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The UX of Phone Trees

Summary: Phone trees are notoriously frustrating for 4 main reasons. There are many small ways to make them more usable and less miserable, however.

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The UX of Phone-Tree Systems: 16 Usability Guidelines

Users who call organizations often find themselves in frustrating phone trees. Badly designed interactive voice response (IVR) systems violate many of the 10 usability heuristics.

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Tanner Kohler is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Tanner's studies have focused on social psychology, and he has researched theories of human motivation and the gamification of learning. He has developed, taught, and evaluated curricula for thousands of full-time volunteers for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He has an MS degree in instructional psychology and technology.

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