Technovangelism

I had an interesting experience last week at a Smithfield’s restaurant. I walked up to the cash register and was asked for my lunch order by the cashier and before I could answer, another employee behind the counter asked me what I wanted to drink. I was a bit confused for a few seconds because I hadn’t made any sort of order yet. How did the other employee know I was going to order a drink or what size I wanted? After being lost for a couple seconds, I turned back to the cashier and ordered the way I order at any other restaurant. While waiting for my food, I watched some local customers handle the same situation much better than I. They managed to order a drink and their lunch in parallel with two different employees without any hesitation.

Of course the first thing this made me think of was software. I can’t stand it when I start using some software for the first time and have no idea what to do. Even though you eventually learn how to use the software, your experience is still tainted from the initial difficulty. If the software is a website, the developer would be lucky if the user stuck around long enough to attempt to learn. Software that caters only to the advanced user is never going to have one. Luckily for Smithfield’s, my experience wasn’t bad (at all) enough prevent me from going back, but it is a potential risk they might not realize they are making.

Another restaurant with a strange user experience is Gates Bar-B-Q. Here cashiers take your order while you are only half way through the line. Normally this would not be a problem, except they do it by yelling to the entire line and not looking directly at the person whose order they are trying to take. So if you were not paying attention to when the people ahead of you ordered, good luck figuring it out.