Bonehead sites/user interfaces

I'll go first.

Went to update our car insurance, having sold one and buying another. Because one car will be used most of the time, the other will see far less.

User Interface: How many miles do you expect to drive this car per year?

Me: 2,000 miles

User Interface: Unacceptable - must be more than 2,500.

Me: 2,500 miles

User Interface: Unacceptable - must be more than 2,500.

Me: 2,501

User Interface: Accepted.

So someone who drives 15,000 miles a year, buys a new car for commuting 13,000 miles a year, leaving 2,000 for the first car, just isn't possible. It's funny: "You asked me how much I drive. I answered, and you said 'unacceptable.' " Got it.

In reply to kb58 :

Kind of surprised they don't just use a dropdown box with ranges, since it's obviously that the actuaries don't have rate determinations that granular. 

Google has a lot of infuriating little things, like the people who programmed their little dropdowns either had never heard of the concept of "Other", or a manager somewhere up the chain had "Other" eliminated so they could have all help assists done by computer programs instead of people.

I was trying to return an item to Amazon through their phone AI. At one point, it said "Describe in one word the item you're returning." Given that my last few purchases were all "bags", I had no choice but to reply with "bags." The answer, "I do not those recent purchases."

Car-part.com has the silliest method ever of picking what car you have. Instead of Year>Make>Model they do Year>Make and Model.

It's not so much the fault of the programmer who drafted the interface, but his boss who reviewed the work and passed it on as "good to go."

buzzboy said:

Car-part.com has the silliest method ever of picking what car you have. Instead of Year>Make>Model they do Year>Make and Model.

Start using their mobile site. Its a huge improvement.

https://www.car-part.com/mobile/index.htm

In reply to buzzboy :

Use it on your cell phone instead

I like the car-part desktop interface better because you can type, say, "maz" really quickly and the dropdown will jump to Mazda, "tra" and jump to transmission, etc.  Can't do that with the mobile interface, have to scroll and select and scroll.

The title of this thread could be used to describe any internal site for the company I work for.

As a contrast, check out mcmaster.com. Their site should serve as an example of what websites should be and can be. It's very impressive.

kb58 said:

As a contrast, check out mcmaster.com. Their site should serve as an example of what websites should be and can be. It's very impressive.

For catalogs like this, Rockauto is actually excellent also.  Love that I can just type in a car and avoid all the scrolling through menus bullE36 M3 if I want.  Also I can bookmark that.

Its too bad most of the parts they sell are garbage :(

And because somebody has to say it:  this text box I am typing in right now is one of the worst user interfaces around.  Especially when dealing with nested quotes.  Holy hell its bad. [QUOTE] [/QUOTE] is so much easier to deal with.

kb58 said:

It's not so much the fault of the programmer who drafted the interface, but his boss who reviewed the work and passed it on as "good to go."

And it's not even the devs, it's the UX designers. They have been able to over rule something that has been standard in tech writing for decades because it's "confusing."

So going forward in our new product, we will be using sentence case for titles as opposed to, wait for it, Title Case.

How they think changing something that has been the standard for decades is not confusing vs sticking with the standard. I have no berkeleying idea.

Home Depot. I have never searched for anything without vowing to never use it again. 6 months later, I forget my seething hatred and attempt to using it again. Rinse and repeat.

The Home Depot app for your phone - grrr. I walk into the middle of many HDs and can't find what I want. I pull out my phone to open their app and there is no cell coverage. I then have to walk back out the front door to connect, or ask someone on the way there, which is probably not how they envisioned the system. I haven't decided whether this is their fault or not.

kb58 said:

The Home Depot app for your phone - grrr. I walk into the middle of many HDs and can't find what I want. I pull out my phone to open their app and there is no cell coverage. I then have to walk back out the front door to connect, or ask someone on the way there, which is probably not how they envisioned the system. I haven't decided whether this is their fault or not.

I swear they have cell phone jammers in there.

But they do have the product locations and store maps which I've been complaing about for what seems like decades. I wish grocery stores had a map like that.

Most HR sites like Workday, IMO, have some of the worst user interfaces. It's infuriating when you're applying for a job and not only do you have to upload a resume, then fill out your job/education/skills/certification to be redundant, you're then subjected to choosing from a pre-set list of skills or majors or job titles instead of just manually typing in what it is that reflects your background. 

I applaud companies that simply ask for contact info and a resume when applying for a job. 

Oh and any VA website is inherently a miserable experience. 

Whoever designs/updates the Motortrend on Demand Roku app should be took out back and beat.  Twice.  

I always start yelling at Amazon when using their in-TV Prime menu. If theirs was the only channel I subscribed to, I'd think that there was something wrong with my remote. No, they just have it set up so dumb that my poor wife has to listen to my rants. My favorite feature is the down arrow displayed at the bottom of the main menu, you know, for when you want to scroll down. Nope, you move your cursor towards it and it disappears before you reach it. Using the remote's wheel to try and scroll down does nothing. If you click on any of the movies or shows displayed on the main screen, it only takes you to the featured show shown at the top of the screen, regardless where you click. Meanwhile, Disney, HBO, and Apple channels operate exactly how you'd expect.

Thanks, I feel better now.

kb58 said:

The Home Depot app for your phone - grrr. I walk into the middle of many HDs and can't find what I want. I pull out my phone to open their app and there is no cell coverage. I then have to walk back out the front door to connect, or ask someone on the way there, which is probably not how they envisioned the system. I haven't decided whether this is their fault or not.

I typically walk in and just immediately ask an employee, "I'm looking for X, what aisle is it in?"

Not trying to waste a bunch of time trying to use an app or aimlessly walk around.

z31maniac said:

kb58 said:

The Home Depot app for your phone - grrr. I walk into the middle of many HDs and can't find what I want. I pull out my phone to open their app and there is no cell coverage. I then have to walk back out the front door to connect, or ask someone on the way there, which is probably not how they envisioned the system. I haven't decided whether this is their fault or not.

I typically walk in and just immediately ask an employee, "I'm looking for X, what aisle is it in?"

Not trying to waste a bunch of time trying to use an app or aimlessly walk around.

Its great when that employee then opens up the app you were trying to avoid and begins searching.

ProDarwin said:

z31maniac said:

kb58 said:

The Home Depot app for your phone - grrr. I walk into the middle of many HDs and can't find what I want. I pull out my phone to open their app and there is no cell coverage. I then have to walk back out the front door to connect, or ask someone on the way there, which is probably not how they envisioned the system. I haven't decided whether this is their fault or not.

I typically walk in and just immediately ask an employee, "I'm looking for X, what aisle is it in?"

Not trying to waste a bunch of time trying to use an app or aimlessly walk around.

Its great when that employee then opens up the app you were trying to avoid and begins searching.

That would be pretty damn funny! I've never had that happen before, then again I don't visit Home Depot or Lowe's very often. I think I've been to both of them combined maybe 4 times in the last 2 years. 

Pretty much every auto parts website save for the RockAuto and Summit websites tempt me to toss my laptop into the ocean. The Advance Auto parts site is especially bad. It used to be good, but they updated it a couple years back to make it extra slow and frustrating to match the same experience you get in person at the stores. Thanks, I hate it. 

Honorable mention for weirdness: Jegs. I was on there last summer looking for something when I was swapping the engine into my truck, and I was running into broken code-type issues. It was glitching out like a NES game with a dirty cartridge in it. I really should have taken some screen shots; it was bizarre! 

In reply to Tony Sestito :

Did blowing Jeg Coughlan help?