{"id":1012,"date":"2017-11-01T11:30:37","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T11:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2017-11-01T13:02:06","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T13:02:06","slug":"dont-make-users-learn-codes-in-place-of-business-terms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/2017\/11\/01\/dont-make-users-learn-codes-in-place-of-business-terms\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t make users learn codes in place of business terms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a good example of bad user experience I came across recently.<\/p>\n<p>In training, I was told the various status codes that health claims would be in.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>125 for a pending claim.<\/li>\n<li>483 for a paid claim.<\/li>\n<li>And so on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I was also told codes that indicate the results of business jobs<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>0 means a claim has been priced completely.<\/li>\n<li>58 means claim has an unknown provider.<\/li>\n<li>26, 27,28 are violations of Wyoming state laws regarding Medicaid claims for black lung disease.<\/li>\n<li>And so on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Then they tested us on these codes.\u00a0 I did poorly on the test. Who can remember all these damn codes?<\/p>\n<p>So, I have a question.<\/p>\n<p>Why can&#8217;t a pending claim simply be marked &#8216;pending claim&#8217;? Why must you come you convert that plain English status to a number?<\/p>\n<p>If there are technical reasons for representing that status as a number, fine, do so. \u00a0However, why must I, the business user, be exposed to that number? Why can&#8217;t you keep the number to yourself, and tell me the claim&#8217;s status in plain English?<\/p>\n<p>Why are you making me remember arbitrary numbers, when natural and easy to understand business terminology exist?<\/p>\n<p>And last but not least, if the business user did not see these numbers, you can avoid a whole chunk of training.\u00a0\u00a0 Is that anything but a good thing?<\/p>\n<p>This is an example of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded\/dp\/0465050654\">Design is an act of communication<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>This is user experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a good example of bad user experience I came across recently. In training, I was told the various status codes that health claims would be in. 125 for a pending claim. 483 for a paid claim. And so on. I was also told codes that indicate the results of business jobs 0 means [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1017,"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions\/1017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seonthemon.com\/wp351\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}