Why didn’t you tell me in advance?

First thing I have learned after my arrival to Toronto is: “If you want to act like a real Canadian, you must have a tumbler!” 🙂  If you bring your tumbler with you, you will get a discount.” tells me the girl behind the counter in the coffee shop. What? Discount? Now I am interested in that. 🙂 “By the way” she adds “you can keep your coffee hot for a while.” That’s logical. Let’s start online with my search after “the tumbler”!

thingsremembered.com? Interesting name. They sell personalised products. Amazing! Maybe later I can buy a gift for my husband here. Great. Do they have insulated bottles?  I will click on the Home+Bar section. Here they are: Travel Mugs and Water Bottles ! I don’t have to search  around any more. 🙂  I like this one. Let’s see the product details. Here they are. Easy to find. Ok, I must have this bottle! Let’s choose the colour! I want the metallic one. This site is not like other sites, where I have a default picture of the product. I can apply the exact colour to the product. I can see every detail of it. There is the “Personalise” button. I feel like these guys are talking to me. They are strictly following heuristic rules in terms of minimalist design and matching with the real world. 🙂 Maybe one of them has graduated from IMM at Centennial. Who knows?

I am clicking on “Personalise”. Nothing happens. I click again. Still nothing. Am I doing it right? Now, I remember Donald Norman’s book: “Design of Everyday Things”. On page 22 he was talking about that if an action has no appearing result, you may conclude, that the action was ineffective and you repeat it. It is so matching to my situation now. Maybe I have jumped to conclusions about the guy and heuristics. Which heuristic criterion was that? “Visibility of system status” I think. I don’t get any error message. It’s weird. Let’s scroll up and down. Oh, here it is. On the top of the page it says: “Please select an occasion.” Is it so important or relevant? Ask it on the next page! 

Anyway now the best part is coming. Let’s choose my initials to be engraved. I would like to have my initials in “Futura”. Or “Rockwell”? These guys are really great! I am enjoying this experience now. Let’s choose “Rockwell” and add my tumbler to the bag. Horray! I am one step nearer to my dream bottle. 🙂 One moment! Maybe “Futura” is better? I want to go back again. There are “Check Out” and “Edit Cart” buttons. Let’s choose”Edit Cart”. I liked the user control and freedom skills of the site. I am back to my product. Where should I click now to edit my settings? There is only check out option. Oh no, I don’t want to start from beginning. I have to say that  error prevention of the site is really weak. They could have warn me before, that I cannot make any changes after going to my bag. I would like to see the product again and make my small changes. Anyway I will take as it is. I don’t want to lose time any more. Let’s check out. Let’s choose my delivery country. What? Can I only select United States? They must be joking. Now, I am at the end of the process and they tell me they don’t deliver to Canada. Very disappointing! They didn’t warned me upfront. In terms of error prevention they failed. I have wasted my time and my dream is  now “puff”! Gone!

I am not happy at all with my user experience. I think the guy is not from Centennial!