Dumb UI

Can't decide which button style to use? Just use them all.

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:45:00 +0000

The people over at MapMyRun.com couldn't decide which button they liked better so they went with all of them. I can understand the decision, picking a favorite button style is like picking your favorite kid.

Icons, icons, and more icons

noreply@blogger.com (aaron) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:17:00 +0000

I really like my iPhone, and I tend to enjoy games that involve real-time physics. A particular favorite is the excellent Jelly Car 2 (and the original Jelly Car). The playability of the PC-based version isn’t great, but with the iPhone’s gyro integration it is excellent. But I digress.

I saw a similar game called Chalkboard Stunts that was available for free and immediately “bought” it. Normally I wouldn’t be so quick to bash a free game, but this game usually costs money, it was just available for free for a “limited time.” Maybe like how a furniture store is constantly “going out of business.”

The first screen I saw after launching the app was this. I’ve taken the liberty of annotating it with my initial thoughts.

So here’s what I know so far. I’m playing the game I bought. I have three choices, and I can only assume one of them means “play the game”. It’s like the Monty Hall problem… Hopefully I don’t pick a goat.

I decided to follow the arrow, which I think was the correct choice, but I’m still not sure because here is the next screen I got.

So I immediately lock my application because like any good internet citizen I’m concerned about security. Then I spend some time having fun raising and lowering globes, and finally I make faces back at the ascii-art-guy. Finally I press the helmet and I can start racing. Well not quite yet.

I love the iPhone-styled “iframe” window inside this app. It’s like they got lazy and said “meh, just throw something in there.”

Selecting a level from the list just highlights it. From there, you have to figure out what to do. I got mad enough that I felt like flinging a CD, so I pressed that button. Turns out it’s supposed to be a wheel spinning (meaning “drive” or “go”) or something.

The moral of this story? Well, I don’t even think I need to say it, do I? Apparently I do because this game still ended up on my phone in this state. Put some freaking text in your UI to describe the actions to take. Don’t assume an icon is enough. PLEASE.

Uverse's dumb remote web access

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:47:00 +0000

I've accidentally canceled quite a few shows using Uverse's web interface to to manage my DVR.

Some asshole thought it would be a good idea to put the "Cancel Series" button in the exact same spot that most people expect to see a harmless "Cancel" button that means nevermind.

Combo boxes as "action initiators"

noreply@blogger.com (aaron) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:35:00 +0000

If there's one obvious bone-headed UI mistake that developers make it is putting actions, which are typically buttons or links, inside of combo boxes.

Combo boxes are for selecting an item (a piece of DATA) from a list, not for selecting an ACTION from a list.

WRONG

RIGHT

Better add "easy to use" to the list

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:24:00 +0000

Logitech’s updater

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:21:00 +0000

Have you ever dealt with the updater app for Logitech’s software? It seems to go something like this:

Logitech: I’m going to check for updates, is that OK?
Me: Yes, and don’t ask me next time, just do it.
Logitech: Great, sounds like a plan. There are no updates right now.
…
Logitech: I’m going to check for updates, is that OK?
Me: Yes, didn’t I already tell you not to ask me, just do it!
Logitech: Maybe, I forget. Oh, and there are no updates right now.
…
Logitech: I’m going to check for updates, is that OK?
Me: What the %*#@, quit asking me, just do it in the background like everyone else!
Logitech: There are no updates right now.

I haven’t quite figured out the time table, but every so often after a reboot, I get this dialog telling me Logitech is going to check for updates.

And every time I hit the configure button and verify it is set to do this automatically without prompts, yet it still asks me again. It teases me with settings to prevent this dialog, yet won’t actually obey the settings.

Then after it checks, it dutifully tells me there are no updates. Thanks Logitech!

Bill Gates Usability Rant

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:35:00 +0000

Pretty good email rant by Bill Gates on Windows usability is chronicled by Todd Bishop on his Microsoft Blog.

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

How many ways are there to pay?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:59:00 +0000

I debated posting this dumb UI example, maybe this is a case where I’m the dumb one and not the UI.

I went to the EA Store to buy the teaser app for the forthcoming game Spore. (Which is totally awesome BTW) The checkout page had this section to fill out for the payment:

I entered my credit card info and then looked at the set of options, ClickandBuy and PayPal. I had no idea what ClickandBuy is. I know what PayPal is and I know that wasn’t how I was going to pay so ClickandBuy must be a fancy name for their payment system. I pick ClickandBuy and continue.

