Great moments in user interface design

[mmcirvin]

No prize for guessing what I thought that bottom field represented the first two times I looked at it:

Comments

[jwgh]

For some reason I am thinking of the Palm Beach County ballot right now.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

That has always seemed confusing, because number 1, things on the left that seem to line up with things on the right ... oh dear. The more you look at it, the more it becomes confusing.


Right up there with putting the 'set your default browser' function INSIDE Safari.

Sorry, that burns my butter every single day.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Also see this.

[schwa242.livejournal.com]

Yikes! So many selections... they're just pleasing the customers!

[avocado123.livejournal.com]

This is not the time nor the place, but every time I see your smiling face, I giggle like schoolgurl. You're so nerdily Shakespearean in a Keanu Reeves way.

OK then. Sorry. I'll go be a gurl in a thread that's not about operating systems.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

You should have gotten an LJ long ago.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

The missus thinks Keanu is HAWT and also thinks i look like him. I guess that's a good thing.

"nerdily Shakespearean"... "Forsooth, my liege, a critical hit! Roll thou a fortitude save, an it please thee."

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

You're lucky you photograph well. I just had my picture taken for the internal company web site, with one of those big-ass squillion-megapixel Sony cameras. The person who took it just sent me back the full-resolution image... I didn't even shave today... oh god I'm hideous.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

GIF! GIF! GIF!

I'll scan the picture on my company ID. It ain't pretty, either (my face clearly says, "Fuck, i had to run over here to get a replacement card `cause i lost my last one").

[jwgh]

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Work ID: ID for our old colo cage:

Note how the second one has my attempt at a... what is it, a handlebar mustache? A Fu Manchu? Pitiful.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Frank Zappa comes to mind.

[avocado123.livejournal.com]

> oh god I'm hideous.

No, you're not hideous. I've seen pics of you and you're cute as a button. I say that to annoy you, really, even if it's true.

The drawing is way cooler than a pic, even if it does make you look like George Carlin.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Everyone is hideous at 5MP, unretouched, no makeup.

um, what?

[(Anonymous)]

I can see that it's a horrible design, but I can't guess what you thought the bottom field represented. What would an AOL box represent?

Re: um, what?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

What it looked like to me was that there were separate boxes for entering an AppleID or some sort of AOL password, depending on which type of account you had. If you read all the text and think about it, you can tell that's not true-- but the initial visual impression is dominated by those big logos that seem to line up with the boxes, an alignment that means absolutely nothing.

What made it easier to be fooled was that this sign-up box is unusual in the iTunes Music Store—most of the time, you don't have to re-enter your ID and password to interact with the store; it just uses the values saved in your keychain. So the procedure isn't that familiar; and the last time I did it was before the deal with AOL that gave them the ability to use AOL accounts, so I hadn't seen that interface before at all.