UI Fail

[NickFitz]

One of the most annoying user interface flaws, IMHO, is when a web site wants a credit or debit card number, and rejects it if you include the spaces that are shown on the card.

I just went to pay a council tax bill, and the form there went one "better": the field for your card number has a JavaScript event handler that actively rejects spaces (along with all other non-numeric characters)

FFS people, this is Usability 101: it's hard for humans to read a string of 16 digits and be sure they got them all correct and/or in the right order. This is why the card is manufactured with spaces in the number dividing it into easy-to-read four digit groups.

If your back-end system wants it without spaces, then strip the spaces on the back-end when you process the input, don't just prevent them being input at all in the user interface. Shoddy, shoddy, shoddy

And who was responsible for providing this chunk of fail? Step forward Crapita, renowned purveyors of barely-functional, badly-designed usability nightmares to the powers-that-be at our expense.

[Zippy]

Nice rant

How about websites where your payment has been taken and you don't get a proper receipt?
Bought some stuff this afternoon and you had to search really hard for the 'Your payment was successful' bit (went off to verified by visa screen). The page came back and prominently displayed instructions on how to pay by phone or post which was confusing. Fortunately the rest of the site looked like a sack of tulip so I knew it was probably OK, and read down the rest of the page ...

[tim123]

One of the most annoying user interface flaws, IMHO, is when a web site wants a credit or debit card number, and rejects it if you include the spaces that are shown on the card.

I just went to pay a council tax bill, and the form there went one "better": the field for your card number has a JavaScript event handler that actively rejects spaces (along with all other non-numeric characters)

FFS people, this is Usability 101: it's hard for humans to read a string of 16 digits and be sure they got them all correct and/or in the right order. This is why the card is manufactured with spaces in the number dividing it into easy-to-read four digit groups.

If your back-end system wants it without spaces, then strip the spaces on the back-end when you process the input, don't just prevent them being input at all in the user interface. Shoddy, shoddy, shoddy

And who was responsible for providing this chunk of fail? Step forward Crapita, renowned purveyors of barely-functional, badly-designed usability nightmares to the powers-that-be at our expense.

What annoys me more are the ones that reject the payment and then put you back at a page where all the boxes are blank so you can't check what it was that you entered wrongly

tim

[TimberWolf]

One of the most annoying user interface flaws, IMHO, is when a web site wants a credit or debit card number, and rejects it if you include the spaces that are shown on the card.

WHS. I've had that a lot and it is annoying.

[Sysman]

Another one is phone numbers, and mobile phones themselves are guilty here.

[OwlHoot]

One of the most annoying user interface flaws, IMHO, is when a web site wants a credit or debit card number, and rejects it if you include the spaces that are shown on the card.

I just went to pay a council tax bill, and the form there went one "better": the field for your card number has a JavaScript event handler that actively rejects spaces (along with all other non-numeric characters)

FFS people, this is Usability 101: it's hard for humans to read a string of 16 digits and be sure they got them all correct and/or in the right order. This is why the card is manufactured with spaces in the number dividing it into easy-to-read four digit groups.

If your back-end system wants it without spaces, then strip the spaces on the back-end when you process the input, don't just prevent them being input at all in the user interface. Shoddy, shoddy, shoddy

And who was responsible for providing this chunk of fail? Step forward Crapita, renowned purveyors of barely-functional, badly-designed usability nightmares to the powers-that-be at our expense.

WHS

Ditto with phone numbers - I mean how hard is it to compress out a couple of spaces?

edit: oops, sorry - Repeating what sysman said.

[VectraMan]

What annoys me more are the ones that reject the payment and then put you back at a page where all the boxes are blank so you can't check what it was that you entered wrongly

That's really annoying.

Though it has to be said that the vast majority of web interfaces (including this one) are terrible, because they don't do feedback. You press submit and nothing happens for a few seconds, in which time the user decides to press submit again, which may or may not submit it twice, or not at all.

[FiveTimes]

I think map quest is the same with post codes, it doesn't recognise the space either

[TimberWolf]

A bit off topic, but does everyone do AJAXie / Web 2.0 (whatever that is) stuff now?

[NickFitz]

A bit off topic, but does everyone do AJAXie / Web 2.0 (whatever that is) stuff now?

Many do it.

Most do it badly.

Correction: almost all do it appallingly badly. I look at things like the jQuery mailing list, or the web UI questions on StackOverflow.com, and the first question that springs to my mind isn't "How can I help them achieve what they want?" - it's "WTF??? Why would any sane person even dream of creating such a bloody appalling user experience in the first place?"