It’s so rare I get a chance to write an article about a good user experience that I feel all warm and squishy about it. So here goes…

Yesterday evening I was sitting in the COSCA Counselling Skills course I’ve recently started and we were having a discussion about the books listed as indicative reading and which were the most important to read. There are a fair number on the list and most people simply wouldn’t have the time to work through them all.

Before the discussion had ended, I had taken out my HTC Desire Z smartphone which sits on O2 – loaded the web browser and connected to Amazon – searched for and found the book mentioned as the most important to read – and ordered the book with a single click to deliver with my Prime account. Good start as far as I’m concerned. The entire process took a matter of a minute or so and I received an email shortly after confirming the order and stating an estimated delivery of today.

Around 10am this morning I was delighted to receive an email from DPD confirming that my book would arrive today and that it should arrive approximately between 4pm and 5pm, meaning I didn’t need to stay in the entire day waiting for a delivery that wouldn’t reach me until late afternoon! At around 5:02pm, DPD arrived and handed over my book. Faultless.

At every stage of the above purchase, the phone, data provider, web service and courier “just worked”. There was nothing that left me frustrated. I was able to leave the house a couple of times through the day, safe in the knowledge I wouldn’t miss the delivery. The book arrived pretty much bang on when I had been told it would. What a wonderful user experience it was.

There is only one thing annoying me about this process: why is it so rare to gain such a straightforward experience that just does what it’s supposed to without causing a problem, that I feel geuninely delighted with it and feel the need to write an article to tell everyone? This should be the normal state of affairs, not the very rare exception.

I thank HTC, O2, Amazon and DPD for doing their respective jobs so well in this particular instance. I can only hope that more businesses make the effort to improve so that it becomes the exception to have something go wrong in future.