I might be one of the slowest to complete this game while frantically clicking everywhere on the page. I haven’t played a game which is this frustrating for a while. To be honest, I do like to play these kinds of games, not about an interface necessarily, but like solving mystery games which requires a slight brain twist. However, it almost feel like every single design of User Inyerface is meant to trick or frustrates me. It makes me think all the different ways we got trained about things like how to create a profile, where and what to click, what each button is usually used for, etc.
First of all, I had a lot of trouble getting into the game. Refreshed the page a couple times, and clicked everywhere on the page, including the green button “no” (which draws my immediate attention), the grey and tiny letters of “click here” and “go” (which is harder to see if the webpage designer put hidden messages there in this kind of colour). I still have no clue how I got in.
Later, I was stuck on the creating profile page for a while. It was annoying that I had to delete the letters in the text boxes before I was able to type my own information. The instructions for password were not given at the first place and I didn’t seem them until later as they were hidden on the bottom. The ticking clock and the 1,2,3,4 were very distractive as the main focus on the page. I feel pressured to try to fill it quickly, instead of carefully create a safe password. The clock also constantly locked the page and it took me a few tries to figure out how to unlock it. During the process, I even tried the unhelpful help feature and just ended up sending it to the bottom.
I went through the rest of the game pretty smoothly. I laughed when I saw the “unselect all” box near the end of the list when I was un-clicking every single box to delete the random items. Also, choosing the right image to verify that I was an actual human part was funny too. I sometimes struggle with this type of verification questions when I’m using other websites. My instruction was to choose the images with glasses, and I was given pictures of reading glasses, sunglasses, buildings made of glasses, glasses of wine, glasses of water, and empty glasses. The instruction was not precise and was misleading.
Although, I do like one feature of this game. Instead of scrolling right down to the bottom of the terms and conditions to click the “I agree” button, it forced me to slowly go down the information and I actually found myself reading more than half of it. Maybe this is how web page designers need to do for the other webpages.
This game showed how we got trained by filling out hundreds of these forms on the other websites and I got frustrated when none of that worked. It also makes me reflect that I need to be more cautious in the future when I use any sites. It indicates that why it is necessary and ethical for web designers to have clear instructions and information for web consumers to understand as it is so easy to be misleading.