“Doorbell problem” or when you think you know everything

Imagine that you are in a large apartment. So big that you don’t hear the doorbell, door bangs and nothing at all. Soundproofing is just super.

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However, people often come to you and you specially installed a light bulb in your room that lights up when someone rings the doorbell. People come different: someone clicks the call once, someone many times; in general, everything is different. The only trouble is that the light bulb does not always work, and indeed it works very selectively and super-randomly. That is, there are people who click on the bell, wait until they open the door. But the door does not open, because you do not see the light signal. People logically assume that since they did not open the door, it means that nobody is at home. And leave. On the other hand, the people you met unanimously say that the call works, without specifying how many times they needed to press the call. Everything is logical, but you met them, then everything works. And since they tell you that everything works, then you have no reason to believe

In practice, I came across the fact that all people perceive information differently. Programmers and other techies have specific thinking, based on their vast experience working with code, algorithms, and more. Therefore, some tasks in this form simply do not arise, and in order to be aware, they must be returned to the plane of harsh realism.

The “doorbell problem” characterizes many situations that occur in web development, game development, interfaces, and much more. Just compare how your product algorithm resembles a problem doorbell.

1) Mobile game. He receives a lot of complaints about bugs and an inconvenient ticket system in technical support (it is impossible to attach a screen). They make a big update, fix all problems and update the ticket system in technical support. And here comes splendor - all bugs have been fixed and letters to technical support are no longer received.

2) Posting comments on moderation. The fender comes with all of the machine “The comment was sent for moderation, if within 3 days it does not appear on the site, then they did not miss it. Write a new one. ”

3) Payment of movie tickets in the mobile version of the site. A lot of people get to the choice of places and only a small part actually pays with the card.

4) In the mobile application there are no technical support contacts and generally no one. From a mobile site, it opens in full format only the main page. When you go to the page of the required project, it automatically switches to the mobile version without the ability to switch to the full version. There is no “contacts” section in the mobile version (to avoid unnecessary questions - we are talking about working with both the application and the mobile version of the site).

I hope that such a visualization of the problem will allow you to better understand the delicate places in building communication with your users.

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