improved user experience.
Since ESN or MEID is either in decimal or hexidecimal there never will be the letter O it will always be the number 0. However, my mother shouldn’t have to think about hexadecimal base numbers if she is changing her phone. A better solution would be to just treat the letter O as the number 0. Then the user doesn’t have to worry about it, and you can get rid of the explanatory text.
This reminds me of code smells. A code smell is a symptom that there may be deeper issues with the code. For instance, long methods are a code smell. They don’t mean that there is necessarily a problem with the code, but they do suggest that there is a good chance there is.
I think that long blocks of explanatory text are a User Experience smell. Sometimes there isn’t a better option, and you really need that text, but in most cases a little extra thought about the UI can eliminate the need for the explanatory text.
Here Here! And what a perfect and logical solution you present. Its a wonder the people at Verizon didn’t think of that. Not only is that a UX smell but a potential case of Project Manager smell or overall cross-communication smell. P.U.
Well written. I agree completely and like the new terminology too.
I think whenever a product designer says or thinks “well we could just put a note explaining… then they should either rethink it or be careful not to make a UX smell.
BTW, I also agree that no normal human should have to think about decimal vs hex vs binary or anything… The above paragraph is very helpful if it didn’t include those pieces. Just saying:
ESN will either be 11 numbers or 8 characters that can be letters and numbers. MEID is 14 characters that can be letters and numbers. It will always begin with a letter.
Hope all is well!
I personally disagree.
In times of flash and what-not these simple highlights are good and useful.
I like them more than a multitude of links. The problem really is about O vs 0
These are hard to distinguish and I used 0 for CFLAGS optimization without knowing the difference back then
Mark, I’m curious as to how Flash makes explanatory text more necessary.
Also, I wasn’t advocating putting the explanatory text behind links, rather I was suggesting that we as developers try to make interfaces that don’t require explanation.
Thanks for the comment!