15 Aug 2007 1135H

How not to design a form, part 2

As reported back in March, when my third Xbox 360 failed and I was sent a box with instructions on packing it in and sending it back for repairs at the UPS facility in McAllen, Texas, we looked at the form and tried to figure out how to make it better. Well, I have mixed feelings in reporting that apparently someone is listening/reading/watching out there because the instructions for sending back the XBox 360 for repair have indeed been redesigned.

This episode has given me nothing but years of client-addressable material on how not to launch a new product. Funny what $1 bn worth of repairs will do for improving a company’s stance on quality control and user experience. Hardly worth mentioning, but it kinda makes the hundreds of thousands, or possibly a million dollars they could have spent up front to bulletproof the hardware look cheap in comparison, right? Oh well. It’s no Coleco Adam, I suppose. Here’s the form:

XBOX 360 Instructions, Redux

Hints that the repair center is listening and they are using continuous improvement techniques to feed their learnings back into their workflow? Apparently, the number one problems are now getting the user to remove their hard drive and removing the game disc or other media that might be in the optical drive before sending in the box. They have done away with the paper slip that would track the user’s machine. And there are some process improvements.

Anyway, I say all of this with mixed feelings because this XBox 360, #4 now, I think, lasted only 5 months. This will be my fifth XBox 360 after I suffered the Red Ring O’ Death earlier this month. However as compensation I have something to blog about and that makes it slightly worth it . . . not really. Just gimme my damn machine back fixed, dammit.

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