[dundee] Bad design examples...

[Robert Ladyman]

> Quoting Robert Ladyman <it at file-away.co.uk>:
> > Apropos of nothing at all, other than a desire to have a moan, I'm
> > wondering about your experiences of annoying small design issues with
> > software or systems that you use.
> >
> > The one that set me off is my accounting package: if I decide that I want
> > to see (say) all customers, and don't enter a search condition, it whirs
> > for a short time and then pops up a modal dialogue box warning me that I
> > have selected to view (say) 260 customers, which might take a long time,
> > do I want to proceed? It actually takes more time to move the mouse and
> > click OK to proceed, than it does to select and display the customers
> > (grr...). Not only that, I know, from checking the logs, that the
> > software has to run a query to find out that there are 260
> > customers...and it only has to do this to populate
> > the dialogue box.
> 
> Solution: Use the enter key on your keyboard. :-)
> 
>That's nice. There a to many developers, which forget the user and the  
>usability. Software and Devices with a bad usability are annoying.
>
>There are a lots of design mistakes in everyday things as well. An  
>interesting book about usability is http://tinyurl.com/2b3po56

Ah...but that selects CANCEL, of course, and don't forget, if a search 
condition HAS been entered, you won't know that the dialogue is coming until 
the search has been performed so you cannot just press return (it might 
present a completely different dialogue). The magic number is 50 records, for 
invoices, hard-coded in the cpp code. Not only that, having just checked the 
code, it queries the database twice and then adds the totals together. Don't 
forget, this is multi-user code, so by the time it's counted to some number 
and presented the value, that number could have changed, so after presenting 
the dialogue, it then counts AGAIN in order to have the correct count for the 
array used for building the display list... and then reads each record in turn 
to fill the list...

Yes, I could patch the code and will. I have done so already for another 
problem: the code checked for duplicate payment numbers by loading ALL the 
records and stepping through them looking for any that match the new record. 
It did not exit the loop when it found one, so took longer with every record 
added. This, of course, is completely brain-dead in more than one way: when 
you have a massively powerful database, specialised and optimised for 
searching, you ask IT to do the search, you don't load ALL the damn records 
and then search them. By the way, that distant crunching sound you can hear is 
me, smashing my head repeatedly against the desk.

You are correct about everyday objects being annoying: I have a Roberts CRD 33 
DAB radio-clock alarm. When the alarm goes off, it handily informs me of the 
channel to which I am tuned, and the day (e.g. "Friday"). It does not inform 
me of the current time, behaviour that might be thought a little counter-
intuitive for a radio-clock-alarm but then I suppose at least I'd know if I'd 
slept for more days than I should have.  Alternatively, I might be 
misinterpreting the meaning of the word "clock".
Handily, one can change the display once the alarm has gone off by simply 
repeatedly pressing one of the identical tiny, black and unlit control buttons 
(which cycles through various display options) about 5 times  (or is it 6 or 
possibly 7?). If you forget the exact number of times (remember, you have just 
woken up), you go past the setting and have to go around again. The setting 
isn't remembered (by me or the device). The buttons are located behind the 
hair-trigger snooze button.

The snooze button disables the control buttons for another 6 minutes: it does, 
however increase my blood pressure, which is quite remarkable for a function 
that is supposed to provide relaxation. By the time 8 or 9 accidental snooze-
events have taken place, I am well on my way to a terminal aneurysm. 
Thankfully, this only occurs every single day: I can't imagine why I take to 
drink occasionally.

I used to have a BT Robin answerphone, one of the "features" of which was to 
beep repeatedly if a power cut had occurred. This beeping disabled the 
recording mechanism, though: you had to press a button to stop the beeping and 
then recording would be re-enabled. I discovered this upon returning from a 
trip when I was informed by the postman that something had been beeping for 
the last two weeks (from the day I left, in fact). Still, at least I knew that 
there had been one or more power cuts: how handy that was to know. 

-- 
Robert Ladyman
File-Away Limited
3 Ralston Business Centre, Newtyle, Blairgowrie
Perthshire  PH12 8TL SCOTLAND
Tel: +44 (0) 1828 898 158
Mobile: +44 (0) 7732 771 649
http://www.file-away.co.uk

============================================
Registered Office: 32 Church Street, Newtyle, Blairgowrie
Perthshire, PH12 8TZ SCOTLAND
Registered in Scotland, Company Number SC222086