I get an order confirmation page, I confirmed and then got a ClickandBuy page asking me for my credit card info. Huh? What the hell? I already entered my credit card info (actually twice, maybe I’ll blog about that also)!

At this point I realized what happened, ClickandBuy must be some kind of third party payment system and I shouldn't have selected it. I try to cancel the transaction but there is no god damn way to do so without contacting EA customer service. That transaction is now stuck at awaiting payment. Doesn’t even seem to be a way to continue with ClickandBuy if I wanted to.

I add the game to my cart again and checkout again and see the screen above and see where I went wrong. The Credit Card section has a radio button followed by a sizable gap then the remaining options. Come on! Can’t you indent the credit card details to make the radio option stand out some?

I can’t believe I’m the first person to make this mistake, I wonder how often it happens. So tell me, am I the dumb guy here? Is this UI perfectly valid and I just needed to pay attention more?

When your Firefox plug-in illegally operates on you

noreply@blogger.com (mike) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:18:00 +0000

I got this error when going to Channel 9's website:

Ok, so first of all what's with the extra whitespace where the error message should be? Is this error important enough that we need to make the message box extra tall or did some intern just build the string incorrectly?

Second of all, if I am strongly advised to restart Firefox, why don't you just force me to? What will happen if I continue? Will my computer explode? This message sounds scary but I'm given no details at all about what happened or what might happen if I continue.

Thirdly, speaking about details, what the heck is the illegal operation that my plug-in performed? I'm a programmer and I have a hard time figuring out what that could have been let alone if I was someone a little less technical like my wife or mom. Sure your code may do bad things, but I don't know what this plug-in could have done that would have been bad enough to alert me about it.

By the way, I ignored it and then went to another webpage and then Firefox crashed. I guess that's what I get for ignoring a "strongly advised" error message. And apparently, it "illegally operated" bad enough to make my next new instance of Firefox fail to load any plug-ins at all. Talk about an illegal operation...

How many kids do you have?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:23:00 +0000

Just got an email from Microsoft asking me to take a survey about the Zune at zoomerang.com. This is one of the last questions in it. Can you catch the dumbness in this before I tell you?

I have two kids that are 3 or younger, so naturally I selected 2 in that category and pressed continue. I Got an error saying I didn't answer completely, what the hell? I don't have any kids kids 4-7, 8-12 and 13-17 so does it expect me select the prefer not to answer option?

After reading a little closer I discovered the button text doesn't match the number of kids! Button 1 means 0 kids, button 2 means 1 kid, button 3 means 2 kids. WTF!?! I'm going to go out on a limb here and say whoever designed this is the dumbest person doing UI work.

Don't make me do the horizontal scroll

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:26:00 +0000

I run my browser at about 900 pixels wide, which I can't imagine is that uncommon. I don't have a problem with any websites running with this width except one, Mint.com.

You hit the first horizontal scrollbar road block right away. I can't login without horizontal scrolling. You might argue that I can see enough of the password field to use it, then hit the enter key which will log me in and you would be right.

However, web browsing is typically an exercise with using the mouse, not the keyboard, my hands aren't on the keyboard. What is not seen in this screen shot is how Firefox remembers my name and password and auto fills it in. If the login button was visible, I could just click it and be in. But no, I have to muck with the damn scroll bar at the bottom of the browser, then go back to the top to the login button.

After getting past this hurdle I hit the second horizontal scrolling roadblock. The main mint.com interface is in no way fluid and space filling. It pretty much forces you do make your browser wider. Fortunately for them their service is good enough that I deal with this frustration.

Blockbuster

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:31:00 +0000

Have you every tried to delete items in your Blockbuster.com queue and deleted the wrong one? It's crazy difficult to get right, you have no idea which delete checkbox goes with which movie because the rows are so busy. I have to find the movie I (don't) want, then slowly move the mouse to the right careful not to go outside the row till I reach the checkbox.

Why don't they highlight the row with a CSS mouse hover rule? One freaking line of code would immensely improve the usability of the queue.

Activate Twitter device! Buzz. Guess again.

noreply@blogger.com (aaron) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 03:19:00 +0000

Twitter settings allow you to configure a mobile device on which to receive updates via SMS. You can turn updates on or off (in general), or “on” for Direct Messages (messages people send only to you).

