Rant time again. The other day it was BT, today it’s Monday. Literally.
So this new lottery then. Sounds like a great idea.
Ok, the rules aren’t exactly something you can easily explain in a sentence. But still. Can’t be that difficult surely. So you’re new to Monday? Perhaps the 1,764 words on how to play page will quickly clear things up. Yeah, right. That’s about 4 pages in Word – just to get started!!
Their website in general though, well, sucks. It really needs to improve very fast. Who on earth designed it? Technical glitches aside (early days, so I’ll forgive that), what’s wrong?
Well, the number selection process is cute but awful. Try it.
The little coloured balls that show the results are idiotically a different colour to the balls you’ve picked. Let me show you what I mean. Here are the results from this weeks draw on the Play Monday website:
Now let’s look at my numbers:
See what I mean? Why is 6 a different colour? Why is 49 a different colour? If they are different, why is 18 the same colour? Why are the results so small? That is a 6 right, or is it a 5? Most stupid. Anyway, I got three numbers. Woohoo!
If you want to find the odds of winning, you look in the FAQ right? Not quite. You need to click on ‘how to play’ then ‘game FAQs’. Riiiiiight. So if you’re looking for odds, you click how to play. Hmmm.
If I was going on holiday on Saturday for a few weeks and wanted to play in advance, I press what?! The FAQ says “Can I play in future weeks’ lotteries? Yes, you can play up to 16 weeks in advance.” Ok, want to give me a clue?
If I want to see the tickets I’ve bought – I click on a button called History. Jeeeez. Call the fookin’ thing TICKETS!!
Oh, the colours….! Man alive!
…and relax.
[...] I posted about Play Monday’s awful website a while back. Since then, little has changed on the usability front – apart from them adding a link to play future draws. [...]
[...] My colleague Lou Cook, is going to podcast about Charities and their apparent neglect of website accessibility. (keep your ears peeled) When it comes to accessibility in the online world its inseparable from usability in my opinion. In the Third Sector this is an issue too. Although some would argue that the ill-fated playmonday.com has nothing to with Charity (!), the Third Sector needs to brush up its web presence. What this blogger says is so true of playmonday.com’s site – he/she blogged about this when Chariot’s share price was a little higher than it is today! In a subsequent post he/she rightly asks whether “lack of usability help kill off internet-only Monday?” – I like the analysis. Resource is always a concern and I am not beating up small charities who are trying their best constrained by resources, but the bigger guys have no excuse, they are paying over the odds to agencies who aren’t getting it right and the charities know no better. [...]