Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

Status
Not open for further replies.
So true, that comic.

Time Zone issues are seriously the most headache inducing thing I've dealt with in my entire career. And I deal with auditors that give me headaches on a regular basis.
 
theprestige said:
The distinct impression I got, working with user interface design and development teams, was that user experience is serious business, and cannot be so easily dismissed with "and not place an unreasonable burden on the user".

And this app was definitely serious business. It was a major source of revenue for the company. So major that any significant drop in customer base would almost certainly have sunk the company within a year. And the app guides the user through an inherently obnoxious and frustrating process. Anything that made the process even the tiniest bit more obnoxious was likely to drive off some customers. Avoiding that if practical was extremely important to our design and dev teams.

"Nearly infinite" was a bit of hyperbole on my part. In reality, the 50 states came down to a handful of different formats. It took the developer only a couple weeks to figure it out. They were pain-in-the-ass weeks, though.

---

I think it's important to distinguish between "in-house" users and paying customers. With your own employees, for example, it can be reasonable to ask them to input data according to a convention. But with paying customers, it can often be better to put as few format requirements on them as possible, and handle varying input formats in the backend.
Click to expand...
How did they distinguish between 06-07-2019 (dd-mm-yyyy) and 06-07-2019 (mm-dd-yyyy)?
 
Wudang said:
Obxkcd
[qimg]https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/supervillain_plan.png[/qimg]
Click to expand...

And, of course, there isn’t just one changeover date, there’s at least two major ones since the US changes a different weekend from most of the rest of the world.
 
This is relevant to my profession:

It Might Be Time to Update the Old ‘Alfa-Bravo-Charlie’ Spelling Alphabet

WHEN SOMEONE ON THE PHONE—THE doctor’s office, the bank, the credit card company—asks for my name, I always offer to spell it out—it’s a pretty uncommon surname. So far as I know, there are somewhere between 10 and 20 Nosowitzes in the world, and they’re all closely related to me. Because it’s uncommon, and because it would be a problem if my bank writes my name down as “Moskowitz,” I err on the side of caution. “N as in Nancy, O, S as in Samuel, O, W, I, T as in Thomas, Z as in Zebra,” I chant.

This uses what is what’s called a “spelling alphabet,” or, confusingly, a “phonetic alphabet.” (The latter is confusing because it has little to do with phonemes, or a unit of sound in a language. Plus there’s the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is something else entirely.) The history of spelling alphabets is fascinating and winding, but it’s notable that there hasn’t been an official update to the most commonly used English version in about half a century. We might be in need of one. As mobile phones have replaced landlines, call quality has, strangely, gone down. The general connectivity of the world—including the ease of international video calls and the use of foreign call centers—means that spelling out a name or word is an increasingly common practice. A modern, updated, globally friendly English spelling alphabet would be pretty useful right now, but getting people to use one might be harder than you’d think.
Click to expand...
 
I go strict NATO. Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta. I learned it for my very first service desk job and I've found it works pretty well. The only bit I don't do is "niner".
 
zooterkin said:
And, of course, there isn’t just one changeover date, there’s at least two major ones since the US changes a different weekend from most of the rest of the world.
Click to expand...
It's not so much US vs rest of the world. It's North America vs Europe.

But in the northern hemisphere there are basically two standard times to switch with dozens of minor exceptions.

What amazes me are the countries that decide to change when they will observe DST just a couple of weeks before it's supposed to go in to affect or even after. How do they ever plan things properly?
 
Oh my sweet summer children.

Try running multiple interconnected Windows, Unix, and various proprietary systems, some of which have to be set to local, some of which have to be set to ZULU, some of which have to be set to Norfolk or San Diego, some of which have to be set to the timezone of your local Network Operation Control Station... and put it them on ships that move across half the planet in a 2-3 week period.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
It's not so much US vs rest of the world. It's North America vs Europe.

But in the northern hemisphere there are basically two standard times to switch with dozens of minor exceptions.

What amazes me are the countries that decide to change when they will observe DST just a couple of weeks before it's supposed to go in to affect or even after. How do they ever plan things properly?
Click to expand...
And then they wonder why their computers don’t show the right time. I used to get support calls asking for tztab updates for Linux based systems when certain countries did that.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Oh my sweet summer children.

Try running multiple interconnected Windows, Unix, and various proprietary systems, some of which have to be set to local, some of which have to be set to ZULU, some of which have to be set to Norfolk or San Diego, some of which have to be set to the timezone of your local Network Operation Control Station... and put it them on ships that move across half the planet in a 2-3 week period.
Click to expand...

I quit.
 
theprestige said:
The distinct impression I got, working with user interface design and development teams, was that user experience is serious business, and cannot be so easily dismissed with "and not place an unreasonable burden on the user".

And this app was definitely serious business. It was a major source of revenue for the company. So major that any significant drop in customer base would almost certainly have sunk the company within a year. And the app guides the user through an inherently obnoxious and frustrating process. Anything that made the process even the tiniest bit more obnoxious was likely to drive off some customers. Avoiding that if practical was extremely important to our design and dev teams.

"Nearly infinite" was a bit of hyperbole on my part. In reality, the 50 states came down to a handful of different formats. It took the developer only a couple weeks to figure it out. They were pain-in-the-ass weeks, though.

---

I think it's important to distinguish between "in-house" users and paying customers. With your own employees, for example, it can be reasonable to ask them to input data according to a convention. But with paying customers, it can often be better to put as few format requirements on them as possible, and handle varying input formats in the backend.
Click to expand...

"Nearly infinite" was my hyperbole based on the assumption that not all users would follow instructions to input the date "as it appears on their ID".

I do understand the desire not to make things difficult for users. However, I really don't see "Input you date of birth in mm-dd-yyyy (or having three separate labeled fields for mont date year or maybe a selection list for month as difficult. I'm sure there are users who will find it difficult as they will for just about anything.
 
CORed said:
"Nearly infinite" was my hyperbole based on the assumption that not all users would follow instructions to input the date "as it appears on their ID".

I do understand the desire not to make things difficult for users. However, I really don't see "Input you date of birth in mm-dd-yyyy (or having three separate labeled fields for mont date year or maybe a selection list for month as difficult. I'm sure there are users who will find it difficult as they will for just about anything.
Click to expand...

Actually, many sites are now using drop-down lists for month, day, and year.
 
Faydra said:
So true, that comic.

Time Zone issues are seriously the most headache inducing thing I've dealt with in my entire career. And I deal with auditors that give me headaches on a regular basis.
Click to expand...
The EU wants to abolish summer/winter changeover.
 
arthwollipot said:
I go strict NATO. Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta. I learned it for my very first service desk job and I've found it works pretty well. The only bit I don't do is "niner".
Click to expand...
Ditto. And I, and I force this on everyone who works for me, invariably use the DDMMMYYYY date format.
 
Today is 18 Jul 2019 for me. The first day of next month will be 01 Aug 2019. It's unambiguous. If I have to deal with other languages and don't know the month names, or when I'm programming, I use yyyy-mm-dd, which is also unambiguous (and sorts properly, too!).


As for spelling things aloud on the phone, I like to make up my own names on the fly, usually drawn from Shakespeare, Tolkien, Harry Potter, or the subject matter being discussed. This is almost always an entertaining interaction...at least for me.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom