6 ms·
If high street shopping was like online shopping [video]
- eitland 6y agoBeautifully done, as a developer it makes me cringe on behalf of my profession. Covers invasive collection of personal details, "security questions", upsells, ReCaptcha and more. Please consider sharing with your teams everyone : )
- beefield 6y agoNot sure the primary fault is on the developers asked to implement these...
- tpxl 6y agoDevelopers can always not implement those.
- cecja 6y agoDevelopers can always not have a job.
- squiggleblaz 6y agoMeta: This comment was dead a moment ago. Now it's alive and shows no indication of being voted down. How do comments become undead? Are some people still able to vote on them?
- ForHackernews 6y agoIf you have enough reputation you can "vouch" for dead comments. As far as I can see, it at least temporarily resurrects them (perhaps if enough people "vouch").
- squiggleblaz 6y agoOh I see, it makes sense, thanks.
- tpxl 6y agoThere are literally thousands of dev jobs where doing stupid shit is not a requirement.
- cecja 6y agoYou are talking out of your bubble. Especially in the worlds IT sweatshops there is no alternative.
- squiggleblaz 6y agoThat doesn't put the primary fault onto devs though. There is a significant amount of pressure to actually build all these stupid systems coming from multiple fronts (e.g. people who believe it is more secure, business who demand certain features). Surely primary responsibility goes to the person who demands the feature. If one developer refuses, they can find another developer without too much difficulty. It would require most developers to refuse, whereas it only requires a few business owners to make other choices. (Senior Developers could probably respond "here's some better ways". But Junior devs often hardly know their own name, let alone what better alternatives there are to this security theatre.)
- tpxl 6y ago>That doesn't put the primary fault onto devs though I agree on that, the primary fault is at the hands of the one who thought that up and pushed it through to completion, but "just doing my job" and "if I don't do it someone else will" doesn't pass the smell test to me.
- onion2k 6y agoIf you're working in a job where developers are just dumb code monkeys who get told what to do and do it whatever happens, and that developers aren't considered part of the team behind a feature and have no way to influence what gets built, then leave. There are better jobs out there that won't make you feel ashamed of what you deploy.
- csunbird 6y agoI am not sure why people put developers on a morally high status like they are able to choose what kind of job that they can do, then try to shame them publicly for the work they do, but I do not see any difference between a forced developer who wants to have a job and get by in their lives, and a telemarketer making calls to the potential customers.
- dalbasal 6y agoPeople complain about telemarketers all the time. It's not like they get a pass. Sure, the actual blame may fall on whoever decided to hire all those telemarketers to defraud the elderly but... they're also just trying to have a job. The ceo is just trying to have a profitable company. The shareholders are just trying to have a pension. Consumers are just trying to shop conveniently. From the perspective of the complainer, the thing is the part of the thing that they see. Telemarketing is telemarketers. Software is the UX. Mindless bureaucracy is the person standing in front of them. Etc. If you're going to come to the defence of anyone, defend someone who is standing in front of the disgruntled consumer, earning peanuts. Developers are generally well paid, mobile and don't ever face the person they're driving crazy. Anyway, developers (and software companies) put themselves on this high status pedestal in the early 2000s. The web was full of developer philosophy touting developer agency, morals, and such. Comes around. Goes around. Chickens roust. Pick yours cliche.
- csunbird 6y ago> Anyway, developers (and software companies) put themselves on this high status pedestal in the early 2000s. The web was full of developer philosophy touting developer agency, morals, and such. Comes around. Goes around. Chickens roust. Pick yours cliche. Exactly the point I am trying to make. People complain about telemarketers all the time but they actually do know that those people are just trying to get by and have no actual choice. Developers think other developers are just able to say "f you" to their boss and leave the job and get a new one next day, but this is not the reality. Is this a reality for the majority of audience of HN? Can they do that? Because I can't.
- eitland 6y agoWhich is why I ask people to consider sharing with their teams ;-) If nobody on your team has a say on blatant ux issues and nobody is allowed to report problems up the chain of command that is a bigger issue I agree.
- dalbasal 6y ago..and the buck passes.
