Sunday 31 July 2011

Grandad, what's a VCR ?



Currently on vacation in the US, I found that a new series of Hells Kitchen had started - worth watching to see if you agree that Ramsey is a great consultant or just a foul mouthed bully...

Having missed the first episodes, we used On Demand to watch them - with the added bonus that we'd be able to skip the commercials that appear every 6 minutes

except...

EXCEPT...

we couldn't.
Hit Fast Forward and the message

" VCR Controls are disabled "

appeared on the screen.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat ?
Several Ramsey style expletives later, my tester senses kicked in.

What does "VCR" stand for ? Video Cassette Recorder
I'm not using a Video Cassette Recorder, no tapes are involved in this operation, why is the message referring to an ancient technology ?

And only the fast forward control is disabled, I could still pause and rewind so the message itself is lying to me.

All of which reminded me of the FAILURE mnemonic from Ben Simo.

The message was not Appropriate - I was not using a VCR and I can imagine some users not even knowing what a VCR was.
( how long ago did people stop using VCRs ? )

Impact - the message told me the controls were disabled which was incorrect

UI - should the error message really be using terminology of another technology ?

Emotions - seeing this message certainly made me mad !

But at least I got a blog post out of it - not that it makes up for commercials every 6 minutes.
Blech

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