Dear Programmers, Why do you hate me?
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There are times I've taken a picture of a document on my phone, slopped it over to my PC, and zoomed in 1000% to make sure I've read the numbers / letters correctly. :rolleyes:
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There are times I've taken a picture of a document on my phone, slopped it over to my PC, and zoomed in 1000%
Yep, been there often.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth. To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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... and all humans? When I pay a bill on line I have to enter my account number. The invoice I received shows this account number in a 4pt font as: 10000000002987421000331 or something ridiculously long with no breaks and an indeterminate number of zeros stuck in just for funsies. Sometimes there are alpha characters that include the letters "I" and "O" to guarantee I can't get it right on the first try. For the love of Dog, and my failing eye sight, could you please break this up into 3 or 4 character sequences, and drop all the 0s out? And if you allow "I" and "O" into the mix, could you please find some other form of work where your clients enjoy being tortured? Oh, and stop using 4pt fonts, too. As I struggle to enter my account number I assuage my frustration by imagining which of the circles Dante would put you in.
The GOV.UK website is a past master at this kind of stuff. To renew your car road licence you are sent a form with a 16 digit number in four groups of four - just like a credit card number. The online form you have to type this into accepts a maximum of 16 characters including spaces. It doesn't ask you to leave the spaces out, accept or silently drop them, it just truncates whatever you type to 16 characters without warning. If you don't notice this, when you get to the end of the page, having filled the rest of the form and clicked continue, it says there is something wrong with the data you entered, but without telling you what. (After many complaints it now seems to tell you which entry is wrong, but still won't accept the number in the format it is given to you!) When you get to the next page you are required to pay - if you want to use a credit card, it will accept the card number (4 groups of 4 digits) in any valid format - with or without spaces etc and doesn't truncate after 16 characters. I think this little example, present now for years, demonstrates the mindset of the Government Digital Service beautifully - they claim to be agile, to undertake extensive real life user testing etc etc, and yet this basic noob error in web page design persists despite complaints. As with so many other similar issues on GOV.UK, if you complain to the GDS team, they will say that the pages are looked after by another department and its not their responsibility... A great shame because the work GDS has done in forcing UK government departments to standardise their IT infrastructure and site UIs getting disparate systems to work together is genuinely staggering, but - as with all things government around the world - the actual users themselves (and especially those without IT skills or unable to use computers well or even at all) are an irritating afterthought in the whole process.
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It's not us! You should blame the designers who insist that all that text must fit in that tiny space! My favorite at the moment is an annual report by month where each month is a column and should be displayed whether or not there is data. Of course, it needs a total column and enough room for a 50-char description. That's a long description column (variable at least) and 13 data columns that must fit on a landscape print. From experience, 8pt is the minimum depending on the expected size of data and formatting. :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
And then there's the paper forms you need to fill in. Then try and write "veryLong.emailAddress@whoTookAllTheShortDomainNames.com" into a space an inch wide.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth. To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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It's not us! You should blame the designers who insist that all that text must fit in that tiny space! My favorite at the moment is an annual report by month where each month is a column and should be displayed whether or not there is data. Of course, it needs a total column and enough room for a 50-char description. That's a long description column (variable at least) and 13 data columns that must fit on a landscape print. From experience, 8pt is the minimum depending on the expected size of data and formatting. :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
Ha! Take your annual report and trump it with a monthly report which has to show the data (three different points per item) with the months of the year (pre-set for all twelve) PLUS the same again - but this time for accumulated monthly figures totals...and don't forget the little (colour-coded) up/down arrows to show if performance has improved or not... :doh:
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... and all humans? When I pay a bill on line I have to enter my account number. The invoice I received shows this account number in a 4pt font as: 10000000002987421000331 or something ridiculously long with no breaks and an indeterminate number of zeros stuck in just for funsies. Sometimes there are alpha characters that include the letters "I" and "O" to guarantee I can't get it right on the first try. For the love of Dog, and my failing eye sight, could you please break this up into 3 or 4 character sequences, and drop all the 0s out? And if you allow "I" and "O" into the mix, could you please find some other form of work where your clients enjoy being tortured? Oh, and stop using 4pt fonts, too. As I struggle to enter my account number I assuage my frustration by imagining which of the circles Dante would put you in.