You would think that changing the drop-down box would turn updates ON, OFF, or ON for Direct Messages. But apparently not, since after setting it to Direct Messages I still didn’t get updates via SMS.

Silly me, it’s because I didn’t actually turn it ON. You know, like on on. I still had to “enable” device updates for my phone.

Good luck finding any help on this. My guess is that they want updates to go to phone or IM or web, but why that’s not in the settings next to the actual settings of those devices is beyond me. I suppose they wanted to enable rapid switching by users? *sigh*

If one progress bar is good, two is better

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:41:00 +0000

Flickr is awesome and a great example of good usability. It's new integration with picnik for editing photos is pretty slick. However, how many freaking progress bars and spinning graphics do they need to show when I start to edit a picture? First I get this one:
I don't know what the hell Sprinkling dew is but it sure takes a while. After that progress bar I get these indeterminate spinning gears:

At least I can cancel now. These gears spin for awhile, then a new progress bar pops up and wastes my time:

Come on! Forget the fact that you're annoying me by making me wait for the privilege to use your website, you really can't combine those to make one progress bar?

Almost there, just wait another....minute....Ok, done...Wait, not yet...hold on....hold on...hold on....Ok, done!....Wait, not yet, just another minute, no really, one more minute..........

What time is the Zoo open?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:45:00 +0000

Is it just me or is this the worse way to present the Zoo hours?

How many people have wasted their time trying to figure what time the Zoo is open. This forces way too much thinking on the user. There are only 5 different park hours, 9-4, 9-5, 9-6, 12-9 and Closed, yet at first glance it seems a lot more complicated than that. Why not present it in calendar form like every other park in the world? Better yet, most people are checking for the current day or week, how about highlighting that?

It is probably best the Zoo puts their money and resources towards the animals, but maybe pay a bit more attention to your web site usability.

Why is there HTML in the title bar?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 31 May 2008 17:03:00 +0000

I wanted to edit this blog's template so the title could be a link back to the home page. I learned with this blog post that I could add HTML tags to the description field, maybe that would work for the title field also.

I tried and it worked, great! Now you can click the title to get back to the main blog page, just like most every web site. But wait, why is there HTML in the title bar now?

Great job Blogger.com! I know how I can fix this, so don't bother telling me how, but I think I'll leave it as an example of dumb UI.

Firefox is for experts only

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:10:00 +0000

Here is a great way to indicate your app is dumb, display this when starting:

Translation: What the hell, I don't know what's going on, I'm pretty sure Firefox is already running but it won't respond to me, I don't know what to do. You're an expert computer user since you're using Firefox, right? See if you can figure out how to end the process. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just reboot, that should fix things up.

You know which browser I'm using.

noreply@blogger.com (aaron) — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:22:00 +0000

Every request a browser makes to a web server includes information about the browser itself: name, version, etc. This information is sent in the "User-Agent" header and can look something like this (for Internet Explorer): "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)". In fact there's a ton of documented User-Agent strings out there describing pretty much everybody and their mother.

But guess what? For human-viewable web pages, the entire User-Agent database can be reasonably reduced to a subset of, oh I don't know, five?

So for the love of all that is good, please tailor your website to the major browsers. When I'm visiting your site to download an application and I'm using Firefox, show me the steps to install using Firefox. It's not that hard, and it makes a big difference in the usability of your site.

Don't just show me this image regardless of my browser, because you know which browser I'm using.

The size of my family doesn't change very often

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:31:00 +0000

I spent a little bit of time on Expedia this evening pricing out cruises. I would have spent more time had Expedia not annoyed the piss out of me and forget how many kids I have (and their ages, which is required information) every time I picked a new cruise to checkout.

Maybe you could remember that bit of info Expedia? The size of my family doesn't change that often, there is absolutely no harm in assuming I still have two kids, ages 1 and 4, since the last time you asked me three minutes ago. On the off chance I do birth another kid since the last time you asked, that would typically be a very big event for me, and I'll remember to update the count.

After about five times, I started looking for a new place to shop. Great job Expedia!

Garmin says don't mix business and pleasure

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:40:00 +0000

Earlier this week my boss had a team cookout at his house. On my way there I fired up Garmin Mobile XT on my Windows Mobile phone for directions. Garmin software is typically very well regarded. My wife has a Nuvi in her car and we love it, that is why I got it for my phone even though there are free map application from Google and Microsoft.

