I mean, all things considered is government web design that bad? I’m sure there are explicit exceptions, but I like say the national parks website, I surely wouldn’t like to see it turned into some bland minimalist Airbnb style design.
It seems the problem is just attention and not strictly speaking thought leadership.
robocat · 8h ago
AirBnB usability is terrible. Unfortunately that's where the listings are, so gotta go through the pain. However it doesn't do what I want, and it does a bunch of shit that I don't want (another dddamn notification asking if I want to complete a booking I didn't complete and cancelled out of - and I was only trying to understand their flow).
No easy way to track bookings for a trip - which you would think was essential functionality.
No way to save a search for later (has your last search but the functionality is severely broken).
I'm in New Zealand, and many of our government services are actually reasonably user friendly. I can call our email our tax service and get an answer: our government has worked out that they're asking for money so it's better to make that easy (and not treat you like dirt). Small countries can get usability right, in part because they can make systemic choices that flow through into usability (e.g. capturing the data needed for automating tax returns, e.g. simplifying the tax code so that tax returns are simpler).
The US can't make the UX better because Intuit keep fighting against that.
I hope that AirBnB usability isn't being held up as a golden standard because it is still awful.
icedchai · 7h ago
IMO, the design matters much less than the functionality. This stuff needs to work. It needs to be accessible.
I once signed up for a state government health care exchange and basic functionality like resetting your password didn't even work. Once I was actually logged in (after waiting on hold with their call center), the site barely functioned: slow page loads. timeouts, absurd error messages. This was a double digit million dollar project, sometime around 2016. So called "professional services" were provided by several major tech firms, which I'm sure outsourced it to the cheapest offshore subcontractors they could find.
It seems the problem is just attention and not strictly speaking thought leadership.
No easy way to track bookings for a trip - which you would think was essential functionality.
No way to save a search for later (has your last search but the functionality is severely broken).
I'm in New Zealand, and many of our government services are actually reasonably user friendly. I can call our email our tax service and get an answer: our government has worked out that they're asking for money so it's better to make that easy (and not treat you like dirt). Small countries can get usability right, in part because they can make systemic choices that flow through into usability (e.g. capturing the data needed for automating tax returns, e.g. simplifying the tax code so that tax returns are simpler).
The US can't make the UX better because Intuit keep fighting against that.
I hope that AirBnB usability isn't being held up as a golden standard because it is still awful.
I once signed up for a state government health care exchange and basic functionality like resetting your password didn't even work. Once I was actually logged in (after waiting on hold with their call center), the site barely functioned: slow page loads. timeouts, absurd error messages. This was a double digit million dollar project, sometime around 2016. So called "professional services" were provided by several major tech firms, which I'm sure outsourced it to the cheapest offshore subcontractors they could find.