It's not you. We're misanthropes - we hate everybody. :-D
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
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The GOV.UK website is a past master at this kind of stuff. To renew your car road licence you are sent a form with a 16 digit number in four groups of four - just like a credit card number. The online form you have to type this into accepts a maximum of 16 characters including spaces. It doesn't ask you to leave the spaces out, accept or silently drop them, it just truncates whatever you type to 16 characters without warning. If you don't notice this, when you get to the end of the page, having filled the rest of the form and clicked continue, it says there is something wrong with the data you entered, but without telling you what. (After many complaints it now seems to tell you which entry is wrong, but still won't accept the number in the format it is given to you!) When you get to the next page you are required to pay - if you want to use a credit card, it will accept the card number (4 groups of 4 digits) in any valid format - with or without spaces etc and doesn't truncate after 16 characters. I think this little example, present now for years, demonstrates the mindset of the Government Digital Service beautifully - they claim to be agile, to undertake extensive real life user testing etc etc, and yet this basic noob error in web page design persists despite complaints. As with so many other similar issues on GOV.UK, if you complain to the GDS team, they will say that the pages are looked after by another department and its not their responsibility... A great shame because the work GDS has done in forcing UK government departments to standardise their IT infrastructure and site UIs getting disparate systems to work together is genuinely staggering, but - as with all things government around the world - the actual users themselves (and especially those without IT skills or unable to use computers well or even at all) are an irritating afterthought in the whole process.
I agree with you and with the OP and others who complained about lack of contrast and other egregious problems. However, I found that the GOV.UK site for reporting Covid test results was a model of accessible design. Text and data entry controls were adequately large and readable, even on tiny screens, and contrast was always good. Previous entries were remembered where relevant and entering the test number was a piece of cake by pointing the phone camera at the data matrix on the test. They deserve some kudos for all that.
Phil
The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of the author, especially if you find them impolite, inaccurate or inflammatory.
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... and all humans? When I pay a bill on line I have to enter my account number. The invoice I received shows this account number in a 4pt font as: 10000000002987421000331 or something ridiculously long with no breaks and an indeterminate number of zeros stuck in just for funsies. Sometimes there are alpha characters that include the letters "I" and "O" to guarantee I can't get it right on the first try. For the love of Dog, and my failing eye sight, could you please break this up into 3 or 4 character sequences, and drop all the 0s out? And if you allow "I" and "O" into the mix, could you please find some other form of work where your clients enjoy being tortured? Oh, and stop using 4pt fonts, too. As I struggle to enter my account number I assuage my frustration by imagining which of the circles Dante would put you in.
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... and all humans? When I pay a bill on line I have to enter my account number. The invoice I received shows this account number in a 4pt font as: 10000000002987421000331 or something ridiculously long with no breaks and an indeterminate number of zeros stuck in just for funsies. Sometimes there are alpha characters that include the letters "I" and "O" to guarantee I can't get it right on the first try. For the love of Dog, and my failing eye sight, could you please break this up into 3 or 4 character sequences, and drop all the 0s out? And if you allow "I" and "O" into the mix, could you please find some other form of work where your clients enjoy being tortured? Oh, and stop using 4pt fonts, too. As I struggle to enter my account number I assuage my frustration by imagining which of the circles Dante would put you in.
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I've stopped signing mine a few years back, after I read some story about a guy at a restaurant who was refused to complete a transaction (after signing the receipt for the meal) because there was no signature on the back of his card. So he then signed the back of the card, and the waiter then proceeded to compare the signature on the receipt with the one on the card...
I used to write “Check ID” on the back of mine but very few people would do that so now I don’t even bother doing that.
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... and all humans? When I pay a bill on line I have to enter my account number. The invoice I received shows this account number in a 4pt font as: 10000000002987421000331 or something ridiculously long with no breaks and an indeterminate number of zeros stuck in just for funsies. Sometimes there are alpha characters that include the letters "I" and "O" to guarantee I can't get it right on the first try. For the love of Dog, and my failing eye sight, could you please break this up into 3 or 4 character sequences, and drop all the 0s out? And if you allow "I" and "O" into the mix, could you please find some other form of work where your clients enjoy being tortured? Oh, and stop using 4pt fonts, too. As I struggle to enter my account number I assuage my frustration by imagining which of the circles Dante would put you in.
