Getting back to this story...
A few weeks ago I spent two and a half hours standing (literally) at the counter of the US Airway check-in counter trying to secure a ticket to San Francisco using a free travel voucher. (No the online experience just didn't work for this one. Another story.)
For most of that time I watched the attendant hold the phone to his ear while he tried to get through to his own inventory department. Apparently they have just merged with another airline and the booking system has gone to hell.
I hadn't wanted to traipse out to the airport to stand there at that ticket counter. Of course I had earlier tried to book on line. But because I had a travel voucher, I thought it would be best to avoid the web system and just speak to someone on the phone directly. After three attempts with three different agents I was told that I had a reservation and the seats would be held for seven days. All I needed to do was take the voucher to the airport for verification. I was relieved that the pain of finding flights was over. A simple trip to the airport to pick up the tickets and...
...that reservation turned out to be pure myth. By the time I got to the ticket counter there was no trace of my name on any tickets and the flights were all booked.
Two and a half hours is a long time to daydream and contemplate what on earth had gone wrong with this airline's booking system. It was impossible to know for sure but one thing was for certain - there was no such thing as fast access to information on that particular day. The System didn't work.
The trip took a peculiar route, the more direct flights having been snatched up long ago. My girlfriend and I ended up spending hours and hours wondering about some distant airport while we waited for our connecting flight. We came across this:
It was pleasant enough as airport bars are concerned. Light and airy with clean table cloths. But something about the scene was bothering me and it took a few moments before I could place what it was. I had sensed a usability problem and my problem solving reflexes had been triggered.
When the waitress came by I asked her, "Are those liquor bottles just for display?"
"Which ones?"
"The ones at the very top of that shelf."
"Oh no, they're all full."
"They do look very nice up there but do you not have a storage room or some place to keep them?"
"Oh no. We just keep 'em all up there."
I was fascinated. Chewing slowly on my meal, I got lost in a daze, thinking about the height, trying to imagine how this system actually works. Later, when the waitress came back to see if I was still working on my Teriyaki Chicken I questioned her some more.
"Do you have a ladder handy to get those bottles?"
"No sir."
"How do you actually get them from way up there?"
She laughed and said, "We just climb up on the counter and reach for 'em."
I was horror struck. What were the insurance premiums for a place like this? And what a spectacle it must be - possibly worthy of Cirque du Soleil - balancing, tiptoed on a shiny wet surface, reaching for that bottle of Johnnie Walker that is still just beyond reach! I felt truly sorry for the staff.
Of course they would have a stash of open bottles somewhere handy - in the lower cabinets and probably below the counter. But still the question remained how often they needed replacing. How frequently did these young women risk their lives to reload the cupboards?
These are questions I always ask when designing the information architecture for a user interface system. What are the tasks and what are their relative frequencies? Clearly the tools for higher frequency tasks must be more readily available to the user or else they will burn away their time just clambering through the navigation system. There is no winner in such a situation. It is no fun for the users to be so unproductive and it is certainly not helpful to the bottom line of a business who depends on such software tools.
And that brought me back to the airline ticket counter. The information I had asked for and that my agent was trying to retrieve was too far out of reach. The spectacle of seeing him standing still as a statue wasn't as glamorous as a high altitude balancing act, but it was perhaps worthy of a side show clown act. But it's a sad story being told here because again there are no winners - the customer loses, the agent loses and the business loses.
Usability is a bottom line issue for all involved.