A Lesson on Top Tasks from Hurricane Beryl

Companies that do not support their users’ top tasks in a crisis fail their users and their reason for existence.

Summary: Companies that do not support their users’ top tasks in a crisis fail their users and their reason for existence.

On July 8 2024, Hurricane Beryl made landfall near the Houston metropolitan area. Beryl was a category 1 hurricane, the lowest rating out of 5 on the Saffir-Simson scale used to measure hurricane strength. For Houston’s electrical grid, which is managed mainly by the utility company CenterPoint Energy, the impact was anything but small.

Over a dozen people died. An estimated 2.5 million homes were left without power . In Houston’s humid subtropical climate, this meant being exposed to a heat index of 101°F (38°C) for days. Suddenly, millions of people in the United States’ fourth-largest city shared this top task: use CenterPoint Energy’s digital experiences to understand when their power would return. Unfortunately, CenterPoint Energy was not up to the task.

Top Tasks and Crisis Situations

T op tasks are activities that users must be able to do with a product. If users cannot do these things, then the experience has failed.