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Absolutely legal. Anything and anyway with beef to make it tasty and tender is copacetic in Texas. Just not raw. It's not to be confused with sushi.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day" Badfinger
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... and all humans? When I pay a bill on line I have to enter my account number. The invoice I received shows this account number in a 4pt font as: 10000000002987421000331 or something ridiculously long with no breaks and an indeterminate number of zeros stuck in just for funsies. Sometimes there are alpha characters that include the letters "I" and "O" to guarantee I can't get it right on the first try. For the love of Dog, and my failing eye sight, could you please break this up into 3 or 4 character sequences, and drop all the 0s out? And if you allow "I" and "O" into the mix, could you please find some other form of work where your clients enjoy being tortured? Oh, and stop using 4pt fonts, too. As I struggle to enter my account number I assuage my frustration by imagining which of the circles Dante would put you in.
Does copy/paste not work? do they include QR codes you can scan on the phone? And finally... you can store much of that in your password manager, so it is handy. Of course, if you are dealing with unique systems each time, it gets harder. But then I pay THOSE bills with paper checks. And if they contain a barcode for only them... I damage it, so they feel my pain. And I write QR Code Plz on the check and the bill. Since most companies are forced to MANUALLY process the payment and review why... Ie, make THEIR problem a problem for them. FWIW, Discover has a note to NEVER give me a card again b/c they pissed me off! LOL
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This makes me think of the excellent book, The Design of Everyday Things. That book should be required reading for engineers of all stripes, but none so much as developers.
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... and all humans? When I pay a bill on line I have to enter my account number. The invoice I received shows this account number in a 4pt font as: 10000000002987421000331 or something ridiculously long with no breaks and an indeterminate number of zeros stuck in just for funsies. Sometimes there are alpha characters that include the letters "I" and "O" to guarantee I can't get it right on the first try. For the love of Dog, and my failing eye sight, could you please break this up into 3 or 4 character sequences, and drop all the 0s out? And if you allow "I" and "O" into the mix, could you please find some other form of work where your clients enjoy being tortured? Oh, and stop using 4pt fonts, too. As I struggle to enter my account number I assuage my frustration by imagining which of the circles Dante would put you in.
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... and all humans? When I pay a bill on line I have to enter my account number. The invoice I received shows this account number in a 4pt font as: 10000000002987421000331 or something ridiculously long with no breaks and an indeterminate number of zeros stuck in just for funsies. Sometimes there are alpha characters that include the letters "I" and "O" to guarantee I can't get it right on the first try. For the love of Dog, and my failing eye sight, could you please break this up into 3 or 4 character sequences, and drop all the 0s out? And if you allow "I" and "O" into the mix, could you please find some other form of work where your clients enjoy being tortured? Oh, and stop using 4pt fonts, too. As I struggle to enter my account number I assuage my frustration by imagining which of the circles Dante would put you in.
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I just read that book for the first time last year & it is fantastic. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: It's great too, because the author exposes the fact that a lot of these items make the user feel stupid, but it really is the engineer who is dumb.
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This makes me think of the excellent book, The Design of Everyday Things. That book should be required reading for engineers of all stripes, but none so much as developers.
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*stares with a grudge at bit.ly links* That's a fun one. You copy by hand to send the link by SMS and instead of a newspaper article, the recipient gets anything from pornography to instructions about caring for an exotic plant.
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... and all humans? When I pay a bill on line I have to enter my account number. The invoice I received shows this account number in a 4pt font as: 10000000002987421000331 or something ridiculously long with no breaks and an indeterminate number of zeros stuck in just for funsies. Sometimes there are alpha characters that include the letters "I" and "O" to guarantee I can't get it right on the first try. For the love of Dog, and my failing eye sight, could you please break this up into 3 or 4 character sequences, and drop all the 0s out? And if you allow "I" and "O" into the mix, could you please find some other form of work where your clients enjoy being tortured? Oh, and stop using 4pt fonts, too. As I struggle to enter my account number I assuage my frustration by imagining which of the circles Dante would put you in.
It's the UX designers, not the programmers! ;-)
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There are times I've taken a picture of a document on my phone, slopped it over to my PC, and zoomed in 1000% to make sure I've read the numbers / letters correctly. :rolleyes:
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Create a Digital Ocean Droplet for .NET Core Web API with a real SSL Certificate on a DomainI'm a developer with a vision problem. I was where you are now when I was 25. I've been waiting for somebody else to finally say fonts and displays had gotten too small, even for people with normal eyesight. Getting a bigger magnifier isn't the solution. Printing things in a readable font in a readable point size is.
