UX/UI
*They are not the same thing.
I am no user experience expert except that I am a user of things and stuff and thus, have user experiences. And once you are aware that your user experience is the experience you have when you interact with companies and brands and apps and restaurants, your mind shifts a little. And when you realize that often companies can control this experience (the interface) you wonder why so many do it so poorly.
The title of this post comes from a recent vendor demo, where the salesperson kept referring to the UX/UI of the product. And my brain was screaming for her to stop. Because if UX stands for user experience (and I think it does) and UI stands for user interface, how could you possibly equate the two?
Back to me, and a few recent experiences.
Southwest Airlines recently bought AirTran and this is good news for everybody that likes to fly on the cheap. But they have yet to fully merge. And here is why it can’t happen soon enough.
A year ago, flying on AirTran from Reagan airport in D.C. to Milwaukee, flight was overbooked. But I could take a taxi to BWI (Baltimore, 45 minutes away), get to Milwaukee an hour later than scheduled and get a free round trip voucher for my troubles. Winner, winner.
I go to use the voucher and I can only fly on AirTran routes. No shared routes. Which means if I want to fly from BWI to Denver, a route flown direct by Southwest numerous times per day, I need to fly to Atlanta, hang out for four hours and then catch my next flight. Same situation on the return flight.
And I get to pay to check my bags.
But on Southwest, no bag fees, lots of flights, lots of flexbility and lets say you mess up your reservation and need to change your flights. It is a breeze on Southwest and does not cost a dime.
Southwest has created a great user experience. And they have created a great brand. As Scott Stratten points out, “ Your logo isn’t your brand. What someone thinks when they see your logo, that’s your brand.” And Scott is doing pretty well for himself pointing out what should seem obvious but slips through the grasp of many. Many people who are paid well to thing about user experiences and user interfaces.
And then there is Verizon Wireless. If you already have your own shitty customer service experience with Verizon, you can skip this next part. Everyone loves to rip on their cell service but it often seems warranted. My wife’s phone dies. She goes to the nearest Verizon store but they do not have the phone she wants, the iPhone 5s. The salesperson tries to convince her that the 5c will meet her needs and is basically the same phone. Which we all know is bullshit and why they don’t have any of the 5s and plenty of the 5c to sell. So she leaves the store with no phone.She goes to order online and because she is on the family plan with her parents, enters the wrong password and manages to get locked out of the account. There are two passwords, you account password and your payment password. Now you know. So she calls to order. Get all the way through the order. Last step, verify the order with your account password, which she can’t do because the account is in her mom’s name and the account is locked. Call back, get that issue resolved. Get the confirmation email. The shipping address is wrong. Wrong city, wrong zip. Call back, get that fixed. And today, she might get her new phone. But then she has to activate and set it up.
All told, she must have talked to more than six people at Verizon and except for the misinformed salesperson at the store, they were all very nice. But the situation did not have to happen. If the store had the products they should have in stock, end of story. If the guy on the phone had asked to confirm the shipping address and told us that we would need to enter the account password at the end of the verification process, problems solved.
And we all have our stories, both good and bad. But think about how much better the world could be if creative people were involved in the development of everything and we didn’t have to think about our interactions as positive and negative. Everything worked seamlessly and intuitively and as it should. One can dream.
This post was inspired by personal experience, working on the web for a living and:
99% Invisible
QR Codes Kill Kittens
This post on Medium:
Interfaces in need
which led me to this post:
Content is Kebab
and so the journey continues.
P.S. Last minute thought: If you think Apple has figured this all out, think again. Try to change the Apple ID on one of your devices. Go ahead, try it.
P.S.S. To demonstrate how consistently awful cable companies are at customer service, South Park offers this piece of brilliance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6G-wNyIxzM
