Needs Testing

Cool little Easter Eggs on websites are always greatly appreciated. Jokes aside, helpful error messages are very important for both usability and accessibility.

Filling out forms can be one of the most frustrating exercises on the Web, and making sure that users know and understand exactly what you are expecting from them, and allowing them to enter their information naturally and intuitively greatly helps ease that experience.

From an accessibility perspective, that which cannot be seen is as important as that which can. The presence and correct use of <label> tags can make a world of difference to the visually impaired.

Well, that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?

Another building video. A couple of weeks ago I was posted on a project in Melbourne. I was booked on a 6:30am flight, which meant I had to get up around 4am to get ready and be at the airport in time. Then I clocked a full day of work at the office.

So when I checked in at the Mantra@100 that afternoon, I was well and truly tired. The hotel allocated me room 601 and handed me the key. I took the lift up to the 6th floor, and I see... well, you can see in the video that I took later that evening (after dinner, a shower and a long nap).

My zany colleague aside, you can see on the wall 602, then 603-610. Where's 601? I look around... rooms, corridor, stairwell/service door, lifts. No 601. Oh wait... that's it up the other end. You probably can't see in the video, but the "sign" for 601 is at the end of the row of pictures, completely separate to the other numbers. It also doesn't help that the room numbers are marked right up in the top corner of their doors.

I call this issue "it don't make cents". Not meaning to pick on Moreton Bay Council or anything, they just happen to be using a payment system (NAB Transact) that contains this problem.

In this image you can see that the "Amount to Pay" field contains a separate box for cents. God knows why this is necessary, and brings to mind the possibility that some people might carelessly type "5" there expecting it to be interpreted 0.5 - i.e. fifty cents (after all, that's how I usually enter it in Excel spreadsheets). However, it could also be interpreted as five cents.

Fortunately, the system includes a validation script that prevents single-digit cents from being entered. But if they're going to check it anyway, wouldn't it have been easier just to have a single field for "Amount to Pay"?

This is what you get when you let an OCD developer design your forms. I can't think of any conceivable use a company could have for recording such precise detail. Plus, the list will forever be incomplete - what if I'm a Senator, Captain, Lieutenant, or one of any number of titles that they've missed? 

In her book Talk to the Hand, author Lynne Truss writes:

Having ticked "Other" on a number of application forms, I now receive post bizarrely addressed to "Other Lynne Truss", which is a bit unsettling for someone with a rocky sense of identity.