On June 30, 2012, United didn’t chaperone a 10 y.o. minor traveling alone to her connecting flight despite the unaccompanied minor service fee that her parents paid. What follows is a story of broken customer service, frantic parents, institutional apathy, and zero accountability. http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/10-year-old-girl-flying-alone-united-left-stranded-chicago-942140

They not only did they succeed with a crappy interface, United’s customer experience is utterly dysfunctional to non-existent.

P.S. I feel sorry for the entire travel industry sometimes, stuck as they are under the weight of your relentless and pointed critiques of their services.

@Rob: I looked that up. Neither/Or is in fact grammatically correct according to may favorite source: Grammar Girl.

Related to #13 (slow pages) why do surveys have to put questions on different pages? That’s extra clicks that add no value to user or surveyor. Pet peeve #1 with me.

BTW, I love the way Netflix does their surveys. Simple question, 1-click and I’m done, they get useful information.

I know a little bit about statistical accuracy (and precision, for that matter). What about my nitpiking demonstrates ignorance?

I can only guess what United’s goal for this survey was, but if it was my team using something like this to improve the product, I think I can tell whether the possible answers will provide meaningful, actionable results.

I’d love to know what I got wrong.

Happy to know I’m not the only one taking screenshots of surveys.

http://martinresearch.com/when-an-intern-designs-your-surveys/

Frank

@Kitty, Peej: Depends on your definition of “free.” I didn’t have to hand over a credit card # to charge. However, United is very good at demonstrating they don’t value my time. (Just look at their attitude towards flight delays.) So, from their perspective, it was “free”. I’m not sure that’s my perspective.

@WC: I think you’re right on. When I was explaining the post to my girlfriend, I mused that the survey was probably designed by a staff intern.

@Emanuel: I’ve given up trying to get United to pay attention to me. They know where to find me. (Probably in seat 13D.)

WC hit the nail on the head.

And then management objected to the questions and asked to have them changed. Multiple times.

The end result is the frankenstein user experience nightmare above. It’s not of any use to anyone and only serves to annoy the customer.

Of course, that’s only 1 scenario where the above is the result. I’ve also seen it where management gave the job of creating the questions to some random employee that has no experience or training in creating a survey. The person did their best on it, but it just isn’t their thing. It’s possible there wasn’t even a programmer involved here as an off-the-shelf survey system would work just fine with Random Employee entering the questions.

[Editor's note: Mark apparently works for jetjaw.com.]

@Livia – Companies do pay attention to this sort of thing, thanks to Twitter and Google Alerts. I wrote an article about a Comcast UI and someone from their team almost immediately. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone from United has already read this.

A question for you, though: What psychic power allowed you know to grab screenshots along the way? I would have been on the third survey question before it occurred to me.