- avian 6y ago> ReCaptcha Why do some stores have a captcha as part of their checkout process? I'm noticing that recently and I can't figure it out. I understand it for registering an account, or even just browsing the store (i.e. prevent scraping), but why make me click the damn traffic lights after you let me put stuff into the cart and got the delivery address? What good does that do except making me abandon my purchase in frustration?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Nextgrid 6y agoThere could be a reason when it comes to card fraud. Card fraudsters need a way to check cards before they use/resell them, so they find a cheap e-commerce and automate the checkout on a low-value item and run the card numbers through there. Of course, this is a problem manufactured by the card payments industry (we've had the cryptography to make card fraud nonexistent for decades) and it slowly getting fixed by 3D-Secure (also called Strong Customer Authentication) and as usual the US are behind.
- eitland 6y ago> Why do some stores have a captcha as part of their checkout process? I'm noticing that recently and I can't figure it out. And why doesn't Google optimize it to return "human" straight away when I am logged in with a 15 year old paying account who took a similar test earlier that day same day? Anyone who knows who are free to answer? Because otherwise I'll stick with my explanation which is one or more of: - organizational incompetence (surely someone should be able to code that up, only they don't call the shots and those who do aren't competent to see the issue) - greed (why do it when we can force people to do unpaid work for us?) - other possibly even worse reason
- dzhiurgis 6y agoShop owner decides the 'strength' of verification
- agumonkey 6y agoWhat strikes me is how the web fad naturally grew. From the curiosity of buying online, to accepting more steps to deal with the potential issues, to full fledged different way of doing simple things. In retrospect it's odd.. but on the way it was so obviously right. Who still wants a fully online world ?
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoGreat!
- deepstack 6y agoYeah, this is the exact reasons why I don't like online shopping. It can be convenient, however find it very annoying the last few years.
- globular-toast 6y agoI actually have, on multiple occasions, had high street shops ask for my name and other details. Thankfully I've never had any problems making the purchase after I politely decline to give them anything.
- 3dGrabber 6y agoRecently had to register to get a substantial "discount" on an expensive item. Gave them wrong data, of course.
- bluehatbrit 6y agoI often get people in shops ask for my email to send the receipt to, a paper receipt isn't even an option they offer. Thankfully when I ask for a paper receipt it's not usually a problem either. If I've just paid for the product, why would I want to give them my email address? Someone needs to make a receipt aggregator or something.
- Nextgrid 6y agoThere are receipt aggregators; there's no reason to trust them though. There's too much of an amount of money to be made in this niche and thus no reason for any company to provide a honest solution.
- bluehatbrit 6y agoYeah that's fair, I should have elaborated and said "someone should make a privacy friendly one". I don't even care much about long term storage, I just want to be able to scan a QR code generated at check-out and have it loaded onto my phone. You're likely right about there not being a good reason to provide an honest solution.
- Nextgrid 6y agoYes, the intrusive marketing cancer is actually spreading to the high street too. They're now asking for e-mails under the excuse of sending you your receipt and saving the planet (no need for paper) but obviously you will get spam and no doubt that this e-mail will also be shared with advertising partners such as Facebook.
- jonplackett 6y agoThis is the number one reason Amazon is winning everything. It's not even the cheapest anymore. But it's such a hassle shopping at other websites. Even supermarkets that should know better - making an order, even once you've clicked 'checkout' is sometimes 10 clicks or more. It's painful!
- djhworld 6y agoThe checkout process of Amazon is good, the browsing experience...not so much
- dalbasal 6y agoGood is relative, and situational. A big part of why it's good is that it's familiar and you're probably already registered.
- Al-Khwarizmi 6y agoIndeed. I remember having a quite frustrating time convincing Amazon to ship to my work address, as for some reason it didn't fit its understanding of what an address should look like and it didn't "validate". The address is not even that uncommon (it's just not on a street/square/etc. but on a campus, and has no building number), and I never had that problem in other websites. But that was years ago, now the address is already registered and it's not something I remember every time I shop there. Instead, what I experience every day is a very streamlined checkout process (the only small frustration is that the option to "group shipments into a large shipment" seldom appears now. The other day I bought two little boxes, identical except for the color, for about maybe €9 each, and they shipped separately, which is a bit jarring).
- jonplackett 6y agoYou say that but - their search works really well. Most other shops it’s awful. You’re lucky if it can even correct spelling errors.
