1. Trying to buy MP3s off Amazon and seeing unfriendly errors like “Important Message There was a problem with your address submission. Please fix all the areas below and try again.”?

    It’s probably because the Amazon MP3 service only works in the US, despite this information not being displayed anywhere or reported as an error. The billing information form even lets you choose countries which it knows will not work!

    This is an excellent example of terrible form design, and to communicate exactly why, I redesigned the form with some improvements:

    Important credit card number:

    Date it stops working:

    LEAVE THIS BOX UNCHECKED TO BUY MUSIC:

    Select a next step:

    (If anyone from Amazon is reading, feel free to use this design on amazon.com/gp/dmusic/verification/addCreditCardMP3 — it would be orders of magnitude more helpful than the current one)

    Source: chat with amazon support staff:

    Update: follow-up email clarified that Amazon music is actually available in the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Spain and Italy — so not just the US, but also no love yet for Iceland :( In their defence: Amazon’s support channels are excellent. Polite, helpful, quick chat and genuinely useful follow-up email.

  2. Mac OS 10.6 spaces vs 10.9 full-screen apps/desktops — switching gestures a welcome addition, but muscle memory persistent “physical” location lost, replaced by ambiguous time-based UI which does exactly what you mean half of the time, and causes flow-breaking confusion+excise the rest of the time

  3. Ben Atkin: This is what happens if you tap the screen on a mobile device while reading an article on @medium. #uxfail http://t.co/6lGHE04R9a

    @benatkin “Hmm, that’s an interesting paragraph, I’ll just comment on (taps) … huh, what was I commenting on again?”

  4. Erin Jo Richey: I appreciate companies that let me export my files when the company goes away, but putting them in 100 separate files to be downloaded? Eesh

    Erin Richie which company is that? I’m doing some research on the UX of data export at the mo and they sound like a good bad example :)

  5. @scottjenson RE google maps, I hear you. This particular problem could be solved by an app which remembers your speed, then displays the concentric rings. It assumes internet access/cached maps, GPS data and a device capable of displaying it — what if the device transmitting the information was a pedometer/similar which knows my speed but not location, has no internet access or way of displaying maps?

    I’m a fan of more ambient approaches like this because they enhance my own senses (in this case my poor sense of timing) without trying to run my life, as apps seem to want to do. I see it as a fundamentally different approach; apps make me perform a task and give me output. Ambient information enhances my senses and gives me more context within which to make decisions.

  6. More awful recipe site , this time even worse with both a near-opaque overlay and one of those stupid app download plea things.

    When will these people realise that, having clicked on a recipe permalink from a search engine, the task in my mind is “learn about a recipe”. Viewing an app in the App Store (yep, that’s not even a download button, so there’s another useless step) or going to a completely different website is not going to help me achieve that task.

    Then again, neither is writing this note. But it’s good therapy, and works up an appetite for the tasty wraps I’m about to make…

    Update: I only just noticed that the app plea is for a *paid* app — even less relevant to the task in hand.

  7. One fail I’m seeing more and more is the “we’ve got a different version of this site for your locality! Would you like to go to it?” whole-page overlay on permalink pages. So many problems:

    • Why do you have multiple versions of the same site if the content is equally valuable on either one (e.g. recipe sites)?
    • If language is the reason (I have never seen this) exactly why can’t you internationalize the UI and offer some sort of auto-translation of the content? Or leave the translation to me/my browser whilst having a small, unobtrusive banner letting me know I might be able to find similar content in my native language.
    • If I’ve followed a permalink, I want to see that content. Offering me a redirect to a generic homepage is useless
  8. After RSVPing the local meetup tonight, I get an email with shared signup details for wp10.wordpress.net so I can post my photos from the party to their site.

    This is another, rather bizarre example of WordPress promoting monoculture. Even funnier is this misguided quote from the email:

    If you don't already have the WordPress mobile app for your smartphone, you'll want to download it so that you can upload pictures and post to the site right from the party. It would be a good idea to add the site to your mobile app before your party so you don't have to worry about it later.

    Paraphrased: “So that you can participate TO THE MAX, post to our hosted silo and download yet another app that you’ll delete straight away”.

    Nevertheless, I plan to download the app and try it out as I’ve never used it before and WordPress UX tends to be pretty good. Perhaps then discuss the whole thing in on freenode to brainstorm a better way of doing this topic-based aggregation.

  9. Requesting a nonexistent page whilst testing on old IE incorrectly blames the user with message “files on this webpage require a program that you don’t have installed”

  10. The problem with all mapping software ever:

    “Hm, that placename is a bit small to read” (zooms in) “TEXT, WHY U GET SMALLER AGAIN”

  11. Why do XYZ reader applications mark things as read as soon as I select them? Just because I’ve glanced at them doesn’t mean I’ve read them. At least defer that judgement until I’ve scrolled to the bottom of the main content

  12. Application of notes or similar: reminding people to contact people in areas they don't go to often. Potential flow:

    • I create an event with a location
    • my software searches my contacts for people in this area
    • a list of those contacts are presented in a non modal fashion
    • If I can't remember where I met the person, hovering on them shows date and location of when I added them to my contacts
  13. Laura Kalbag: Avatars. Do they add anything to comments, or are they a waste of space?

    laurakalbag they add significant value to conversations, as they provide a recognisable visual indication of who is speaking and where each comment starts/ends. I am inclined against comments, but would recommend having avatars if you do :)