I make websites. I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to make websites more user-friendly and efficient. As a result of this, whenever I see a website that has an extraordinarily bad user interface it makes me angry. This particular example of eye-watering inefficiency came in a letter from Camden Borough Town Hall (my local council).
I’m sorry for the poor quality but this was taken on my phone. For the sake of accessibility I’ll copy out the important bit below:
“Thank you for registering for my revenues and benefits.
Unfortunately I am unable to process your request for the following reason(s)
You have not provided an email address.
Please try registering on-line again and ensure you provide a valid email address.”
I’ve also included a screenshot of the page this validation error came from. The email field is not marked compulsory. I wonder how many of these letters they have to send out and how big a dent in the council’s budget this makes. Perhaps if they stopped sending out these letters they could afford a half-decent UX Designer.
Words cannot describe how stupid this is. This form is five pages long and I didn’t find out it hadn’t processed properly for a whole week! Infuriatingly, I was trying to pay these people tax, some of which has presumably previously been used to pay whichever “web professional” came up with this crackpot system.
I couldn’t help thinking what would happen if all websites took the “Secret Compulsory Fields” (SCF) approach to form design. Instead of a book from Amazon you get a letter two weeks later listing the errors on your registration form, or you try and order your groceries online and instead of a food delivery you get a polite letter informing you that your password didn’t meet the minimum eight characters.
The only way this form validation could have been worse is if it had been sent by fucking carrier pigeon. If you’re reading this Camden Council: that wasn’t a serious suggestion. For God’s sake please don’t waste any more of my time and money.
Tags: form, UX, validation