Details aren’t details, they are the design

If you are a designer, you’ve heard that a million times before. It’s so very true.

Here is an example I snapped today while redeeming a gift certificate:

The system is telling the user to click here for their receipt (click here and do what?), but then says, “oh, you might want to wait a second, it might not be ready yet, but I have no idea.”

I find it hard to believe that the system doesn’t know when it had finished generating the receipt. The reality is the developer carelessly (or thoughtlessly as Stephen would say) glossed over this contradictory interaction.

Here is an idea:

Provide the customer with some status about what’s happening. If the system says, “wait, I’m still working on that” we’ll wait for it. No questions.

Next, the system should politely tell the customer when it’s finished:

And just to be nice, how about a more descriptive verb. “Click here to view” doesn’t tell me much. The end result is to most likely print.