Badly Designed User Interfaces

Introduction

I've finally found the time to doing this page on poor user interfaces.
Over the years I've written and designed a number of software systems and web pages. This is my thoughts on the matter.

The first poor interface I can remember coming across was in the 1971. I was working for a Car component manufacturer as a Parts controller. Each morning I would be given a "Stock list", This list was about 2000 Sheets of fanfold paper Detailing the stock of all of the part the company sold. It pretty much lists every Bumper, Door handle, Lock and Window winder for every British car ever manufactured. So that was about 120,000 items. Now with all the will in the world no one can read the whole thing. It was of course just for reference. but what a waste of paper. Many of the parts as you can imagine were out of stock. and quite rightly. The company made things to order. I suggested to the "Data Processing Dept" Why not just print a list of the item we have orders for. Well a shape intake of breath and all sorts of reasons why it could not be done but i persited and eventualy got my way. Once the other saw the "New Style" they wanted it too.

These days we are surounded by technology. But IMHO it's not very well thought out. It seems to me that the designers think of all the feature they can have and then put them on the menu/userinterface with out a thought of how people may want to use it.

The first example is my Car GPS and Phone Hands Free. The car a Renault Laguna Initial. Fabulous car and a real gadget rich environment. At first I was mega pleased with my choice but now I realise it's not as good as it could be.

First lets look at the GPS.

Map Zooming

The map can be zoomed from the whole of Europe to a few hundered Yards. What it should do is auto Zoom a bit like Tom Tom does. As the Speed increases then the map should zoom out automagicaly.

Address Entry

1. You need to enter the Country. OK thats fair enough. I do plan trip to France from The UK. So I enter France, and the rest of the address. It works I get to the far off place in France. I travel around a bit and eventualy I want to go home. Home is a presett destinaion and I can select it quickly or use the Voice Controll and say "Destination Home" Low and behold the GPS guides me home. The next day I want to go to some place in the UK The GPS remembers that the last time I entered an address it was a french address. So I have to manually change the country back to the UK. It's a GPS it knows where it is. Why doesn't it switch back to UK Automagicaly. That would be the logical thing to do.

2. You then enter the City/Town Street and House number. AS you enter these items it will do auto completion and when you are down to a choice of five Towns or streets presents you with a list to choose from even if there is only one item to show. If there is only one item "just use it" don't bother asking if thats what I want.