Comments on: It’s 2010. Isn’t it time to start demanding good user experience design?

By: Rian

Rian — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:10:24 +0000

Wow – I continue to be amazed at the variety of bad experience people are having with Rodale. Keep the stories coming – maybe we can make a difference!

By: Jennifer Reed

Jennifer Reed — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:47:57 +0000

About 8 weeks ago I started receiving email advertisements for each of the Rodale products (Men’s Health, Running, Prevention, etc), apparently because my email address was on a list. I have absolutely no problem with Rodale’s vision or products – quite the opposite! However, our family is not big into magazines for a variety of reasons, so we were not interested in receiving Rodale publications. I was consternated that no option was presented to stop receiving Rodale advertising overall. Instead I had to individually unsubscribe to each of the Rodale magazine advertisements – and even after receiving a Confirmation page for unsubscribing, I continued receiving ads. Lots of them. Once my inbox was overflowing I tried contacting Rodale customer service. I waited 20 minutes on the phone, then heard that it would take another 6 weeks to “fully unsubscribe” from Rodale’s email notification queue. It’s really unfortunate. Rodale strives to be a *different* kind of company on its face. Yet its policies toward customers are same-0ld-same-old.

By: Nancy Stover

Nancy Stover — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:28:22 +0000

OK, to start with they would not let me go any farther then the Login Password section. No matter what I put in there, they wouldn’t accept it & they gave me little information why they wouldn’t accept it. I tried over & over again with different logins passwords, but it would come back to me that they needed different information to fill it out with, but no information about what I was doing wrong. As far as I know, I haven’t been in this Rodale company before, so all I did was get madder & madder every time they thing came back to me!! I will send a check to them after I have cooled off, but it’s going to take awhile, so they can just wait!!

By: Laurie

Laurie — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:43:25 +0000

I have had a similiar, frustrating experience with Rodale as well. My initial visit to their website was to order one workout video, their website was very misleading and confusing, I ended up accidently ordering three workout videos. The website has no customer service phone number, if you have a question the only means of communication are vai email and you must wait for a reply within 24 hours (if your lucky). After canceling all my order(s) via email, (took five days)I still received one workout video in the mail that I did not want. I immediately returned it but continue to recieve a bills. They conveniently provide an (800) so you may call and pay immediately. Wish they had made it that easy and convenient with a customer service phone number on the website when I had tried to cancel my original order. Email is a great form of communication but occasionally a good old fashioned phone call works amazingly well. Never again!!!

By: maria rodale

maria rodale — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:41:43 +0000

No worries Rian, I should probably send you a check for doing us the favor of pointing out what needed to change. In general, though, my rule is never do anything without at least two strong black cups of coffee for fortification.

(And thanks to you, Tony, for pointing out this post to me!)

All is well that ends well.

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:37:40 +0000

That’s so awesome! Always great when a random blog post results in a company making the right changes!

By: Rian

Rian — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:31:50 +0000

Hi Maria. Thanks for stopping by! Glad to hear that you’re making some changes, that’s really encouraging to hear. Sorry for being so hard on you guys — I ended up writing this post before I could get that cup of coffee…

I am also happy to report that I sent you guys a check, so I should no longer be in debt to Runner’s World

By: maria rodale

maria rodale — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:06:46 +0000

Thank you very much for pointing out exactly what was wrong with our user experience. As the new CEO of Rodale, I am very committed to improving all aspects of our business. This was one area no one had looked at for a long time. A very long time! Thanks to you, we are making some very quick and positive changes…and getting rid of all those old invoices we were trying to use up (ahhh the constant struggle between thrift and environmental efficiency and user experience!). I hope your next experience with us is a good one!

By: Rian

Rian — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:03:24 +0000

Hi Laura – absolutely. In fact, I’d say even a simple heuristic evaluation by an experienced designer could have fixed most of the issues. That combined with some user testing could have made this a very easy experience.

By: Laura Klein

Laura Klein — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:44:12 +0000

Great post. I couldn’t agree more. I often wonder if the person “designing” a check out process has never actually purchased anything online before. The sad thing is, some very minimal user testing with 3 or 4 people performing 1 or 2 tasks would have found 90% of these problems. This is what user testing is fantastic for: finding confusing or problematic things in the office BEFORE