A Blackberry Icon "picture" is Only Worth 1,000 Words If You Know What it Means!
An icon that showed up on my Blackberry Storm that I couldn't figure out. That's bad design. Icons should epitomize the saying that "a picture is worth a thousand words". They should generate immediate meaning, save space and ideally, be attractive.
Not only was the icon cryptic but Blackberry's user manual and web site provided no information about it. I Google'd the issue and all I found were 25 other postings asking the same question I had. There was no Blackberry icon glossary to be found.
I called Blackberry and was told that only by paying for "professional service" could my question be directly answered by them. The agent did say she would connect me with my carrier, Verizon, who could answer the question at no cost, and if they didn't know, they were allowed to call Blackberry at no cost. Go figure and please transfer me.
After describing the icon issue to Verizon, I put the phone on speaker and did other work while two people looked at the user manual and Blackberry web site only to report 10 minutes later that they were escalating this to the next level of support. Fine...back to work. The next level of support came on the line and asked if I had any 3rd party software on the phone as that might be the source of my unknown icon. Yes I did, particularly since Blackberry, Android and every phone operating system is trying to catch up with Apple's by providing apps.
After opening Blackberry's own app 'Blackberry App World,' it turns out that the mystery icon tells me that Blackberry App World has updates for apps I downloaded from App World. In other words, it's Blackberry's own icon that pops up but they can't tell me what it is unless I pay for "professional support". Go figure as you check out iPhone pricing.
The customer experience was bizarre. But equally important is how well intended but incomplete design can harm customer experience.
