I’m not a UI designer, nor any kind of authority on UI design.  A Liger like hybrid of linux, java, and Ada 95 my idea of a good user interface is a giant text box with a run button and a solid –help command.  That having been said, one of the more enlightening articles I have ever tripped over comes from the archives at Joel on Software.  It provided me with the following quote:

UI is important because it affects the feelings, the emotions, and the mood of your users. If the UI is wrong and the user feels like they can’t control your software, they literally won’t be happy and they’ll blame it on your software.

So some time ago a service I use almost every day changed their login dialog on the web interface.  When I went to sign in, by selecting a link titled “sign in”, I was presented with the following box.

Can you spot any potential problems ?

First time.  I typed the user name, password, unchecked the remember me box with the mouse and instinctively hit the “join now” button in the lower left hand corner of the screen instead of “sign in”.  Tiny frustration.

Second time.  I decided to use the keyboard because I figured the enter button was a safer route to go. I tabbed my way from username to password just fine.  My next tab after password, took me to the sign in button (which visually changed to indicate selection).  I was hoping the “remember me” checkbox would be highlighted so I could deselect it *before* navigating to the sign in button.  Remembering my experience on some websites where I can tab again to get to that select box, I hit tab again.  Nothing appeared highlighted at all, so I hit the space bar.  Of course, the Join Now button was the button that was activated, so we went to the sign up screen again.  Tiny frustration.

Third time.  I went back to using the mouse … and still burnt my hands on the stove selected the Join Now button.  I was considering going back to audio cassettes at this point.

Finally logged in successfully the fourth time.   All told, including the time to load the “join now” page and navigate backwards, the whole process probably only took a minute. That is not a terribly large chunk of time. It was, however, a terribly frustrating user experience because I had seemingly lost control over a very simple process I had done hundreds of times before.

Possible lessons:

• If you give a link titled something, make that the most likely thing the user can do.
• Don’t have a two button login box.  Make links for secondary actions similar to “forgot password”.
• Run usability tests.  I’ve watched two other people use this dialog for the first time and they all clicked the join now button.