Thou Shalt Not Punish The User. Ever.

If a user enters the wrong address, take a swag and give them some options to help him to move forward. You do not give the user a 404 with no forward options. That would be punishing the user.

If she takes the time to click “Don’t recommend this to me again”, let her know you heard her and will obey her. That she spent more than 15 seconds on your site is great. The time she took to give you an opinion is nothing short of fantastically precious. If you’re doing the right thing, your entire system learns and grows. You do not forget her preference and leave that hateful piece of information lying around to trip over. That would be punishing the user.

etc. and etc.

Politics.

I live in San Francisco. I recycle everything. I lean and vote left. Hard. I do not, however, attend vanilla political protests/activities… because I live in San Francisco: The overwhelming majority of local people are already leaning as hard as I am and the folks watching Faux and Balanced News on TV from Plano Texas believe we are completely out of touch with the heartland, and thus “reality”. I think it’s a pointless waste of time and energy.

I show my support and exercise my right to protest with my wallet. I give money directly to various causes, or I spend my money on goods carefully to minimize propping up things I am ideologically opposed to. As things go on and on and on, I give a bit more and a bit wider. This year I donated some cash to Ned Lamont for US Senate - he’s running against Joe Lieberman in Connecticut.

I now get mountains of mail - snail and electronic. People are begging from places and causes I have never heard of. I am getting barraged with repeated requests from the same people (i.e. Mr. Lamont*) telling me “yeah yeah that was great but now give us TWICE AS MUCH OR IT WILL ALL BE RUINED!”.

So… The user provides cash - a highly tangible, flexible, and valuable show of support. Do you

• Thank the user for his support once and offer some innovative ways for the user to check in, like a “My Yahoo Ned Lamont tracker” in case the user decides he wants to offer support later on or

• “Thank” (punish) the user by selling his e-mail and snail mail to all liberal causes (creating hours of work to track down and unsubscribe from these unasked for molesterings) and (of course) sending him a continuous stream of requests for more and more money?

Ten out of ten people who weren’t dropped on their heads as children agree that you do the former, because the latter is sheer, torturous, unadulterated PUNISHMENT OF THE USER.

I will continue to allow myself to be fooled because I can’t not try to make the world a better place. But you cocks in the political fundraising profession should consider reading up on usability. Stickiness on a website and stickiness to your message and requests for cash are analogous. I might be a bit more sticky if you stop treating me like the village idiot who simply must have forgotten to give more money this week because you didn’t remind me.

*I should note that this is not entirely Lamont’s fault. I give to lots of these well intentioned but user-punishing causes/people/groups and they all operate in the same horrible way. Clippy art thing stolen from http://www.wiscasset.k12.me.us/