Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  emPowering the User (21 Jan 2005) It's an issue of anticipation. All of Maytag's competitors were able to accurately foresee my need for energy ratings, but Maytag did not. This may have been an explicit choice by someone on the web team, or an implicit oversight. It doesn't matter. The reps who wrote to me had the information ("Please include your model number...") But I did not. I was a potential customer, I based my entire perception of their brand on the interaction I had with their Web site. It was all part of the user experience -- as much as browser compatibility, the use of Flash, or the effectiveness of the navigation for information discovery. In essence, Maytag designed their site with an incomplete understanding of their users. And they paid for it. Article URL: http://www.ok-cancel.com/comic/71.html Read 182 more articles from OK/Cancel sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Media: A-Clue takes a Cool Assessment of Trends     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy