by Patrick O'Hannigan

Editorial note: These are just a few of the many examples of poor user interface design that you might encounter in software applications or on the Web. For extensive additional examples, please refer to sites that focus on poor design, such as http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com and http://www.pcd-innovations.com/bad_design.htm.

Example 1:

Figure 1. An error generated by IE 6.0x in Windows XP Professional

This came up while trying to access an Intranet page. Note that the "Never download" option is not complemented by an "Always download" option. Note the following shortcomings:

• Cryptic dialog box title
  
• Incorrect grammar ("components")
  
• One course of action ("Never download…) makes more demands on fine motor skills and eye/hand/mouse coordination than the other

"Download," the default option, leads you further down the primrose path rather than actually downloading anything (see Figure 2).

Example 2:

Figure 2. We’re Sorry (the penalty for following directions in Figure 1).

Figure 2 was displayed on clicking the Download button in Figure 1. At this point, I’m two steps removed from information that I’d been looking for, but directions in Figure 2 suggest I need to get further still from that information (by installing XP service pack 1) before it’s made available to me.

Note that the default option in the previous figure leads to a failure notice in this figure.

Note also that users can’t download a service pack from the service pack web page until they’ve run a scan (at which point they’re four steps removed from the original inquiry!) or made at least one more selection.

Example 3:

Figure 3. Subverting usability in a historical record.

A customer-friendly web site would include links to save or print the active page, but this site has no such links.

Want to export the data on this page to a spread sheet? Good luck finding out how.

Example 4:

Figure 4. The Hotmail Startup Page.

Note the position of the Sign In button relative to the Security Options.

The false implication of this layout is that you can sign in to your account and then choose security options. In fact, however, the login procedure ends when you select Sign In.

Result: to use security options for Hotmail, you have to work through the login counter-intuitively, bottom to top.

This page has been redesigned for MSN 8.0 and the "better with the butterfly" ad campaign since mid-October, 2002, but the old format still pops up occasionally.

Example 5:

Figure 5. Windows Media Player in "Compact" Mode.

A screen hog by any other name is still a screen hog.

Contrast the overhead of the Microsoft application with the GUI for a shareware application that plays music just as well (see Figure 6).

Example 6:

Figure 6. Full display of the Chime "Tray Play" GUI.

The compact display of this utility is a tiny triangle pointing right (standard audio hardware notation for "play"). The triangle, which is identical to the graphic used at the top left edge of Figure 5 sits in the toolbar, where it doesn’t take up desktop space.

The Tray Play design is not without problems like the following:

• Three different Play buttons, but none of them is Play alone—this violates conventions of the home stereo system metaphor otherwise used successfully on the buttons in the bottom row.
  
• No intuitive difference between Auto Hide and Hide (and no apparent rationale for not combining the two Hide buttons into one Hide button).
  
• Odd placement of the Associate button, given that the word is a linking verb that implies x and y values on either side of it.
  

In spite of these shortcomings, Tray Play developers look like models of self-restraint next to the people who built the Windows Media Player (Figure 5).