'Bad Verb': A bad user interface in action

So there I am, dutifully filling out a survey about our new my.super-duper-security-group.org bulletin board system when I finish the last question and click on the SUBMIT button.

WHAM!

A single-line error message appears: "BAD VERB" it says, all by itself on the screen. No other information. No helpful guidance of the sort we teach our students to insert in error messages (“Always make error messages interpretable to the user. They don’t know or care what the internal error codes are, so tell them what to DO.”)

Nope. Just “BAD VERB” sitting in solitary splendor at the top of an otherwise empty page.

Muttering a few bad verbs of my own, I take a PDF printout of my survey responses, append a PDF printout of the error message and send the file to the support group with a note explaining what happened.

Later that day, I get the following e-mail:

“I’m the survey administrator and I got your message from the support group. You got the error message because you did not answer questions 8, 9 and 10, even though they are marked as required fields by the asterisk after the question.”

Well, I take a look at those questions, and here’s what I write back to the charming person and others.

* * *

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you very much for providing such a good example of flawed user interface. I am copying my colleagues in the computer sciences group so they can illustrate their undergraduate lectures on Web design by pointing to your survey.

Question 8: "Is there a particular site, page or set of documents that are hard to find?" If you really insist on making this a required field, change the text to read, "Identify at least one particular site, page or set of documents that are hard to find – we cannot believe that you would actually want to leave this blank as a response. Or, if you want to be really difficult, write any of the words NO, NIET, NON, NICHTS or UGRONYDSKY in the space below."

Question 9: "What are your top five favorite things about my.super-duper-security-group.org?" Using the same reasoning – that you have made this a required field for no perceptible reason – I suggest that you alter the question to read, "What are your top five favorite things about my.super-duper-security-group.org? If none come to mind, insert any five favorite things about sourdough, ball bearings or tardigrades."

Question 10: "Do you have five things that aren't doing it for you on my.super-duper-security-group.org?"

Oh now really. The answer space is infinite. How about:

1) Providing the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything (thought to be 42, according to some experts).

2) Solving the problem of world peace or alternatively, of whirled peas.

3) Finding the largest prime number or demonstrating that there is no largest prime.

4) Explaining why my computer works perfectly as soon as a technical support staffer arrives – but no earlier – to fix the problem I reported 20 minutes ago.

5) Offering questionnaires that correctly distinguish between required answers and optional answers.

M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP, specializes in security and operations management consulting services and teaching. He is Chief Technical Officer of Adaptive Cyber Security Instruments, Inc. and Associate Professor of Information Assurance in the School of Business and Management at Norwich University. Visit his Web site for white papers and course materials.