Did you miss one? March blogs lament deteriorating user experience

The decline of design.  As interviews proceed for the upcoming report, The Future of the Tech User Experience, all agree.  The deteriorating user experience, aka UX, is the result of fragmentation across multiple devices, portals, and websites. Product development has superseded UX. The pre-development focus group has been largely abandoned in favor of a post release shock-and-awe experience both for developers (bad PR) and customers (just plain bad).  And it is not just tech – consider the impenetrable smart TV interface, the microwave button-display combination, the new car that lacks readable warning lights and other user interface issues.  Here are the blog posts from March:

A decade later: good ideas, never realized. Why not design for all, customize on need? This 2014 Challenging Innovators report has withstood the test of a decade. A technology buyer has different needs at life-stage transition points. Consider death of a spouse, divorce, illness, disability, loss of vision or hearing. Today’s accessibility features on smartphones, though difficult to find, are good examples of software-based customizations that can match a new requirement with an existing device. Blend the online and offline experiences – a driver has watched the video about seat adjustment in a new car – does the actual car match it? Chatbots may be forging a new path for assisting as needed -- but the jury is still out as to whether that replaces live training. Read more.

Imagine an AI-enabled future for tech user experiences. Should AI help navigate overly complex apps and the enormous Internet? Ask ChatGPT 4 how best to produce or manage passwords. Not bad. Now consider a future in which you ask for the best way to do just about anything, including managing minor health symptoms or locating.  From a smartphone, you can save the answer before heading off to urgent care if it wasn’t helpful. But what if the software remembered the question for next time, saved it ina profile about you, not taken from another site, but willingly provided by you to improve responses. “I see you have asked about a stiff knee before, would you like to see some exercises that possibly could be helpful?” And then next conversation, “How were those exercises? Which did you find challenging? Would you like some other suggestions?” Read more.

For today’s interactions with tech, the customer no longer matters. For years device and software tech ‘improved’ to a point of widespread optimism about our tech future. Certainly access has improved: Ninety-five percent of Americans use the Internet and more than 80% have broadband at home. Today there are numerous programs to subsidize access, and smartphone penetration has exceeded 92%. So that’s good. But in parallel with greater access, there are many more problems with using poorly designed or inappropriate tech. Consider the confrontation today with kiosk proliferation in restaurants, QR codes replacing concert programs, baffling patient portals, unforgiving password processes – it’s a mess.  Read more.