Tuesday, June 17, 2008

How many ways are there to pay?

I debated posting this dumb UI example, maybe this is a case where I’m the dumb one and not the UI.


I went to the EA Store to buy the teaser app for the forthcoming game Spore. (Which is totally awesome BTW) The checkout page had this section to fill out for the payment:

CropperCapture[20]

I entered my credit card info and then looked at the set of options, ClickandBuy and PayPal. I had no idea what ClickandBuy is. I know what PayPal is and I know that wasn’t how I was going to pay so ClickandBuy must be a fancy name for their payment system. I pick ClickandBuy and continue.


I get an order confirmation page, I confirmed and then got a ClickandBuy page asking me for my credit card info. Huh? What the hell? I already entered my credit card info (actually twice, maybe I’ll blog about that also)!


At this point I realized what happened, ClickandBuy must be some kind of third party payment system and I shouldn't have selected it. I try to cancel the transaction but there is no god damn way to do so without contacting EA customer service. That transaction is now stuck at awaiting payment. Doesn’t even seem to be a way to continue with ClickandBuy if I wanted to.


I add the game to my cart again and checkout again and see the screen above and see where I went wrong. The Credit Card section has a radio button followed by a sizable gap then the remaining options. Come on! Can’t you indent the credit card details to make the radio option stand out some?


I can’t believe I’m the first person to make this mistake, I wonder how often it happens. So tell me, am I the dumb guy here? Is this UI perfectly valid and I just needed to pay attention more?

Posted by at 11:59 PM

2 comments:

  1. Well, personally I saw the radio button immediately, so I wouldn’t have made the mistake, but if I had been the UI developer, I absolutely, definitely, certainly would have indented it as you suggested. Even if just for purely aesthetic reasons.
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  2. While going through the process of posting the above comment, I was presented with a CAPTCHA. Next to the text box where I’m supposed to type the answer to the challenge, there is a wheelchair symbol. Am I the only person who gets really annoyed by this? First of all, if it’s a command button, shouldn’t it at least look like a button? But more importantly, what difference does it make whether I’m in a wheelchair? Surely the function is intended for *visually impaired* people and has nothing to do with wheelchairs...? (Lastly, I clicked the thing just to see what it does, and it prompts me to install an Apple Quicktime plugin!)
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