this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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I had this one user who kept using an old report. It used a terribly provisioned db account and had to be changed.
We created a v2 that was at feature parity to v1 and told users to move off of v1. Slowly but surely it happened.
Except one user.
We put up nag screens. Delays on data return, everything we could go "carrot" them to the new version but they stuck with it.
Eventually I called the guy and just asked him, "Why are you still using the old version?"
His answer, "no one ever told me about the new version."
I asked him if he got our email. He said no. I forwarded it to him.
"Oh."
I asked him didn't you read the nag screens? He said no.
I asked him, "The page doesn't allow you to move on until you wait 90 seconds. Why didn't you read it?"
"I didn't think it was important."
I learned an important lesson that day: never wait for all users to move. Once you have enough, start doing scream tests.
I was on-site for users learning our new program. Watched them do something, a dialog came up, and faster then i could catch what it was, they closed it. Dialogs are warnings or confirmations you know, and they did not know what it was...
So yeah, sometimes I do think there should be a wait time on the OK button.
Alert fatigue.
It probably makes sense if the program they came from is a badcase, but at least ours don't go over board. It's always a "you are probably doing something wrong, but we will allow it if you want to" or a "please confirm you want to do this thing that may have huge consequences". With what they were learning, they were not touching anything related to the latter. So they probably were doing something wrong.