One of the nice things about the Garmin app is you can browse your contacts and get a map to their address automatically. (what I used to think) I selected Contacts, found my boss, and got a dialog with his Work address (where I was already) and a giant GO button. Ok, but I want his home address...look around a bit...there is no way to select a Home address! What the hell?!? I guess Garmin doesn't want me to mix business and pleasure, I must not be allowed to socialize with business contacts outside of work. I guess that may be wise for some of them, but I should be allowed to decide that.

After a lot of cursing, I notice a really small unlabeled button in the corner of the screen. (Small buttons are perfect for mobile application that are used while driving!) I push it and get the full contact details, this must be where I select the home address. Yeah, right, his home address is listed, but no way to select it, just to edit it. This screen has a context menu, I display that and see a Show on Map option. Seems promising so I select it, Windows Live Maps launches and lets me pick Home or Work. Great job Garmin! Way to send me to your competitors product.

So now that I'm at home, sitting in a comfy chair, I try the app again and see if I was missing something, nope, doesn't appear so. I close Garmin and go to the standard Windows Mobile Contacts application, look at contact and discover on the Context menu a option to view in Garmin Maps that does let me select Home or Business. Genius! Why doesn't the contacts list within the Garmin app have that feature?!?

Use Quick Find in Firefox for less powerful searching

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 21 May 2008 03:38:00 +0000

Firefox has two ways to search for text. The one you probably know about is by hitting Ctrl+F which pops a bar at the bottom to enter the search text. Along with the search field there are Next and Previous buttons to search up and down the page as well as a Highlight all and Match case checkboxes. All very useful options.

The second way to search in Firefox is for when you can't be bothered to hit two keys on the keyboard and require less powerful searching because you know what you're looking for only exists once on the page. Hitting the / or ' keys invokes the Quick Find bar which looks a lot like the other Find bar but has none of those crazy advanced options to get in the way.

The only reason to use Quick Find that I can fathom is that the dialog closes automatically so you don't have to hunt and search for that hidden Esc key or be confused by that X icon or any of those advanced options. If you are a unfrozen caveman, this is probably the way you want to search.

(I might have to address the Done text in those screen shots in a future post)

The Folly of Mozy

noreply@blogger.com (mike) — Mon, 19 May 2008 02:01:00 +0000

Ok, so it should be pretty apparent right now that I'm backing up to Mozy. What's not apparent is how long I have left in my backup. "Unknown"? WTF? Why even show it at all other than to just piss me off?

Then there's the Faster Computer vs Quicker Backups thing. Had I known that "Faster Computer" actually meant "Faster Internet" I could have shaved a nice day off of my upload time. I mean come on, every one and their grandma refers to their network connectivity as "My Internet": "My Internet is slow", "My Internet is down", "My Internet isn't working". Are you intentionally making this difficult?

And then the "Show this box after every successful backup" gem. So by "this box" you mean this dialog, right? Why do I need to see this box after a backup? To know that it's done? How about just a "Backup completed" box? And why do I only get to see this box after a successful backup? Do I not see any box after a failed backup? Or rather than seeing this box after a failed backup, will I instead see a box of kittens? I truly do not know...

Stupid Blogger Blog Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 19 May 2008 01:17:00 +0000

First real post comes courtesy of Blogger.com who hosts this site. I tried to edit the description to add some funny ironic code to really drive home the point of this site and got this error:

What the hell Blogger? Why would I expect that field was meant to hold HTML? It doesn't say anything about HTML. How about giving me a way to accept that description as static text, no, that would be too freaking hard for your developers.

About this blog

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:10:00 +0000

I'm always coming across dumb user interfaces in the world and wanted a place to bitch about it. After years of complaining to my wife who doesn't care in the slightest I finally created this blog so I can feel like someone might care. I also gave a few friends posting privileges.

I intend to complain about not just software and websites, but also about real products like cars and baby strollers. Like most critics, I'll point out the dumb a lot, but never offer any suggestions for improvements.

Hopefully it turns out I'm missing something completely and commenter's will point out what I'm doing wrong. However, their UI is still dumb.

Like with everything in life, whoever made the mistake I'm complaining about probably had some good reason or had to make some compromise. I don't care. The point is whatever they did is dumb and deserves to be mocked.