Hmmm. Poor Form. #usability #forms

Given the recent launch and refresh of some notable usability firms, including Adaptive Path and InUse.se, I’m often surprised at how out of date and 'unuseable' some user consultancy sites are.

Setting aside the minimalist simplicity that is Jacob Nielsen’s Useit.com, industry pubs and orgs like BoxesandArrows, UPA (yikes), and others are showing their age or seem to be trying to make a point - of what I'm not certain ('Hey look! We built in HTML5 and are W3C compliant! Yeah, we know it looks terrible...).

I found some nice resources on OptimalUsability.org so I gave them the benefit of the experiential doubt I was feeling. Then, I went to sign up for their newsletter. Luke W. would have a fit.

The form is short enough that it could be all left justified to avoid horizontal scanning and facilitate form completion. The form labels could be right justified or top aligned – again to avoid scanning. The optional ‘How did you hear about us?’ field could benefit from a dropdown for information purposes.

Worse, two grey buttons at the bottom of the form. Granted the ‘Save Profile Changes’ is a little bigger, but it can be confused with the ‘Cancel’ button.

I'm guessing this was an OOTB form implementation, but it left me wondering about the resources I was subscribing to. I don’t mean to pick on them specifically, and forms do generally suck, but this one bothered me.

Posted via email from John Hutchings

Usability and Form Design | preso | #ux

Posted via email from John Hutchings

#United breaks guitars. Oh, and web forms #ux

Holy Crap. I'm not all that thrilled about flying United in the first place, but their 'express' web check-in is horrendous.

Not only is it about 5 pages long, it won't let me upgrade unless I register with them. I don't want to register, which means I'm about to pick up the phone.

Oh, and their flight status notification form is a doozy. "Enter your Pager's e-mail address". Really?

This does not bode well for an already weary traveler.

Posted via email from John Hutchings

Get your chicken (sh*t) together

Co-teaching a course with Jeff Nelson and the topic discussed was User Experience and Form design. Used a personal example about how not to do forms.
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Flashback to after Christmas. I was still craving some bird and stuffing. Swiss Chalet, I thought. Online ordering? Cool. And then it went downhill in a hurry.

User goal = me, chicken. When ordering by phone, expect to give up the following:

1. (First) name
2. Order
3. Address
4. Phone # (for follow up)
5. Payment information
   

Here's what went down...

Step 1: Phone number. Seems reasonable, but two things: 1). There is no 'status and visibility'. In other words, how many hoops do I have to jump through to get my dinner; 2). Why just phone number on this page? Are you geo-locating me?








Step 2: Personal Information. Why do I need to create a profile? Why do you need to know if I'm a Mr. or Ms. and what my last name is (obviously for marketing purposes)? Which fields are mandatory vs. optional? Love this line: "Please note: The address field is optional. If you leave it blank, Delivery will not be available unless you compete your profile". Understand the over 18 legal requirement (PIPEDA compliance), but you're still adding to the user experience burden.








Step 3: Error handling. So, I screwed up. Quelle surprise. It's not apparent how I messed until after submit. Inline contextual help and visual indicators might have assisted. Oh, and they reset the Password settings.








Step 4: I've told you all about myself in good faith and I'm still nowhere near accomplishing my goal. When do I get to select my meal? What's next? Postal code. Hmmm. Could they not have asked this a little bit earlier for localization (and, as you'll see availability)?








Step 5: What the heck does this error message mean? No context, nothing. After all that, you want me to call?








So, I called them, thus breaking the online customer experience to move to another channel. After another 10 minutes, we discover that I can't have their chicken - outside delivery area. Wow.

Lessons learned:

1. Obviously, don't buy their chicken online
2. Before you design a form, think about user goals and paths
3. To paraphrase Luke Wroblewski: "A raindrop never thinks that it's responsible for the flood". Don't let other departments from within dictate the customer's experience. By asking marketing and sales questions, as well legal stuff, you incrementally degrade user delight

All I wanted was chicken and stuffing...