FinServ Blog

Designers Give Computers a Bad Rep

I just went through the NJ homeowner rebate form – you know, one of those programs were politicians who have taken a lot of your money give some of it back, usually shortly before an election It reminds me of how badly computer forms are still done. On the printed guide the state sent out, the ID number had dashes, while the computer fields would not accept dashes. You’d think it would be pretty easy to program a computer to drop the dashes instead of making the user type again. Or for the person who designed the paper form to leave the dashes out. Or for the computer form to tell the user to omit the dashes. Same thing on the salary entry, where the computer wouldn’t take commas, but never warned the user.

            It’s sort of like the address forms that are common in financial services, the ones that start with Afghanistan and force you to scroll to the bottom for the UK and the US, where probably 75-90 percent of the users reside, depending on which bit of finance you are talking about.

            Isn’t it about time to get a little smarter in designing the interfaces we have to use?