extrastar

Verizon’s iPhone 4 + (formerly) tricksy UX

This presentation on “dark UX patterns,” or designs that aim to trick the user into doing/buying/upgrading something that they may not want to, came to my mind just after the Verizon iPhone 4 came out. Though I’m a longtime Verizon subscriber, I wasn’t in the market for an iPhone as my upgrade doesn’t come around until October. However, I’m certainly coveting one. So I had my ear to the ground re: reviews, and something in Engadget’s review made me take pause: 

“You’ll also need a Nationwide voice plan, of course — the cheapest with unlimited texting is the $59 plan that offers 450 minutes a month, so you’re looking at a minimum of $90 a month (or $1,080 yearly) to keep your Verizon iPhone 4 happy and completely functional. (If you drop the texting it’s $70 a month, or $840.)” [Emphasis mine.] 

I wondered if that information came from a Verizon press release, or if that’s the way Verizon was communicating their plan options on the website. Now, I have a plan that runs me about $80 per month before taxes, for voice, texting, and data—which gets me 450 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited mobile-to-mobile texting…and when the people you text the most are all on the Big V, that’s more messages than you’ll ever need. Unless you’re a 14-year-old girl, perhaps. Anyway, that’s $10 less per month than Engadget’s quote. 

Maybe Engadget assumes their readership is wireless-savvy enough to assume that they can add a la carte texting onto that $70/month SMS-free plan…but what about less informed people, like my iPhone-curious mother? These individuals are in danger of being upsold. (And I know that if I were one of those people, and somehow found out months later that I’d been paying for texts I didn’t really need, I’d be soured on my experience with the company.)

Imagine my disappointment when I visited the Verizon site, put myself in the shoes of an iPhone seeker, and proceeded through the purchasing process. Verizon prominently featured their “Nationwide Talk & Text” plans—which came up as the default option— whereas it took several clicks to see that there are a la carte texting options available. One had to click to the “Nationwide Talk” option, then go through two additional screens, to even see any mention of a la carte SMS packages. This definitely seemed to me like Verizon was deliberately taking advantages of new customers who were perhaps not aware of their pricing scheme. 

Afterword 
This post is a good example of why I shouldn’t procrastinate. On a visit to the Verizon site today, during which I went through the same purchasing flow, I found that Verizon had changed their site to present Talk plans first—with a nice little message about texting-as-you-go or plans that start at $5/month. Talk & Text plans are now a distant second option, below the fold. Thus rendering this entire post moot. Oh well. One less instance of dark UX on the web = better for all of us.

this one’s a doozy.

clientsfromhell:

Client: “Excellent work, we love what you’ve done with the site! Actually, would it be too much trouble to send me the original?”

Me: “The original?”

Client: “You know, the site on paper, before you scanned it in.”

Playing with Etsy’s Taste Test

I’m usually a regular Etsy visitor, but I missed this feature when it debuted just before Christmas— Etsy has created a tool called Taste Test that is supposed to make it a little easier to explore Etsy’s massive amount of offerings; it aims to create a list of items tailored to your personal style. 

At the beginning of the quiz, there was a row “from men’s favorites” and “from women’s favorites.” I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to choose the row that corresponded to my gender, or the row that I just liked.

 What if (and it did happen to be the case) I like the dude-chosen products better? It was unclear to me whether this was just a minor “FYI, ladies chose these” note or a firm directive to help me get started. 

As I proceeded through the tool, I wasn’t quite sure what the payoff was going to be after I went through all the steps— I mean, had a vague idea that it’s going to be a group of products that correspond with my taste, but that wasn’t a sufficiently juicy carrot to keep me going. I also had to refresh the page a number of times to get to a group of products I liked. And finally, my results were largely a regurgitation of items I’d chosen.

I think the idea is cute and clever in theory, but there are definitely some design issues. It’s great to be able to get exposure to items you might not normally come across during a typical browsing session, but the way the tool generates results could seemingly use some tweaking…

Try it out here.

Photoshop vs. Paint

clientsfromhell:

“I understand that you prefer to use photoshop, but we don’t feel like that program is universal enough. If you could do all of the design work in Microsoft Paint it would be easier for us to edit what you do and give you an idea of the changes we want.”