Comments on: UIEtips: Account Sign-in – 8 Design Mistakes to Avoid

By: Bryan Owens

Bryan Owens — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:53:01 +0000

Lately I’ve been dealing with corporate career sites that require registrations for job submissions.

There’s nothing worse than filling out a lengthy registration form, including resume, cover letter, etc. — only to have it tell me on submission that my email address has already been used, presumably from an earlier application months or years earlier.

Easily solved by using inline validation of the email address as the first form field, along with the option of logging in using an existing account.

Believe it or not, I’ve actually seen some job-specific submission forms without an existing-account login option, which requires hunting around the site to find it, following by searching for the position again after login…[sigh]

By: Tim Dowd

Tim Dowd — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:57:24 +0000

Before validation, hints as to format are so helpful, such as dashes in a phone # or not. In fact, why doesn’t the app parse instead of making the user do it? Separate fields for phone # parts are nice but some auto-tab to the next field while others don’t and some forms auto-tab on some fields and not others…why? Some forms just validate to the first error, why not validate all fields and give feedback, rahter than user trial and error? After validation, hints as to what fields are bad and why are helpful, especially near the offending field.

By: Jon Kranz

Jon Kranz — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:49:22 +0000

Good form design is not only pleasant, it’s effective! But how do you balance good validation messages without sacrificing security against fraud or hacks (both of which are big problems we manage at my company)?
Some validation messages may be good for users but can also help fraudsters or hackers. Captcha codes aren’t enough. So what’s a good way to go?

By: Grant Novey

Grant Novey — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:57:18 +0000

If you’ve ever forgot to fill out required field(s) in a form and then submitted it you should see some type of error telling you so. When I see forms using Javascript alert boxes telling the end-user what they forgot to fill out, it really annoys me. I’ve seen forms move to using Ajax to inject the error messages directly onto the page instead of using an annoying alert box. Some web forms that I’ve filled out use live validation giving the end-user immediate feedback before they click submit. This I like!

By: Michael Ramlal

Michael Ramlal — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:57:33 +0000

content thats erased out of a field after a validation warning thats anoying!

By: Samantha LeVan

Samantha LeVan — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:31:55 +0000

My pet peeve is unnecessarily long signup forms. If there’s not enough incentive to continue, customers will back out before completing the process. There’s little need for endless pages of signup fields. Focus on the priority items and let the rest be optional – later.

By: Margaret

Margaret — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:42:24 +0000

Another mistake I find very anoying is not to clarly indicate which fields are mandatory or even worse, make all the fields mandatory.