Bill Payment and Bad Design

I had to have a medical test done at the end of April.  Last week I got two things in the mail.  A bill for my portion, and a check for the same amount out of my flexible spending account.  I have no clue where my EOB is.  I finally figured out it must be subject to my deductible which I haven't reached.  Fair enough.

Oh, and I got a bill and a check for each of two things: the test and the doctor's fees for reading it.  Luckily both could be paid online.  Much easier, right? 

The first one I had to create an account for, with password, security questions, and the like.  Here are all the things that were wrong with it.

1. One field was "account nickname."  As I have no reason to think I'll be back, I left it blank.  Error message number one.  It wasn't optional.  Sigh.
2. My next error message was that my password didn't meet the requirements.  Doggoneit, I looked for requirements when I was putting it in and there weren't any.  They don't bother to tell you until you've screwed up.
3. Nowhere did it tell me my balance (or at least, nowhere I could find).  If I didn't have the piece of paper in front of me, I wouldn't have known how much to pay.  That's just plain dumb.
4. I had to fill out patient information, including address.  Never mind the fact that they mailed me the bill with the account number on it.
5. I had to enter the same address for the billing info.  Every two-bit e-commerce site has a check box to use the same information for billing that you've already entered.  Is health care that intent on making us miserable?

I finished account one and moved on to number two.  Here's its list of transgressions.

1. I had to enter my address in three places.  Geez.
2. The payment page had the American Express logo along with MasterCard and Visa, but guess what.  It wasn't in the drop down.  Had to walk downstairs for the other card.  Seriously, why put the logo there if you don't take it?

So this second site wasn't quite as bad overall.  They even do one thing I really liked.  They have four different bill formats (well, that in itself is bad but is probably due to mergers or something).  The first thing you do on their website is click on a picture of what yours looks like so they can walk you through it.

Although now that I think about it, that's just wrong too.  If they ask for the account number, they should know what kind it is.  And besides, there's no guarantee that you have the paper bill in front of you, especially if you're coming back for subsequent payments.

Why does bad design persist?  Very simple and inexpensive testing would uncover these things.

Design Analysis #1 - Caution Signs

I started to title this design rant number one, but I promise to never rant about bad design without offering an alternative or at least exploring what's wrong with it.  And I'm numbering them because I know it'll be a frequent topic.

This is something that has bugged me for the entire six years I've been at Travelocity.  As you're walking in from the garage, you have to cross a road.  It's really more of a divided driveway as its only purpose is for drop off.  Because of this, at most times of day, traffic is very sparse.  You could easily walk into the office a dozen times in a row without seeing a car. 

Lest the sense of complacency this leads to causes an unwary pedestrian to be run over by a colleague's car pool, the company has put up caution signs to remind you that you're crossing a road, or rather two one-way roads since it's divided.  Here they are.

(One was in the shade and one in the sun when I photographed them.  They are really basically the same.)

So what bugs me?  They just have never felt right.  And I finally spent the time to think about why.  I think it boils down to the fact that we read left to right.  The left sign is particularly problematic.  The first thing you see is the arrow.  The fact that it's pointing left draws your eye from right to left.  But then you want to read the sign, so your eyes jump back to the right.  You read the message, and again look to the left as it says.  So eyes going everywhere.

The right isn't quite as bad.  But the tendency is still to follow the arrow to the right, then jump back and actually read the message.

I think the first solution is to put the arrow after the message.  Read first, then follow arrow to follow directions, and you never have to look back at the sign.  The arrow being first makes you jump all over the place.  With the right sign this works beautifully.  You track left to right to read the message, and just keep following the arrow in the same direction.

Left is, like I said, more problematic.  Moving the arrow means you track left to right to read, then jump back to the left to follow the arrow.  Not much of a way around a jump at some point.

I also wondered if maybe a big arrow with the words inside might be better.  This would eliminate the left to right issue of processing text and arrow sequentially.  If I have time later I'll draw it up and put it here. 

Is the sign as is effective?  Yes, it's fine.  It just bugs me because it doesn't feel right and could be better.  But I guarantee you nobody usability tested this sucker and did eye tracking.  The geek in me would love to do it.

Counting My Blessings

I spent the night last night in the guest bed.  My hip was hurting terribly, and it's currently the mattress I like the most.  Started ticking off all the lousy health genes my parents passed on to me as I was trying to wake up: bad back (which ties into the hip issue), worse knees, asthma, tooth issues, sensitive tummy, chronic depression.  

All of a sudden it hit me.  Quit being a wuss!  None of those things are life threatening or even all that life altering.  So I have to bike or swim rather than run.  So I do none of those things very fast.  So I'm the proud owner of six crowns.  I'm not dying and treatment has not left me destitute.

And look at all the other wonderful things in my life.  My family and friends, a job I love.  

So my prayer this morning is this.  Lord, attitude adjustment accomplished.  Now please take away the hip pain so I can sleep.

As a mother of redheads

My two daughters - who for the sake of this blog will be referred to as Big M and Little M - have red hair.  Not strawberry blonde, it looks red in the sunlight, but gorgeous, flaming red hair.  It is beautiful, no ifs, ands, or buts.  But the constant attention it attracts sometimes gets old.

Twice in the last week people have come up to us while we were eating and interrupted us to say something.  Or ask.  Wish I had a dollar for every time we've been asked where it comes from, as Dad and I are not redheads.  

I've gotten to where I mentally assign a score to the originality of the comment.  One of this week's meal interruptions warranted a fairly high score for his question of whether they got it at Kroger or Tom Thumb.  But mostly, we just all smile and say thank you, and say it came from Granddad rather than get into a lesson on genetics and recessive genes.

After a family bike ride this weekend, Big M commented that she likes biking for many reasons, one of which is that her helmet covers up her hair.  

My niece, also a redhead and older than M&M, commented several years ago that people always say things about her hair but not about her.  Which brings me to my point.  It's just plain not good to make comments about kids about things that are out of their control.

I'm going to make it a point to say nice things to kids, especially redheads, about them.  Tell them how sweet or brave or kind they are, depending on the situation.  It will probably be a welcome change for them.