Ten Thousand Coffees and the Story of Bad UI

Rule number one for good writing: get to the point. Medium users love rules for good writing. Another thing that they love is user interface (UI) talk so this may go over okay. The point here exploits both: today I was a victim of bad user interface (UI) design.

I live in a suburb of Toronto and so the ~$10 train ride into the city allowed me enough time to think about an anticipated blog post. It would explain my introduction with ten thousand coffees (.com), explain how I landed my first coffee meet up with a professional in the field I am interested to learn more about, and praise it’s ability to bring us together in person – something university grads can only dream of. Although it was the UI that got me, proving the point that so many Medium users profess: that bad UI loses money (even if it is only $20 for a train).

I suppose some of what I had anticipated writing still comes in handy. TenThousandCoffees.com is a very smart and socially innovative way to connect young people – their fresh perspectives and their underemployment – with older private and public sector employees to help solve two problems over coffee (that’s their thing and that’s the key). First, the difficulty of networking and career development for young professionals. Second, the issue for older business executives of staying relevant and staying in touch with younger generations. The idea is there. I was, and still am, truly impressed with the initiative to connect these two disparate groups for mutual benefit.

So I signed up. I made a profile and sent coffee invitations to a few professionals in the field I am considering for a career. And one responds to my request. She’s a big player at a big multinational firm downtown. However, she responds to my personal and textual invitation for coffee with an acceptance and proposal for a time using a template acceptance tool provided by the platform.

It reads: “Your coffee chat has been scheduled:” and then presents the proposed date and time and then gives the phone number of the proposer. Oddly, she did not propose a place to meet. I expected a coffee shop or Cafe, judging by the whole concept of he networking site.

I messaged her back expressing how excited I was to meet with her and hopeful I was to get something useful out of it. I also asked if she had a place in mind where she would like to meet. It remained unanswered and I headed downtown – spending my money to do so – and called her at the states number an hour before her proposed time.

The reason I’m chalking this up to bad UI is because I feel that I am a reasonable user of tech. I had no reason to anticipate that she would say over the phone to me: “I thought that it was clear. I am free today for a phone call”.

So I found a relatively quiet nook in a building I was not supposed to be in and called her when the time came. I made the trip down to the city to do something that I could have done just as easily – but actually easier – from home.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that “coffee chat” implies being in person. Because coffee chats are usually done over coffee and you don’t call a phone call where both people are drinking coffee a coffee chat, I thought it was in person. TenThousandCoffees had no information in their template to lead me to believe that this talk was not in person. The phone number seemed to offered to allow me to contact my coffee date outside of the website, for coordination.

This is a user interface error that needs to be improved. It is a very smart and innovative service but will not be as successful of its users remain bumbling fools showing up to a a place in anticipation of a meeting and being told they aren’t welcome, and that they spend $20 for nothing (that’s right, I’m a student and stuck on the money issue).

I was the victim of bad UI that is part of a service with good everything else. UI is important in the simplest ways and you never truly feel it until you lose a day to it.