- 6y ago
- festive-minsky 6y agoA cookie banner in the doorway should get stuck to her face as she walks in
- sefrost 6y agoI was expecting them to do something with a tray of cookies.
- personlurking 6y agoOr kids dressed in cookie costumes follow her when she leaves
- Lio 6y agoYeah there should be a sleazy looking guy in a raincoat recording everything she does and trying to follow her into the toilet. Bonus points if they occasionally turn to another raincoat and whisper about her.
- schappim 6y ago>> This is the number one reason Amazon is winning everything. It's not even the cheapest anymore. But it's such a hassle shopping at other websites. Speaking as an online merchant, we default to guest checkout and we regularly get emails "how do we register for checkout". It would seem customers have been trained that they need to register before checkout.
- arkitaip 6y agoEverything is behavior online and behavioral design is everything for a smooth experience. What we could need is a mechanism where you can reliably and safely provide stores with ALL required personal and payment details with the click of a button. Currently, not even autofill works satisfactory due to a myriad of reasons.
- Nextgrid 6y agoWe have that mechanism, it's called Apple Pay. I believe Google Pay does the same. The problem is that for both incompetence (they don't have good developers that can integrate it in their third-party eCommerce solution) and malice (one-click Apple Pay checkout won't allow them to implement dark patterns and upsells) it's never done.
- andy_ppp 6y agoSome percentage of customers think this, sure. Is it even 1% of orders?
- gitowiec 6y agoThe way men behave in this video makes me feel weird - am I homophobic? I don't meet people like this on daily basis, I don't meet them at all. Are there men like this or is this just acting which is an exaggeration? I don't recognize my feelings well, but it feels hard. I wouldn't feel like myself around such a man.
- arkitaip 6y agoI think they way they act is designed to mirror the saccharine yet useless and often hostile shopping experiences we have online.
- ForHackernews 6y ago> am I homophobic? Maybe, yes, a little bit? At the very least it's worth considering that possibility -- it's not necessarily any slight against you: most people were raised in cultures that are at least a bit casually homophobic, and it's hard to ask anyone to completely transcend the culture you were born into. On the other hand, maybe you're reacting negatively to the faux-obsequiousness, the pretending to be subservient and helpful while actually obstructing and frustrating the customer's desires? Does the female shop assistant also annoy you? In the same way or a different way? Maybe reflect on why you feel uncomfortable?
- gitowiec 6y agoThank you. Your analysis showed me other side of that acting, it let me interpret that skit as a whole.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Nextgrid 6y agoThey are acting. Think "your call is very important to us" or when a customer service monkey tells you how sorry they are because their company screwed up (but then makes up all kinds of BS reasons as to why they couldn't provide an acceptable resolution).
- 6y ago
- OJFord 6y agoWell that's not right, she only had to look through one frame of squares, and he didn't ask her to identify things she's never seen in her home or local country! (I refer to the American 'parking meters', 'crosswalks', and to a lesser extent traffic lights, that Google makes me spot even on UK-only sites.)
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoIsn't that called "intercultural competence" ?
- OJFord 6y agoHa. Maybe. Or is it Google's lack of intercultural competence to not understand that I don't have 'crosswalks' and that traffic lights and (another I forgot above) fire 'hydrants' (not called that) look different here? It's not like it shows images from around the world, it just shows American images to everyone around the world.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoFor me it did. ISTR something in Spanish, so I'd guess Mexico at least, and I've definitely seen Asian scripts on road signs sometimes, while having a German IP.
- OJFord 6y agoI've seen Asian scripts when asked to identify 'storefronts' (also not called that) - but I just assumed they were takeaways. Sorry - 'takeouts'. Anyway, regardless of if it's global or just American, the point here is that I don't have to answer questions about images of other countries when I shop on a British high street!
- dzhiurgis 6y ago"Please identify all kulchas without paneer"
- Lio 6y agoIf this was really like shopping online then a loud, brash arsehole would jump between her and the counter as she walked in and demand that she sign up to their newsletter before she was able to look at any goods...
- dvirsky 6y agoI was totally expecting them to go and creepily stalk her around town with crappy retargeting.
- Nextgrid 6y agoThat's an opportunity for the next episode!
- Regenschirm 6y agoyes i want to keep my shopping card for longer then 10 minutes No i don't want the session being terminated after 20 minutes. Yes i want to order as a guest.