If you want my help, dont make it hard for me!

Adobe PDF Writer asks its users for help but makes it extremely difficult

What's misdesigned?

PDF Writer is Adobes program to create PDF Documents. When the program encounters a problem it asks its user to help the Adobe PDF development team in troubleshooting. However, it seems that Adobe assumes their users to be particularly patient as they make this process extremely difficult and time-consuming.

Figure 1. Adobe PDF Writer attempting to collect feedback for troubleshooting

It would be as if

It would be as if the waiter asked you for feedback after eating at a restaurant. When you agree to help him, he asks you not only to fill out an extensive questionnaire with unfamiliar and strange information, but also to go all the way to the post office and mail it to his boss, once completed.

How to fix this problem

There are many elegant ways to request help from users. In the example below, the program has done all the information gathering for the user: If you want to help the program developers, simply push a button. At the same time, this interaction design leaves the user in control as he/she is given the option not to help. Also, privacy-concerned users may inspect the information before it is sent.

Figure 2: Windows XP attempting to collect feedback for troubleshooting

Research themes surrounding this misdesign

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The research themes surrounding this misdesign is broadly speaking that of Interaction Design (see the encyclopedia entry). More specifically, this misDesign touches on the means by which designers of software communicate (results in bibliography...) with users and what the designer-user relationship is about. Designer-user communication (or the lack of it) is often talked about as the Gulfs of Evaluation and Execution (see encyclopedia entry). The interaction designers at Adobe could have used an Interaction Design Pattern (see the encyclopedia entry) to help them avoid annoying their users. Moreover, Semiotics (results in bibliography...) is the study of communication where the acts of communication are not limited to verbal and written communication but includes signs, gestures, etc., which is why semiotics has a long tradition of being used for design of communication between user and the computer/software. Other, more specific, themes include status (results in bibliography...) and feedback (results in bibliography...), i.e. how the software communicates its status (e.g. an error state) and feedback information. Status and feedback is used to maintain rapport, which is one of the most important aspects of interaction design: It is commonality of perspective, i.e. being in "sync", being on the same wavelength. Other than the above, obvious research themes are privacy (results in bibliography...) and error handling (results in bibliography...)