Dog food snafu

So I’m ordering food online for Nino…

nino in flight

Nino

… and I keep clicking the box to the left of the item description because that’s usually where you SELECT things laid out in rows online before taking the next step – ordering, managing, archiving… whatever – and my shopping cart keeps emptying out!  I try clicking through a few more times before noticing that the checkbox  is actually labeled “Remove.”

qc+ usability prob

So you come to this screen after clicking “Order” on the previous screen and your first (top row, left) option is to change your mind and NOT order?!? Not good for business!  Not good for the user experience–not how most user interfaces are designed! Usually a checkbox in that position is for selecting something, choosing to act on it, preparing to take the next step in the interaction flow–then maybe later clicking again to de-select it.

So that  layout tripped me up, cost me time, made me a tad irritated with QC+,  a product I’ve been buying for almost 20 years  (I’m a proverbial “loyal customer”; don’t bug me!).

My point being… design interfaces as much as possible with familiar lay-outs–Web design “conventions”– so users in a hurry don’t have to stop and figure out anything new – they (we) simply don’t have the time and patience for that!  (Which doesn’t mean, of course, that if a design convention really doesn’t work in a particular context  it should be applied willy-nilly… but you should  have a pretty strong, clear reason for ignoring it–preferably confirmed with user testing.)