If high street shopping was like online shopping [video]
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
(I refer to the American 'parking meters', 'crosswalks', and to a lesser extent traffic lights, that Google makes me spot even on UK-only sites.)
It's not like it shows images from around the world, it just shows American images to everyone around the world.
Anyway, regardless of if it's global or just American, the point here is that I don't have to answer questions about images of other countries when I shop on a British high street!
Covers invasive collection of personal details, "security questions", upsells, ReCaptcha and more.
Please consider sharing with your teams everyone : )
(Senior Developers could probably respond "here's some better ways". But Junior devs often hardly know their own name, let alone what better alternatives there are to this security theatre.)
I agree on that, the primary fault is at the hands of the one who thought that up and pushed it through to completion, but "just doing my job" and "if I don't do it someone else will" doesn't pass the smell test to me.
Sure, the actual blame may fall on whoever decided to hire all those telemarketers to defraud the elderly but... they're also just trying to have a job. The ceo is just trying to have a profitable company. The shareholders are just trying to have a pension. Consumers are just trying to shop conveniently.
From the perspective of the complainer, the thing is the part of the thing that they see. Telemarketing is telemarketers. Software is the UX. Mindless bureaucracy is the person standing in front of them. Etc.
If you're going to come to the defence of anyone, defend someone who is standing in front of the disgruntled consumer, earning peanuts. Developers are generally well paid, mobile and don't ever face the person they're driving crazy.
Anyway, developers (and software companies) put themselves on this high status pedestal in the early 2000s. The web was full of developer philosophy touting developer agency, morals, and such. Comes around. Goes around. Chickens roust. Pick yours cliche.
Exactly the point I am trying to make. People complain about telemarketers all the time but they actually do know that those people are just trying to get by and have no actual choice.
Developers think other developers are just able to say "f you" to their boss and leave the job and get a new one next day, but this is not the reality. Is this a reality for the majority of audience of HN? Can they do that? Because I can't.
"More" agency is not full agency, but if we're thinking in shades of grey, then I think it's a substantial delta. The stuff developers read and ideas they care about have influence.
For example, agile, TDD, and other buzzword methods for managing software teams started by gaining traction among developers. There is no equivalent for telemarketers. No one cares what they read or think. You can spy on their screen, time their toilet breaks, etc. Software companies do not want developers to think they are bullshit. They don't care either way for CS agents.
It is a matter of degrees though. It's not like an average developer can say no! to some crappy verification step that higher-ups promised their payment processor. I'd also say that agency is waning in the era of big tech.
At the end of the day, it's the developer who types in the code and pushes. Developers should share the blame for what they create. It's not just those mean horrible managers forcing us all to write bad UX. It's your choice as a developer to type git commit.
I don't think this opinion comes out of privilege. It you have no subject matter control over your work, you're not a developer--you're a typist.
I didn't actually suggest that. All I said was that people should leave bad jobs. That doesn't have to happen overnight. However, if you recognise that your job is bad and you're not actively looking for a new one then you've made a choice to stay. You've decided that something is worth staying in the job for. At that point everything that you do in the job that's bad, like implementing features that are awful for users, is on you. That's your responsibility. You've chosen (for example) a higher wage at the expense of making thousands of people miserable. You need to own that.
I agree that developers have agency, but (a) most of the stuff this video is parodying is near universal. FB, Google, Spotify, Amazon etc. all have this stuff. (b) If you are going to make "the moral choice" then UI clunkiness might not be the issue you care about most. Maybe you care about UI clunkiness, basic labor rights for lower end employees, environmental morals, monopolies, tax evasion, etc.
Choices are complex.
I can't speak for other people, but personally I don't believe it's only developers who should leave jobs they feel are bad. Everyone who works in a job that's a net negative should strive to leave that job. The difference between a developer and a telemarketer is that the is a huge shortage of developers so it's not that hard to find a new role, and it's generally relatively well paid so having the resources to change job is much less of a problem, so any developer who stays in a job that's awful is clearly making a choice to do that.
FWIW I'm also an advocate of systems like UBI and negative income tax that would enable more people to make moral choices about the work they do.
More to the original point.. if this is the case, the developers arguably aren't developers. The developer is whoever made these highly specific specs.
Honestly, IMO, this is illusionary. There is rarely, if ever, such thing as a spec other than the code itself that leaves no decisions to whoever writes code.
