The most frustrating thing in the world
Arrgh! Is there anything more frustrating than not being able to find something that you just know should be there? I have a very minimal wardrobe, so I only have two (identical) pairs of jeans that I really wear. But yesterday my minimalism turned against me. I “misplaced” one pair of jeans and I already put the other pair in the dirty laundry. So I got no pants to wear. I looked everywhere. The more places I looked, the more frustrating it got. Just when I thought I found them, that denim turned out to be my girlfriend’s jeans.
Combined with impatience, not being able to find what you need, when you need it, can be most the frustrating experience in the world. You start blaming yourself (‘Where the hell did I put them!’), you want to blame someone else (‘Why do my girlfriend’s jeans look like mine!’), and finally you blame the system (‘Why is everything in my house not better organized! Where is Marie Kondo when you need her!’). Luckily, in general I’m a pretty organized person, so I don’t often have to look for my stuff. But when I do and I can’t find it… it makes me want to smash something.
When we are looking for something on a poorly designed website, we can have this same experience. Though many websites are much better than they were 5 or 10 years ago, there is still a lot of terrible information architecture out there. The problem is usually that websites are organized in ways that make a lot of sense to the company (or to whoever organized the content), but not to the people who actually need the information: the visitors.
Many companies know their content is not ideally structured, but instead of solving the problem at the root, they go for what they believe are easy fixes: they introduce FAQs (which are rarely the questions that are actually asked most frequently), or worse: they add more links and more pages, making the site even harder to navigate. It’s no wonder that one of the most powerful companies in the world became so popular because they understand our frustration with finding information: Google.
But there is a place where Google doesn’t work: on intranets, which for work-related information, is basically your entire internet. Yet intranets are often designed more poorly than public websites. This also, is no wonder. After all, many organizations don’t have strong incentives (or resources) to really fix their intranet. It’s not like their business directly depends on how well their intranet is designed. At least external websites are somehow linked to measurable business goals, like conversion and sales. The “business case” for investing in a more delightful (or at least less frustrating) intranet is a bit harder.
What’s more, how do you really measure frustration? You can’t see the user’s feelings in the site analytics. Sure, you could do a qualitative usability test and see if users can perform tasks, but this is a simulation, where there is no urgency. So the respondent probably won’t get as frustrated as in real life, because nothing depends on it. But this doesn’t mean the users’ frustration doesn’t exist in real life. It can be sky high.
I guess my house is like my intranet. Why organize it better? It’s my junk, so I’m the only one who suffers if I misplace things. There is no business case.
Back to my pants. I gave up looking for them when I realized the last time I wore them was when we visited my sister in law last week. And sure enough, when I texted her, she confirmed that I left my jeans at her house, 140 kilometers from here. I felt so dumb. And I’m still annoyed that I don’t have my pants. But at least now I know where they are. (If only websites could communicate this clearly: “Don’t bother looking for it here. We don’t have it. But you can find at this other site.”)
You’re now probably wondering, with one pair of jeans in the laundry and his other pair many miles away, what is Patrick wearing? Well, let’s just say, with remote work, who needs pants?