A Hospital missed an opportunity to improve its user experience, and gain some bucks

A few months ago I went to a hospital for a routine check: blood tests and the like.

So one of the test was a urine test, and I totally forgot about the need to bring your own cup to the hospital. So I asked if they could provide me with one. The answer was NO. Period.
So I asked "what can I do then?". The answer was "Go to a pharmacy store and get one". Period.
So I asked "so, where can I find a pharmacy around, do you have one in the hospital?". Answer: "No we don't, get out of the hospital, turn left... and you will finally find it... but it might be closed since it's summer time, so you might need to go to this other one".

So I went... and, of course, the pharmacy was closed on vacation. So I had to walk some more to find the other pharmacy... just to find that, of course, it's 8:00AM and they don't open until 9:00AM. So I had to wait for one hour in the street till they opened, buy a €0.60 cup, go to the hospital and finally deliver what I should have delivered more than one hour earlier.

So my questions are... am I the only one who forgets buying the cup before the test? Isn't the hospital missing an opportunity here to server its customers much better? How come don't they provide a small pharmacy inside, even if they charge you a premium for what they offer? I don't know if there's a law that forbids them to sell drugs, but... cups??? Of course I will not ever forget the cup in my entire life again, but is this the way to "teach" customers? Because for what I know, I will never have a test there again...

Definitely, Microsoft needs a PR. Live.com

So a few days ago as my laptop was automatically trying to sign me into Skype, MSN Messenger and the like, a dialog popped up asking me if I wanted to freely update my MSN Messenger. I said no, since I did not quite know what new stuff it would bring me, and how that would improve my life. I kept on working.

But a little bit later I realized that I was not logged in at MSN. I tried it, and then the dialog appeared again. So what happens is that you MUST update MSN if you want to use it!!! First missing opportunity: leverage how far you want to push your users, even if what you offer is free.

OK, so I decided to update. And a long, tedious process started where I was not only offered to update my MSN Messenger to Live.com, but also offered me *by default* a myriad of apps that I didn't want or care for. But that's ok. The problem is when the installation finished, and Live.com welcomed me.

It's in spanish, but you can clearly see what's happened. My new "Live.com" is dead.com. And I know, it might not be Live, but Vista, but I don't quite care now. Microsoft missed yet another opportunity.

Because the world is full of missing opportunities

In my professional life I need to worry about how customers perceive the products we create, and we increasingly see how user experience and usability have more and more importance. Maybe it's because, as Daniel Pink says, there's so much abundance of down-to-earth products that we need something more than pure functionality to feel compelled to buy.

In this blog I'm not going to theoretize about user experience, interaction desig or anything like that. There are many places in the net and many books that already talk about it. My goal here will be to show "missing opportunities", the concept I relate to all the things that happen in our daily life that could be improved if the product, service or experience designer would have thought a little bit more about how their users would make advantage of it.

So let's start!