OT: Interface pet peeves

When talking about badly designed UI’s age verification interfaces surely deserve a few (thousand) words.

The basic premise of age verification controls is quite bizarre in itself. Somehow, somewhere, someone got the bright idea that the best way to weed out those not old enough to handle mature content is to ask for their birth date. Yeah.
Next up is the fact that 99 out of a 100 controls will use the dreaded drop down menus for day, month and year selection. Drop down menus are the worst UI invention since, well ever – but that’s another story. I guess using a calendar to choose a date would be too radical.
And last but not least, the vast majority of controls out there list years in a descending order. This means that 2008 (or the year the page was put up) is the first choice offered. How many less-then-one-year olds are using the internet these days? And are they really looking for mature content?

Interfacing the environment

I’ve been reading Joel Spolskys User Interface Design for Programmers which is a useful paradigm shift for most programmers and it got me thinking…

I have quite a far amount of trouble keeping David from pressing the reset (and off!) button on my computer. Why is that? Why is he so interested in pressing that particular piece of plastic? He certainly has no idea of what it does or that it does anything.

It’s because the button invites pressing. It’s designed by professionals to look like something that can or rather should be pressed. That’s why David feels the need to turn knobs on the oven, handle the remote control, open closed drawers and rarely plays with his toys.

Toys designers got it all wrong. It’s not about the vivacious colors or the high pitched sounds. It’s about usability. So I’m off to buy some toys with interfaces!