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.

[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 :)