I used to have a checking account with Wells Fargo. Overall I was pretty happy with the service, locations, and website. It was a pretty good overall banking experience. There was, however, one extremely grating thing. Every time I used of of their ATMs, it started out by saying, “Welcome, Joel. Please select a language for this transaction,” and presenting options for English and Spanish.
Of course, I have no problem with them providing the option to conduct transactions in Spanish. What bothered me was that I had to tell them every time I used the ATM. Christ, they know who I am; I just put my card in the machine, and they’re addressing me by name! What are the odds I would want to change my mind and use a different language than I used last time I used the ATM? Would that ever happen?
Now, there may have been a technical reason that it wasn’t possible to save my preferred language. From a user’s perspective, though, it just doesn’t matter. It’s annoying having to answer the same question, click the same button, change the same radio button, or do anything else every single time you want to get something done.
I try to remember how irritating those ATMs were when I’m adding new functionality in Mockery. Am I asking my users to do the same thing over and over? Users tend to be less forgiving of minor annoyances when your application doesn’t spit out $20 bills.