A recent visit to the Motorola site made me realize how much usability really does matter and how much truth there is behind those old rules.

My mom needed a manual for her cell phone. Motorola had told her to go to their web site and download it, but she couldn't get it to work and asked for my help.

I went to www.motorola.com. Not being a Motorola owner (or a cell phone owner, for that matter), it was my first visit. The first place I looked for a link was along the top. They have three buttons along the top by their logo, but they were all corporate stuff. I then saw four buttons at the top right: At Home, At Work, In the Auto, On the Move. None of those cryptic buttons sounded right.

I finally spotted it: in a sidebar on the right (ironically labeled "Fast Find"), in tiny gray text on a gray-blue background, the words "Cell/Mobile Phones." I clicked. A list of phones popped up, and I scrolled through. None was what I wanted, so I clicked on "View all phones" at the bottom. Then I was presented with a list of countries that I had to select from, but instead of using a regular drop down list, it was a Flash-based widget with only an up and down arrow. So, I couldn't just grab the scroller, drag it to the bottom, and select United States. Instead, I had to hold the down arrow down until it finally got to the US. It only took 8 seconds, but when something takes 8 seconds that should have taken 0.5, we web users get mad.

After selecting US, I went to a US portal page where I had another box to select my phone from. Since my phone wasn't listed (turns out mom gave me a slightly wrong name), I hit back to try my luck on the home page again. I had to navigate through the Flash widget again. This time, I selected "Downloads," because I needed to download a user manual. It then presented a little graphic saying I could get my hands on games, ringtones, etc. Oops – this didn't sound like what I wanted. I wanted to go back and choose "Support" instead of "Downloads." But there was no way to get back! (Turns out the widget did have a back button, but I didn't see it all the way at the bottom.) I would have to hit refresh, scroll through that list of phones again, then select "Support." After selecting support, I had to select US again. Guess where it sends me? The same US portal site as before, not the support page! So, I had to search around on that page and select Support, even though I told it back on the home page that I wanted support. Talk about unneccessary clicks.

On the support page, it was easy to find the link to Manuals. Finally! On the Manuals page, I selected a category of manuals, Phones. I then went to the next drop down box to select my particular phone. But the list was empty. Suspicious, I loaded up the same page in Internet Explorer (I use Firefox as my default browser). Sure enough, the select box worked in IE. Now I was really mad. They were using some cheap, lazy Javascript that wouldn't work on Firefox. How irresponsible of Motorola, a site that must receive millions of hits, to exclude so many users of their site! If they are going to require you to use their site to receive support, they need to make sure it is accessible to all.

Now forced to use IE, I attempted to locate my mom's cell phone in the list. It wasn't there. After looking a few more times, I finally spotted it. Her cell phone, 280, was not at the top of the list with the other numerical phones. It was stuck in the middle of a bunch of phones starting with V. Why? Who knows. Motorola apparently doesn't know how to alphabetize either.

The whole process was protracted and difficult – and I'm a web designer who knows my way around a site! Web developers, I beseech you – don't do this to your customers.