Is it Possible to be too User‐Friendly?
My answer has always been yes, but I had no real reason as to why I believed this to be true… until today.
Recently, photoblogger Mirco Wilhelm's Flickr account was "accidentally" deleted. Wilhelm has been using Flickr for five years, and is a paid customer. He reported someone's account and in a very‐easy‐to‐make‐mistake, the Flickr representative deleted Wilhelm's account instead of the fraud's account. Flickr says, "Oops! Unfortunately, I can't retrieve your pictures. But, what I can do is reactive your account (minus the 4000 pictures that are your livelihood) and even give you an upgrade!" (not real quotes). Well since Wilhelm's pictures are linked everywhere on the Internet and now all of those links are broken… that doesn't really do him much good. Flickr is now trying to develop a way that this doesn't happen in the future.
As you can see, it is entirely possible that things can be made far too simple. It sounds like deleting accounts can be far too user friendly and maybe need to be a little less. There should be a process in place that is a little more difficult. It is far more difficult to remove yourself from a social networking site (hours), and even unsubscribing from emails a minimum of a two‐click process.
So, what's the point? The point is, while it is true that we don't want things to be more complicated than necessary… we also need to think that sometimes they should be...
© 2011 Adrienne McEwan
My answer has always been yes, but I had no real reason as to why I believed this to be true… until today.
Recently, photoblogger Mirco Wilhelm's Flickr account was "accidentally" deleted. Wilhelm has been using Flickr for five years, and is a paid customer. He reported someone's account and in a very‐easy‐to‐make‐mistake, the Flickr representative deleted Wilhelm's account instead of the fraud's account. Flickr says, "Oops! Unfortunately, I can't retrieve your pictures. But, what I can do is reactive your account (minus the 4000 pictures that are your livelihood) and even give you an upgrade!" (not real quotes). Well since Wilhelm's pictures are linked everywhere on the Internet and now all of those links are broken… that doesn't really do him much good. Flickr is now trying to develop a way that this doesn't happen in the future.
As you can see, it is entirely possible that things can be made far too simple. It sounds like deleting accounts can be far too user friendly and maybe need to be a little less. There should be a process in place that is a little more difficult. It is far more difficult to remove yourself from a social networking site (hours), and even unsubscribing from emails a minimum of a two‐click process.
So, what's the point? The point is, while it is true that we don't want things to be more complicated than necessary… we also need to think that sometimes they should be...
© 2011 Adrienne McEwan
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