If nobody on your team has a say on blatant ux issues and nobody is allowed to report problems up the chain of command that is a bigger issue I agree.
Why do some stores have a captcha as part of their checkout process? I'm noticing that recently and I can't figure it out.
I understand it for registering an account, or even just browsing the store (i.e. prevent scraping), but why make me click the damn traffic lights after you let me put stuff into the cart and got the delivery address? What good does that do except making me abandon my purchase in frustration?
Of course, this is a problem manufactured by the card payments industry (we've had the cryptography to make card fraud nonexistent for decades) and it slowly getting fixed by 3D-Secure (also called Strong Customer Authentication) and as usual the US are behind.
And why doesn't Google optimize it to return "human" straight away when I am logged in with a 15 year old paying account who took a similar test earlier that day same day?
Anyone who knows who are free to answer?
Because otherwise I'll stick with my explanation which is one or more of:
- organizational incompetence (surely someone should be able to code that up, only they don't call the shots and those who do aren't competent to see the issue)
- greed (why do it when we can force people to do unpaid work for us?)
- other possibly even worse reason
Who still wants a fully online world ?
A big part of why it's good is that it's familiar and you're probably already registered.
But that was years ago, now the address is already registered and it's not something I remember every time I shop there. Instead, what I experience every day is a very streamlined checkout process (the only small frustration is that the option to "group shipments into a large shipment" seldom appears now. The other day I bought two little boxes, identical except for the color, for about maybe €9 each, and they shipped separately, which is a bit jarring).
Many other online stores are all shiny with nice slogans but if you have a problem and need customer support then good luck.
This is also visible in the fact that Amazon makes it simple to cancel an order before it ships (just one click) and that they don't charge until an item ships.
Even when 3rd party, like shipping, messes up.
Many stores treat the package someone else's problem as soon as it's out of their shop. Amazon seems to be the only one who cares about the tracking number too(this may vary country..).
1)Keep the item, no charge (small ticket price item delivered twice by mistake). 2)We've refunded you, and for your inconvenience we've topped up your gift card by £5. (delayed delivery so cancelled).
Most other UK stores: 1)Please jump through several hoops and go an hour out of way to send it back to us (at your own expense) then it's 50/50 if ever hear another thing. 2)No reply whatsoever
I don't like it that amazon is taking over everything, but it's happening because they're really good at what they do.
The biggest threat I see to this though is Apple Pay (for mobile web). When sites integrate with this properly, it enables them to match the Amazon experience. No need to register or enter any details, just one fingerprint, and all done.
If there was a cross-platform payment service which integrates with Apple, Google, Samsung (et al) Pay, and then is ubiquitously employed on mobile web, now that could make a dent in Amazon sales.
The integration needs to be easy and well implemented. I've lost count of how many sites I've gone through "1-click" pay with PayPal and then still had to enter my address details again because they haven't integrated it correctly with their shopping cart.
The other week he said they were not accepting his card so, assuming he was making some obvious mistake, I tried with my own card and found the same problem. Using another card, the same.
Two weeks later, the same problem. Yes I emailed support at the time and never got a reply?
And yes, this is also one of the supermarkets that requires 4 or 5 clicks after you have selected to checkout.
No doubt they'll be blaming amazon for their fall in sales of late.
Bonus points if they occasionally turn to another raincoat and whisper about her.
Speaking as an online merchant, we default to guest checkout and we regularly get emails "how do we register for checkout".
It would seem customers have been trained that they need to register before checkout.
Maybe, yes, a little bit? At the very least it's worth considering that possibility -- it's not necessarily any slight against you: most people were raised in cultures that are at least a bit casually homophobic, and it's hard to ask anyone to completely transcend the culture you were born into.
On the other hand, maybe you're reacting negatively to the faux-obsequiousness, the pretending to be subservient and helpful while actually obstructing and frustrating the customer's desires? Does the female shop assistant also annoy you? In the same way or a different way?
Maybe reflect on why you feel uncomfortable?
You're likely right about there not being a good reason to provide an honest solution.
You can practically see the cogs whirring as they try to comprehend that before they realise that, of course, I'm looking them in eye and lying to them.
This is particularly funny in a computer store.
The GDPR is a joke and will never be taken seriously until those promised "4% of global turnover" fines actually start falling down on the offenders.
No i don't want the session being terminated after 20 minutes.
Yes i want to order as a guest.