I’m looking to take my family back to Dave and Busters (it’s been quite a while) for some family fun. I have one of their “power cards,” which is where game play credits are stored.  Before we head out, I wanted to check the balance on the card – simple enough, right? Wrong.

Turns out, visiting DaveandBusters.com was a frustrating experience and a lesson in weak site design and usability.  Finding the site was easy (thanks to the new Google predictive results feature – see video). What is interesting is that even after watching annoying flash commercials and fumbling through inadequate navigation, the answer was to call an 888 number and leave a voice message with personal information for some woman in the “corporate office”.

Really, Dave and Busters? Really??? C’mon guys, welcome to the age where databases are hooked to websites and user experience is important.  Here’s the 5 min video, “Dave and Busters – a lesson on how not to design a website”.