November 2003 | Welcome to ClueTime with today’s guest, AT&T Wireless Broadband

Tiny dog would like to officially discourage potential users of the Cometa wireless hot spots in various dining establishments these days, specifically if you are signing up for the AT&T Wireless Broadband “pay as you go” service ($2.99 per instance of use, which sounds good if you only want occasional access, cause you already have broadband at home or elsewhere).

The AT&T wireless broadband site has the worst sign in user experience in the history of UI, and in this day, age, and economy, there is no excuse for a major corporation to foist this upon paying customers with other choices at their disposal, nor is there a reason to put up with it.

Here’s the deal. To use the service, of course, you have to fill out pages of personal data, including your credit card number. Always an arduous experience, the initial “sign up” routine, but one we’ve come to expect.

Once you sign in and create yet another user name and password you are bound to forget (also something we’ve come to expect) you have access to broadband for 24 hours, at the cost of $2.99. Great.

So say it’s a month or so down the line and there you are back at the wireless hotspot again, thinking you might check your e-mail. You return to the AT&T log in page. What would you expect to happen?

1. Log in, have $2.99 automatically charged to your account, use the service for 24 hour period.
   
2. Receive a “log in failure” error message that explains (in tiny type at the bottom that you might easily overlook) that your account has expired, and offers no other information. You then must intuit that you have to fill out another application form/”reactivate” your account complete with personal data entry to access the service again for $2.99. Calling to complain to customer service results in the usual stammering, slow, unarmed agent having no idea what you are talking about (even though it is a basic facet of the service), since he or she is neither paid nor trained sufficiently to actually understand what AT&T Wireless is.

If you guessed number 2, and I know you did, you are correct. Way to go AT&T!! You are the tiny dog ClueTime guest of the month!!!

And now, we must ask why: AT&T: this is 2003. You are a major corporation. These facts being what they are, you don’t need me to tell you that interface design and user studies are a major, entrenched part of designing web services for customers. And you skipped this stage in the design process…. why, exactly? And let some clueless half-wit confuse the notion of “account” with a mere instance of use, and then build the subsequent confusing delays and wasted time into the UI?

Oh AT&T, it’s sad really, how stupidly this is designed. You could pay a techwriter one hour’s wage to write an explanation, at the very least, of this stupid design so customers at least understand how to sign back in to the service. Hell, I could write it for you in ten minutes. Let me at least take credit for making your future meeting on the subject of “why pay as you go customers only use the service once, and what we can do about it” a lot shorter than it would have been otherwise.

That’s all the time we have for ClueTime today. Thank you for your participation.

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