conservations I wish I didn't have multiple times a week

[the_siobhan]

"Hey, can you help me with X? It's not working?"

"Sure. Can you give me more info about why it's not working?"

"I don't know. I try to do X and it doesn't work."

"OK, but can you tell me what happens instead? Does it give an error message? Does it give a result you don't want? Does your computer explode? I need more information to diagnose the problem."

"Oh, it gives an error message."

"OK, and what does the error message say."

"I don't know, I closed it."

*turns off microphone, sighs deeply, turns microphone back on*

"OK, can you try it again and take a screenshot of the error message and send it to me."

"Sure!"

*email dings two minutes later*

"OK, I'm looking at your email and the error message says, 'Cannot perform X as Y is not set up in the parameters.' Did you try setting up Y?"

"No. Should I try that?"

"Yes, please try that."

"Oh it worked! Thank you so much!"



I got a promotion for this.

Comments

[sanguinity]

It has long surprised me how many nominally-literate people struggle with practical reading comprehension, and yet it's true: a lot of nominally-literate people struggle with practical reading comprehension. And the more frustrated or upset they become, the worse their reading-comp gets. I used to be ???? that parts of my then-job were literally just reading to people what was freely available for them to read themselves, but eventually I learned to just shrug and read it to them, if that's what it took to get things done.

[the_siobhan]

That's the thing. If it were one person, or even two people, I would say, "Oh hey, un-diagnosed learning disability, that's gotta suck" and just get on with my day.

But it happens every second day and it's so many people.

[elusis]

Now let's iterate on this.

1) The person is my student.
2) If I tell them to read the thing, I am intimidating.
3) If I do not tell them to read the thing, I am not clear on what I want from them.
4) Either way, they file a complaint about me.

[the_siobhan]

You really are in an unwinnable situation.

[elusis]

Kobayashi Maru, man.

[brainwane]

Arrrggghhh.

[warriorsavant]

Lack of verbal comprehension too: - "Apply this cream to your rash 2 times/day." - "So what do I do?"

This is beyond handing someone a prescription and their asking what they do with it. I mean the piece of paper, not the medication it is for. "Well, go to a pharmacy, hand them that, along with some money..."

[disastrid]

A lot of my job these days is figuring out how to make people have a better mental model of the system that they're working with so they never have to make that call. I frequently want to grab some of these UX writers by the lapels and scream THESE ERROR MESSAGES MEAN NOTHING TO THE HUMAN USING THIS SYSTEM HOLY SHIT. I mean some people are always going to pick up the phone, but I'm less furious at that than I am at the designers who do this really half-assed design and pass the rest of their job on to people like you.

Btw I collect error messages so please screenshot the good ones and send them to me :)

[the_siobhan]

You make a good point. The company who designed our system absolutely did not hire UX people.

The bank also outsourced all our tech support, so instead of one contact point that figures out who to send our tickets to, we have a half-dozen external companies who send everything back with, "We don't handle those issues". But that is an entire rant on it's own.

[disastrid]

Or they hired shitty UX people, which is probably more the case.

Also that outsourcing hahaha HOLY SHIT. I don't know how you don't spend all day just flinging chairs. I'm assuming it's because they're all screwed to the floor?