It’s never the user’s fault…
I recently experienced a bug using Basecamp, and the subsequent support conversation I had with 37signals got me thinking about the responsibility of the user whilst using a web application.
One of our non-techie clients posted a message into Basecamp which broke the layout of the message page and truncated his message text; it turned out that he had pasted html from another source. When I contacted 37signals, they kindly edited the message to remove the layout problem… but I was left unsatisfied.
It appeared to me that this was actually a bug with the way Basecamp validated data input and I was keen to have it rectified to avoid further problems of this nature - after all, our client had no idea that he had done anything wrong.
I contacted 37signals again, to which they responded:
It’s not a bug, this user just entered Textile incorrectly. You may
want to ask your users not to use formatting in their messages.
It was this response that got me thinking about the user’s responsibility.
Essentially 37signals were telling me that the user was at fault, that they had used the system incorrectly. However, there was nothing to indicate this to the user - as far as they saw it they were inputing perfectly acceptable content.
Equally, most of our clients are non-technical and do not know what Textile is (and whilst it might be useful if they did, it’s not essential for the use of Basecamp) so it’s not fair to say that the user had input Textile incorrectly, the fault was actually that the system was unable to validate the data and protect itself from malfunction.
So it’s not the user that is at fault but rather the system.
And I believe this to be true across the board; if you are catering for non-technical users and offering a system that is easy enough to require little or no instruction, your system must be ready to deal with the varied ways in which a user may attempt to use it - whether that be with the proactive use of warnings or instructional notes, or the reactive use of validation.
Whilst I won’t deny that this is a dig at 37signals (as they advocate such things as the above), the encounter did actually serve to highlight the issue of where the responsibilities of the user and the system lie.
And as we all know, the customer is never wrong…
Comments
Sarah
said on 13 June 2008Hi Keir,
I apologize for this experience. I certainly never meant to imply that you or your customers were to blame for this, or that Basecamp wasn’t, I really just wanted to assure you that the issue had been fixed and give you some feedback for avoiding it in the future. I’m sorry that I didn’t communicate that well, and for assuming that this user had intentionally entered the textile.
Feedback like this is important to us since we spend everyday improving our products and our customer support. I completely empathize with your frustration on this issue and take responsibility for not being more clear or thorough in my response. I also hope that if you have any other lingering issues or need help with anything that you won’t hesitate to get in touch.
Keir
said on 13 June 2008Hi Sarah, thank you very much for your response - it’s really appreciated. We love using Basecamp but often the problem with an excellent system is the smallest issue can be very noticeable.
That said, I do still believe this to be a bug in Basecamp’s validation and the solution you offered fixed a specific instance of the bug, but not the underlying problem.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Add a comment