Showing posts with label misdesign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label misdesign. Show all posts

03 June 2008

UI Design Encourages Mistakes, Boosts Profits

Having just finished my banking and tax admin for the month, I fire up the bank's online system to fork the money over to the various landsharks, fatcats and leeches.

Bank payment UITo make the various tax payments I first have to select which of my accounts to use for paying.  Then I select who I want to pay.  (For some value of "want".) The system insists that you click the "Search" button to check that you have entered the corect payee account details, but, of course, it only tells you this after you navigate away to the next page, and, when you return to the payment details form, it throws away all the details you have already captured.

I also have to enter a 19-digit reference number and, guess what, if I get it wrong (as I am likely to do with such a long number) it only tells me on the next page, and, again, throws away all the work I have done to fill in the form, forcing me to redo it from scratch.  Including forcing me to redo the payee "Search", despite the fact that my browser has captured the field details perfectly.

The real kicker is that it also ditches the account-number from which I want to make payment, substituting the "default" account (which happens to be my personal account and not the business account)  Of course, the account number is metres away up at the top of the web-page, so I don't notice that I'm making payment from the wrong account.

As a result I pay business taxes out of my personal account.  When I eventually discover my mistake, I have to transfer the money over from my business account to fix things.  And I am going to get hit with the withdrawal fees again.  To add insult to injury, the payment pushes my personal account into overdraft.  Bam!  Overdraft fees!

This UI is so wrong, in so many way, you would think that the bank  would have "inspired" and "motivated" to fix this monstrosity years ago.  Do you wonder why Standard Bank can't be "bothered" to fix their broken user-interface?  Do you wonder why they make incredible profits?

Did you think the two facts are unrelated?
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