{"id":181,"date":"2010-11-30T08:20:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T16:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=181"},"modified":"2010-11-26T22:42:58","modified_gmt":"2010-11-27T06:42:58","slug":"the-user-experience-of-lost-luggage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/30\/the-user-experience-of-lost-luggage\/","title":{"rendered":"the user experience of lost luggage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I travelled to my hometown<\/a> to visit my family for Thanksgiving. \u00a0On the way home, the airline lost my luggage. \u00a0Lost luggage is a bad experience all around. \u00a0It’s been some time since my luggage has been lost (of course, I also usually don’t check bags), so I was surprised at how bad the user experience is for this occurrence.<\/p>\n

There’s no status indicator for the luggage coming off the plane. \u00a0You’re left to guess whether all of the luggage is off of the plane. \u00a0This is especially difficult when you’re directed to a baggage claim that’s in use for multiple flights. \u00a0It’s not really a lot easier when it’s just a single flight, though, since luggage appears in fits and starts. \u00a0In any event, you have to guess whether you’ve waited long enough for your luggage to fail to appear.<\/p>\n

Then it’s time to chat with the lost luggage guy. \u00a0I consider that job to be akin to tech support, since you never call tech support when everything’s going well. \u00a0There’s probably a queue, and it’s slow-moving. \u00a0But this guy at least has some status information to share.<\/p>\n

Problem is, his status information isn’t necessarily correct. \u00a0In my case, he said that my bag had been placed on another flight. \u00a0That other flight had originally been scheduled to leave before mine, but had mechanical issues and would instead land 45 minutes after my flight. \u00a0I elected to wait to get my bag, learning an hour later that his status information was wrong. \u00a0My luggage wasn’t on that flight, either. \u00a0After checking again, his status information said that the luggage was lost.<\/p>\n

Then I was directed to a kiosk to enter in my information for the bag to be delivered. \u00a0I was appalled at how badly-designed it was. \u00a0Amongst the questions that it asked was whether they could use a courier service like FedEx or UPS to deliver my bag. \u00a0My reaction to that was that it meant that I wouldn’t see my bag until the next day, since the fastest shipping that they advertise is next-day delivery. \u00a0I selected “no”, but then it didn’t tell me how or when my bag would be delivered. \u00a0I was just prompted to enter my name, address, phone number, and email address. \u00a0All of this is information that they already had on file. \u00a0Instead of making me suffer through entering all of that data using the on-screen keyboard, it would’ve been nice if they had simply displayed the already-known information and asked me if that’s where I wanted my bag delivered.<\/p>\n

At home, the bad experience continued. \u00a0The website showed that my bag’s whereabouts where unknown. \u00a0I finally got a call from the courier company, 6 hours after I’d landed, saying that they could deliver within a couple of hours. \u00a0They did. \u00a0Even after I had the bag, the website continued to show that my bag’s whereabouts were unknown.<\/p>\n

In short, the lost luggage experience violates several user experience principles:<\/p>\n