Notebook

Holly Jolly Websites!

6 Dec 2010 at 8 AM

Tis the season for red and green! Unfortunately, poor use of the season's colors on a website caused the complete failure of a very simple form.

ScoreCard Rewards is a basic credit card point redemption service associated with my bank's debit card. I rarely use my debit card, therefore, I rarely redeem points on the site.

The ScoreCard website requires that I periodically change my password. Strangely, policy is more restrictive than the one for the bank associated with the card! Since I rarely login to the site, I end up changing my password on each access. That process needs some work.

The site's password reset form is shown below:

Standard form - enter username and last 8 digits of credit card

Filling out the form was straight forward. I knew my user name from an e-mail and the digits are printed on my card. Where I failed was in clicking the correct button.

Reset Password Form

Below the form are two buttons, the first is green, the second is red. Form design tells us that the first button should move you forward in the process. Color context in the United States says that green means go! So, I clicked the green button. To my surprise, I was returned to the previous page. I waited for a bit to see if an e-mail appeared. When it didn't I revisited the form.

Turns out that the green button is the "Return" button, e.g. Cancel. The red button, below it, is the correct choice.

Not impossible to figure out, but frustrating nonetheless. All the indications except for the text point toward the first button being the one to go with. So, how do we fix it?

Remove the "Return" button, we don't need it. Our browser has a back button. That change alone would prevent all problems, but to reinforce the process change the red button to green.

The colors of Christmas don't limit their confusion to websites. At a recent trip to a local grocery I ran across a slight usability issue while checking out.

I had rung up some groceries at the self-checkout, opting to pay with my credit card. The point of sale device asked me to confirm the amount and followed up with the question, "Would You Like Cash Back?"

Checkout process