As a designer that works full-time on a high-traffic website, I understand perfectly that without ample user testing it’s impossible to know exactly how users will interact with your designs. I’ve watched agape when, in testing sessions, users seem unable to decode new features that I’ve developed that made perfect sense to me.

What’s even more baffling to me is when users sometimes disregard simple instructions altogether, especially when they’re clearly presented. I can’t quite grasp why someone would ask someone else for help or give up entirely instead of simply reading the directions. There’s probably a psychological component in play but I’m not a psychologist so I’m uncertain to what that principle is called (if it has a name).

It would be ignorant to try to apply a one-size-fits-all explanation to why users seem to have problems with various interfaces, especially on the Internet. But user error is something you can count on with virtually any technology, even with devices as old as the telephone. Not cell phones, not wireless phones–the old-fashioned telephone that plugs into the wall.

In today’s New York Times there’s a brief article about the phone numbers that people dial when voting for contestants on American Idol.  The article points out that every Tuesday night the owners of toll-free numbers that are even just slightly similar to the numbers used to vote see a drastic uptick in call volume:

Mr. Westendarp received a toll-free phone number late last year, and things were running smoothly until “American Idol” started up again in January. Then, he said in an interview on Friday, he began to notice an uptick in phone calls on Tuesday evenings after his office closed. Most of the calls, he said, resulted in messages in which the callers simply hung up.

After the number of calls spiked to more than 10,000 this week, Mr. Westendarp said he did a little research. His discovery: “American Idol” callers who mistakenly transpose two digits when dialing to cast a vote for a certain contestant end up on his phone line.

Ten thousand mistakenly dialed calls is a lot.  I’m not going to coddle the callers here–this is blatant stupidity on their part.  In an average episode, the producers go to the following lengths to try and make sure people dial correctly:

1. Host Ryan Seacrest reads the numbers aloud at least once and usually twice, verbally warning the viewing audience to dial carefully, using the 866 prefix and not 800.
2. Seacrest also points out that wireless phone users can send a text message (the word “VOTE”) to a much shorter number (5701, 5702, etc.) as an alternative.
3. Lower-third chyrons displaying both the digits to dial (866-436-5701, 5702, etc.) the letters that correspond to the digits (866-IDOLS-01, -02, etc.), as well as text message voting information, are displayed repeatedly.
4. The numbers are shown and announced both during performances and at the end of the show.
5. When a user does dial correctly, they are “rewarded” with a recording that clearly acknowledges that they have registered a vote for a given contestant and that thanks them for watching.³³

Are these measures enough?  They should be, but they clearly aren’t.  If the producers wanted to make the process absolutely foolproof (which may actually be impossible, given that it’s also impossible to prevent people from misdialing numbers on their phones in general) they’d have to take the following steps as well:

1. Obtain the corresponding toll-free numbers for the 888, 877 and 800 prefixes.  Downside:  This would be extremely expensive.
2. Allow voting online.  Downside:  This might lead to vote hacking.
3. Simplify the numbers to include lots of repeated digits or zeros–something like 866-700-8001.  Downside:  Changing the numbers in the midst of the competition is probably a bad idea.
4. Allow voting using the two-way functions provided with most cable boxes.  Downside:  Not everyone has a cable box.

At a certain point, these measures are overkill.  I am by no means suggesting that designers should ignore user feedback and foibles, but I do believe that the general incompetence of users must be taken into account when developing designs.  A number of individuals will always have problems with every design regardless of the lengths gone to prevent those very problems.

So what are we left with in this instance?  Part of the problem is the actual design of the telephone in general.  Dialing ten random digits on a tiny keypad is not a natural action for anyone to perform, but it’s the system that we’re stuck with until such time that the Internet and/or mobile phones replace phone numbers as we know them with some sort of other identifier (a “screen name,” perhaps–a “phone name?”).  But that’s no excuse.  Reading and writing are unnatural acts as well, and most people are able to do both of those things.  Dialing a telephone number is far simpler than either of those actions; you recognize symbols and press buttons that correspond to them.  I don’t believe it’s a stretch to say that a dolphin or a chimp could be trained to dial more accurately than many American Idol viewers.3

1. One would assume that when people don’t get this recording and reach a consulting company or notary public’s cell phone instead they’d realize that they had misdialed.  Apparently this is not true.333

3