Do you feel stupid when using a website? It’s not your fault, it’s bad design

I was frustrated and confused. I’d gone to the City of Cape Town e-services website to manually enter my electricity meter reading, which I can do once a month. The City had incorrectly overcharged me by R5000 a few months ago, and in the process of getting it resolved they asked me to manually record my meter readings (my electricity meter is inside my property and often someone isn’t home when the meter readers come around).

My meter reading was 6114,3 kWh. [tell the story]

Think about a time a friend or famiy member asked you for help on their computer. They’re trying to do something and are stuck, often frustratingly so. So you help them: “Click here, open this menu, choose this option, then click this button. Done!” It’s so simple…if you know how.

It’s tempting to think that because it took you 10 seconds to do something which the other person was stuck on, you must be smart and they must be stupid. At least a little bit. However, the truth is quite different.

For this particular task, your brain knows what to focus on and what to ignore.

The first some someone does a task, it’s hard. Where do you click? What does this button mean?

* difference between fixing the system and accomplishing the goal. It takes a different level of thinking to say, “Let me not just figure out how to do this, let’s fix this problem so that hundreds of people after me don’t have the exact same issue.”

The craziness of the City’s response: , = .!