First
let me point out I’m one of those life-long students. Not because if
love college, but because I can never make up my mind on what I want to
do. After making some big life changes I decided to take a full year
away from school. Yesterday I attempted to register for this coming
spring semester to get back on track. Interestingly enough my account
has been disabled… sort of... This is where the fun starts.
Premise
“Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you have to be dumb.”
First let me point out I’m one of those life-long students. Not because
if love college, but because I can never make up my mind on what I want
to do. After making some big life changes I decided to take a full year
away from school. Yesterday I attempted to register for this coming
spring semester to get back on track. Interestingly enough my account
has been disabled… sort of... This is where the fun starts. I expected
my account to be disabled, that isn’t the issue here. The problem is
how it was disabled, and the messages which I received back from the
University. First my account still worked to access class registration,
and the University portal but my E-Mail had been completely locked out.
This is the main point of my concern. If the university had a unified
technology structure the login / password information would be
centralized. An account disabled one place should be disabled across
campus. Instead some departments disabled my account, and other left it
running while I was gone. Worst some parts of the university left it
partially running, but unusable. Strange isn’t it? Why not completely
disable my account rather then just PRETEND it works only to give me a
nasty permissions error when I attempt to USE the portal which I am
already logged into.
Rule #1 “Never let the user see the nasty error.”
Building an application or networked system on any level requires more
then just getting the job done. A developer should take the additional
time to build functionality for the unexpected. In my case there should
have been two things. A friendly message explaining why my account was
disabled and directions on how to re-enable my account.
Rule #2 “Avoid the circle of death; take personal responsibility for the problem.”
First I talked to my counselor who said I should talk to computer
services. Computer services told me to talk to the registration office.
The registration office told me to talk to my counselor. FAIL,
never ending loops are bad, not just in programming but in the real
world. This could have been avoided at each step, but instead the
problem was passed onto someone else. All someone had to do was
research the problem, and they would have known the problem has come up
in the past. The eventually solution was to force someone to register
my classes over the phone rather then using my account on the Internet.
Rule #3 “Record problems and make proactive steps to resolve known issues.”
I work in IT and I know how incredibility complicated things can get.
But it’s important to always take steps to prevent the situation from
coming up again. I am sure that I am not the first person to have their
account disabled, and because no one is following rule three; I will
likely not be the last. A few simple changes to the application would
easily fix the problem, but no one cares enough to do anything about
it. This means me, THE CUSTOMER, THE STUDENT, THE IDOIT, to run around
trying to convenience people to do their job. Thanks for the warm
welcome back akron,
