No Frustration Setup Policy

While many designers spend countless hours thinking about the design and usability of a products functionality, it seems that many neglect the experience of new user setup/assembly. Here is my tale...

I recently purchased and camped with the T3 Quarter Dome tent by REI and it was the best new setup experience I have had with a product in many, many years. So good, in fact, that I decided to dedicate this post to it. I'm sure anyone who has camped has felt the frustration of arriving late to a site and trying to assemble a tent in the dark for the first time, fumbling with the user manual to find out which posts attach to which side of the tent, why something seems to be unnecessarily tight or loose, etc... Arg! It seems that the designers of the T3 have also felt this pain (dare I say listened to their users?) and provided the following anti-frustration features that are simple and just knocked my socks off:

• Connected support "rods": support pieces are tied together with bungee cords in the middle, meaning that it almost instantaneously assembles in the right way as soon as you pull it out of the bag, and also means that you never lose one
• Color coded assembly: the top of the tent has lines in two colors, orange and silver, striping across the top that correspond to the orange and silver colored rods. Since the rods almost assemble themselves, you can see immediately how they lay across the top with respect to the tent. Color coded tags show that orange rod starts and ends in one stripe and the silver rod starts and ends in another. Dare I say idiot proof? I dare!
• Two doors: the flyaway (as well as the tent) has a door on both sides, meaning that you don't have to decide and reducing the amount of times you say "oh wait, it goes the other way"

I could go on far too long about the little things that make this tent *fun* to assemble but I think I can go right to the point: the best user manual is the product itself. Smart use of color to lead the user and simple tricks to prevent "oh wait.." moments can take a user experience from "meh" to "wow" even if the final product is the same.

As a counterexample, let me describe the most frustrating setup I've had in many years, which just so happened to occur the week before the best one. I purchased some Speedplay clip in pedals for my road bike and attempted to mount them on my cleats. Here is a sampling of why it took two days to assemble correctly:

• Bad print: the paper was neon orange and everything is written in 8pt font with bold and underlines exploding on the page to the point of complete ineffectiveness
• Incomplete instructions: additional instructions and warnings were littered in the box like an afterthought, the most important of which accidentally drifted under the table only to be discovered after the problem was solved. I know its cheaper, but just reprint them!
  
• Color: the only color coding turned out to be things that were irrelevant to assembly as well as screws that were only 1mm difference where almost unidentifiable and shims for different shoes were all the same gray with the label nicely etched in (you guessed it) gray were the most annoying
  
• Language: assembling these shoes I said "what does that MEAN?!?" more times than I care to share. This instruction sheet definitely needed a definition list
  

After 2 frustrating days of wondering if it was my poor instruction reading, new pedal break in, or the pedals just not living up to the expectation set, I finally got things working right. With both products, after things were put together correctly, the end products were awesome and I am happy with my purchase decisions. However, if someone asks me about my pedals I'll recommend with a disclaimer: "...but it was a bear to assemble so watch out". You probably don't need to ask me what I think about the tent because if you know me, you already know.

So from here on out, a new No Frustration policy for getting started with a product made by LizCo is active. Any questions can be directed to your closest level of management and there is a reward for snitching on any product produced caught violating the new policy.

Now if I could just produce something...

Sincerely,
Management