By Eddie Lopez.
Wednesday, 7. January 2009, 02:22:30
web pages, bad design
A dialog/form that could have been designed better:
- Yes/No buttons should ideally only refer to one question
- "Continue" is ambiguous in this case- continue to remove the item from my cart? Or continue with the purchase as is?
- The "dominate" question is the "Are you sure you want..." but the HR tags are grouping the "Do you want to continue.." with the Yes/No buttons. Clearly some interaction design work could be done here.
AT&T Form Full of FAIL
By Eddie Lopez.
Tuesday, 9. January 2007, 13:18:46
web pages, usability, bad design
Here's an example of a "Band-Aid" fix to a problem that could probably have been fixed correctly with little effort. The screenshot is to an entry on a FAQ page (PA state website):
There several things wrong with this FAQ entry:
1) The error message is completely technical. The "humanized" response of what it actually means is only found on this FAQ page. Why not present this to the user instead of the SQL error?
2) Unhandled input- Check my input before I submit. Make me correct any errors, or better yet, handle what you can and prompt me if there is any ambiguity. Let the form/web page handle the input- why am I seeing SQL error messages?
3) In order to correct the problem, you have to login all over again and find my "submission" to correct the problem.
Well, so we just have a bad web page/form. No big whoop. I just thought it was funny that it probably took more time to put up this web FAQ than it would have been to implement a simple form validator prior to submission.
Instead of addressing/correcting any problems with the coding of the web page, they just add to the FAQ to handle all the strange errors, creating a Band-Aid for over the real problem. Hopefully, the user will even bother to look for the FAQ, but I wouldn't count on it.
What else would you recommend for handling this more appropriately?
WIDGETIZE