Archive for October, 2008

I’m hardly the best when it comes to designing forms with usability in mind, but I came across one today that frustrated me for awhile before I figured it out. While flipping through channels this morning, I saw that Highlander was on. It stuck in my head, so when I got to work I bought “Princes of the Universe” from iTunes. Since I’d recently updated to version 10, the little Genius thing was new. I clicked on the button to enable it, and was greeted by the following form:

(Image lost in the Great Update of 2009)

I put in my email address and clicked continue. Nothing happend–a message to “Please fill out the entire form.” After trying a few times (all unsuccessfully), I finally said “screw Genius” and went back to my normal playlist.

Fast forward 10 hours or so. Now I’m home, and again listening to some music. Thinking it may have just been some weird glitch on my iMac at work, I tried to activate Genius again. Same problem. I think, “Fine, I’ll try my AOL login.” I switch the toggle to the second option and fill in the second field with my AOL username. Another error. Only at this point do I look at it more closely… the second field is the password field!

There’s a good chance I’m just retarded, but I feel like I’m pretty tech-savvy. If I made this mistake, I’m sure others have as well. The issue is that the two radio buttons line up perfectly with the two text fields. If I could boil everything I’ve learned about usability into one single mantra (even if I don’t always follow it myself), it would be: “PEOPLE DON’T READ.” I’m no exception. Because there was a 1:1 correspondence between the two radio buttons (and more importantly, the two logos), my brain made the (incorrect) leap that the first field was for Apple ID and the second field was for your AOL username. I’m no stranger to multi-screen login/verification forms (especially for things with higher security, like bank accounts or apple accounts with purchase power built in), so it didn’t seem weird that it would ask for my username on one screen and the password on another.

Once I actually read the form and understood what it wanted me to do, it all worked great. What I’m wondering is, though, am I just dumb? Would others actually make this same mistake?