User Unfriendly
Regular readers will be familiar with my frustrations to pay for parking in the UK amidst the array of different apps used by each county council in this new age of not accepting legal currency as payment.
The grey area seems to arise in the crossover between doing things in person and doing things via a link or app. (Plus the added risk of being scammed, a whole other can of worms).
This issue is not confined to parking of course, because there’s an app or a link for everything. My phone continually pumps out alarmist messages with a passive aggressive tone: SID’S ARTHRITIS INJECTION IS OVERDUE, or YOUR POOL NEEDS URGENT BUFFER. And don’t get me started on the super fun to be had trying to find out about Telstra power outages when the Wifi’s down, which can only be done via the Telstra app, which needs updating first but can’t be done without Wifi.
I arrived for a long-ago made health appointment recently to find the practice had no record of it. This is how the conversation went.
Me: I made this appointment four months ago in person and put it straight in my calendar.
Receptionist: We’ve just changed to a new booking system, so it probably got lost. Did you get a text confirmation?
Me: (thinking) I don’t remember. No, I don’t think so.
Receptionist: Well then.
Me: ???
Receptionist (patiently, as though to a small child): If you didn’t receive a confirmation then there’s no appointment. You should have called to confirm.
Me: So, the fact that you didn’t send me a reminder is on me because I should have checked back with you, even though you lost the appointment at your end?
Receptionist: Yes.
My gym has recently upgraded the changing room lockers from old fashioned raised keypads to a new fancy app-based system. Lockers are centrally controlled via a large touch screen in the changing rooms, or you can allocate your own locker direct from your phone app. What could possibly go wrong?
The new system promises to be user friendly, reliable and automated, providing flexibility and convenience. You assign your PIN and either allocate a random available locker or choose your own vacant one from the list. Brilliant. No more trying all the doors to see if they work or not. The only trouble is the same as most instances of technological frustration. That pesky issue of human behaviour.
Intuitively, people physically select an empty locker, throw their things in, close it, and then go to assign the locker number. Wrong. There’s no way of retrospectively assigning the number once the door’s safely locked, which is done by simply pushing it shut.
Some people throw their non-valuable gear in a locker but aren’t bothered about the palaver of assigning a PIN and locking it. The new ‘smart’ lockers think the locker’s still empty, so the number gets allocated to someone else, who then discovers this gear. Or for some reason the door’s been pushed shut, maybe by accident. So, you can’t retrieve your stuff because you didn’t set a PIN. You can allocate a number from your phone app but then you have to cart your phone around the gym with you.
Even once you’ve got the hang of it, the lockers seem to have a mind of their own. I came back after my workout to discover my perfectly correctly assigned and closed locker was open. Since my laptop was inside this was far from ideal. The user friendly and convenience promised claims are yet to be delivered on. Still, hats off to the lovely helpful staff who have their hands full fielding clusters of unhappy patrons.
The world is used to the rapid rate of change, but humans push back when we’re told to just accept that the new way is better. Often it is. My poor dog would probably be hobbling stiff legged, and my pool would be green if the handy alerts didn’t spring up on my phone. I’m sure we’ll be beaten into submission in no time, and if not, just wait for a few years and AI will do it all.
In the meantime, I’ll take my laptop everywhere with me and set reminders to call ahead of appointments in case they’ve got lost.
Easy.