Poor form | Web Directions

Today I’ve had need not once but twice to use complex form based interfaces from two enormous multinational companies. Each was a spectacularly frustrating experience, and goes to show just how far we are from designing decent web experiences much of the time. In order to salvage at least some value from these experiences, and given Web Directions UX is coming up this week, I thought I might reflect on what made them such bad experiences.

At the first site, I was informed in small print (I only noticed after failing the process the first time) that IE6 or higher was required. We aren’t talking about a particularly advanced setup here - radio buttons, text fields, and little more. Why restrict the experience? I expect the .aspx suffix might have something to do with it.

Interestingly, with Safari (I got all the way to the end with no inkling Safari was not welcome) and then Firefox 3 on the Mac, all went fine right until the final, javascript driven step, when simply nothing happened. I finally fired up Windows, used IE, and got the job finished. To make matters worse, many of the individual steps within the process were confusing, and themselves extremely frustrating. Time and again I was asked for information that was extraneous - but mandatory.

This is not a process one is likely to go through all that often, so I’m unlikely to learn the system making it less frustrating, and the business involved could run into the tens of thousands for this organization - so you think there’d be an incentive to get this right.

At the end of it all, I received an email to let me know that they weren’t sure they’d be able to meet my request - but hang tight and they’ll get to me to clarify my requirements (which they’d asked for in excruciating and yet also sufficiently vague detail as for me to wonder what the point of the exercise really was.) So the entire exercise was essentially meaningless.

The whole thing could have been streamlined dramatically, finished in a fraction of the time, and the process would not have left me with tension from my fingernails to jawbone.

Meanwhile, the other experience (with an even bigger company), essentially completely failed because I didn’t meet their form’s criteria for the service they are offering. I do meet their criteria, but the business logic embedded in their forms required me to be geographically located in a particular area (which is in fact irrelevant to the service being provided).

False precision is a major reason why both these experiences were so bad. Both of the services are highly tailored and individualised, and so seeking a large amount of seemingly precise data on my requirements is an exercise in frustration.

If there’s a lesson in this, it’s that when designing this kind of experience, identify the outcome you want, and then do the bare minimum to get to the next step. Time and again, there seems to be a focus on the business process of the vendor or service provider, rather than the users’ experience in the design of the experience. It’s business centered design, not user centered design.

Often on the web, form driven interaction will be a single transaction which entirely takes place on the web then and there. Yes, you’ll need certain details to complete the transaction - but my phone number? My address? My title? I’m still never sure what a title is (though I guess it’s pretty improtant if you are a general or some such, but how many people care?). If you’ve got a Wii, go and look at their Wiishop system - all it asks for is a credit card number for buying points. I was dreading the idea of filling in name, address, mother’s maiden name, first pet, and goodness knows what other details in order to make a purchase using the Wiimote and a virtual keyboard, but the process took just a moment. Compare this with the number of times I’ve had 30 mins or so in an airport, and wanted to connect to grab some emails, only for the signup process to take seemingly most of that time.

In other cases like mine today, the whole process will likely take negotiation and clarification, which may take days or longer. In this case, just make it quick and simple to get to the next step (afterall, in both these cases, I might be seeking information from up to a dozen competing service providers).

My rule of thumb - ask only what you absolutely have to in order to get to the next stage of the relationship. And be driven by your user’s needs, and not your own.

I look forward to what our wonderful speakers have to say on this and related topics in Melbourne on Friday, and your horror stories (as well as stories of good form based user experiences).

Just don’t get me started on online banking!

john

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