DREWspective

A “forced preview” is my name for when a message is displayed as the sender’s name and the first few words of the message.

Here’s an example from Facebook:

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I’ve given a few examples of what I consider to be bad user experiences (or UX); now here’s the good example I’ve been alluding to.

There’s a web site called Brickset, which is one of the main sources of information on Lego sets and general news. Not only does it have a web forum, but people can create an account on the site to make a list of sets they have and want.

Here is their registration form for creating a Brickset account:

All that’s required is your email address (entered once, thank you) and your desired user name. Once you submit the form, they send you an account password via email, which is secure enough but able to change.

This is arguably the best web registration form I’ve ever come across, because only information relevant to registering a new account is collected. No demands for your date of birth, location, name or postcode (for whatever reason it’s become trendy to collect people’s postcodes), or anything that’s not absolutely essential. Besides, we can fill those in later if we really want to.

Another good thing about the registration form, in my opinion, is that it isn’t tied to the forum; you’d have to create a separate forum account to access it. I think it’s a good thing because online forums aren’t for everybody; some people might just want to keep a list of Lego sets they have and want, and some people (including me) might not want to be a member of the forum. There are some sites that tie site registrations into their message boards, but separate site and forum accounts are general practice.

Whether a form like this would require a CAPTCHA test, or some other kind of security measure, is debatable. I would imagine that there’s security measures behind the scenes if there isn’t a CAPTCHA in place.

I promise I will add examples of good UX in the near future. But first, I want to address one of my biggest pet peeves online…

JobSite’s login form is guilty of a particular crime that several other web sites’ forms are guilty of. Basically, if you try to sign in to the site and just happen to get your email address or password wrong:

You’ve guessed it: both fields are empty when you’re told so. It makes sense for the password field, but my complaint is with the other, plain-text fields – in this case, the email address field.

Why is this a problem?

First of all, JobSite’s login form comes populated with your email address (if you’re a member already, or you accessed the site from a link in one of their newsletters), so it makes no sense to “forget” it if you get your password wrong.

Second, because the email address field is empty, a lot of time is wasted filling in the email address again. Worse still, the clearing of the field suggests that the email address was wrong – so a lot of time could be wasted in trying to guess the correct email address. Usually the problem is simply a small typo.
The only quick option then is to request a new password (or if security was an afterthought, retrieve the actual password) by guessing which email address was used to register.

Believe it or not, this doesn’t just happen with poorly conceived and poorly implemented login forms. I’ve seen the same thing happen with registration forms on various web sites (most of them fly-by-night), where one small omission will present you with a completely emptied form – meaning you’ll have to type in every single bit of information over. Unfortunately I can’t provide any examples off the top of my head.

The moral of the story: if you don’t want your web developers hunted down in cold blood, please think about how you implement your forms. If there’s an error with the data the user is submitting, try to keep as much of that information available the next time.

Rant of the day: is anyone as annoyed as I am about this message on Monster?

It’s annoying because there’s apparently no way to get rid of it. I’ve answered every single question in the linked section, and keep my CV up to date at least every month – but still it appears not to be enough.

I think it’s just a sick ploy by Monster to make potential candidates more eager to hand over personal details. Particularly as they’ve now started advertising various third-party services (such as the Open University and rubbish CV-rewriting companies) at random moments. It’s an insult to be sold things I don’t even want when I’m trying to apply for jobs in the first place.

Maybe I’m just thick, though. Is there a way of being the most “visible” I can be, and getting rid of that fucking message?