Trapped in the UI: My Frustrating Journey Through User Inyerface
Reading through Sourabh’s post on his frustrating journey forced me to relive my own experience with User Inyerface a few weeks ago, and I have to admit, it brought back a visceral feeling of frustration that I felt at the time. What was interesting is where our individual frustrations with the game overlapped and where they differed. There were UI experiences that we both tripped up on, namely the ‘locked’ screen that forced a re-start, as well as the slew of obstructions that made the process time consuming and irritating. One thing I didn’t consider until reading his post was just how much psychological obstructions were in there.
The ticking clock is the most obvious one. Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter whether you finish the game in five minutes or fifteen, however the alarming presence of the clock played on both of us, forcing us to feel an unnecessary pressure to move faster and faster despite the hindrances. As an educator, I have seen some students who, when completing an exam or timed assignment, fall to this pressure. I have seen students, who are otherwise capable and prepared, completely lose their ability to function. Some have even had panic attacks – an extreme physiological response to authentic danger, when faced with a time exam. (This is one of the reasons I moved on from high stakes, timed tests in my own practice).
One interesting diversion between Sourabh’s experience and mine was around the password. I’ll be honest, when I read the password criteria list that Sourabh references, I made the assumption that I wouldn’t need to meet all of the password’s requirements. The fifth requirement, (…at least 1 cyrillic character), made it seem to me that this was an impossible criteria, so I mashed the keyboard for my password, (something like vfiedhfhoejoiwfj), and it seemed to work since I was able to get past that step without further delay. I wonder if Sourabh or others knew of a keyboard shortcut that I don’t, and managed to insert a Cyrilic character before they moved on? This would be, (another), a deceptive practice – forcing the user to complete a criteria that, in the end, was irrelevant to the task.