Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2011-11-14 05:52 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2011-11-14 05:52 pm
(old) Sprint UI rant
Not sure if I sent this off to them; either way, it's in my drafts folder cluttering things up, and it's good and ranty. This is why the cut tag was invented. Yay!
I was trying to activate a new phone. I wound up in chat because I could not do this on the web (the webpage said I needed to contact customer service), but I was on the point of contacting customer service several times earlier when I could not even find the link to activate the phone.
First, http://sprint.com/activate is stupid. I say this from a user interface standpoint. I'm already at the site and logged in, and the directions I get with the phone say to go to the /activate page. OK. If I go to /activate, I'm prompted to enter my phone number. I'm expecting that it'll notice I'm logged in, and proceed with the activation process. No. It prompts me to log in (again), and then to find the link to click to activate the phone once I've logged in. To clarify, this means it asks for my phone number, then tells me that once I've logged in I need to locate a menu and click a link on the menu, then asks me to log in, and dumps me on the main page for my account, and if I want to refer back to what I was supposed to do, I have to either go back with my browser, or open a new tab and go to the page again and look at the instructions.
That was just stupid. To add injury to insult, the UI for activating phones is actively bad. You have two "I want to..." boxes. One is a sidebar. It does NOT have "activate a new phone". One comes up when you click an "I want to..." link. This one DOES. Two menus of the same title should have the same contents, and "activate a new phone" is not searchable on the page, because it's not on the visible menu. Furthermore, the help documentation (cannot remember whether this was paper that I got shipped with the phone or online) shows the sidebar "I want to" menu as having the "activate" link, when on the live site it does not. Perhaps it has changed in the intervening months since the documentation was created? I eventually found this without customer service help and proceeded, and after more tedious but understandable entering-in of numbers, the process told me that I could not do this on the web, I would need customer service assistance.
Your customer service person was just fine, and that part went really smoothly.
I was trying to activate a new phone. I wound up in chat because I could not do this on the web (the webpage said I needed to contact customer service), but I was on the point of contacting customer service several times earlier when I could not even find the link to activate the phone.
First, http://sprint.com/activate is stupid. I say this from a user interface standpoint. I'm already at the site and logged in, and the directions I get with the phone say to go to the /activate page. OK. If I go to /activate, I'm prompted to enter my phone number. I'm expecting that it'll notice I'm logged in, and proceed with the activation process. No. It prompts me to log in (again), and then to find the link to click to activate the phone once I've logged in. To clarify, this means it asks for my phone number, then tells me that once I've logged in I need to locate a menu and click a link on the menu, then asks me to log in, and dumps me on the main page for my account, and if I want to refer back to what I was supposed to do, I have to either go back with my browser, or open a new tab and go to the page again and look at the instructions.
That was just stupid. To add injury to insult, the UI for activating phones is actively bad. You have two "I want to..." boxes. One is a sidebar. It does NOT have "activate a new phone". One comes up when you click an "I want to..." link. This one DOES. Two menus of the same title should have the same contents, and "activate a new phone" is not searchable on the page, because it's not on the visible menu. Furthermore, the help documentation (cannot remember whether this was paper that I got shipped with the phone or online) shows the sidebar "I want to" menu as having the "activate" link, when on the live site it does not. Perhaps it has changed in the intervening months since the documentation was created? I eventually found this without customer service help and proceeded, and after more tedious but understandable entering-in of numbers, the process told me that I could not do this on the web, I would need customer service assistance.
Your customer service person was just fine, and that part went really smoothly.