You submit a form. An error flashes: “Invalid.” That’s it. Invalid what? Invalid how? Invalid because you used the wrong format, or invalid because the email is already taken, or invalid because the server had a seizure and forgot what an email even is? For all the user knows, the…
Before I Can Fill It, I Need to Know What You’re Asking There’s a form I encountered recently that had twelve fields. No labels. Just placeholder text inside each input that disappeared the moment you started typing. If you forgot what a field was asking for, you had to delete…
Trigger Warning & Note Before You Read This post discusses eating disorders, mental health, adverse medication reactions, and hospitalization. If you’re struggling, please reach out to a healthcare professional. You deserve support. Three months ago, I published “When Algorithms Forget You’re...
We’ve all been there. You fill out a form. You hit submit. Nothing happens. Maybe the border turns red. Maybe a little icon winks at you. Maybe your computer hums aggressively. But nobody tells you what went wrong. You stare at the screen. “Did it fail? Did it work? Am I…
Why Labels Need to Match Across Pages You’re at a party. Someone introduces themselves as “Michael.” You shake his hand, have a nice conversation, move on. Later that evening, you see him again across the room. You walk over and say, “Hey, Michael!” He looks at you blankly. “It’s...
You’re filling out your taxes. Your cursor lands in the first field. You start typing. And halfway through entering your email address—whoosh!—the form submits automatically. Now you’re looking at an error page because you didn’t finish. Or worse, you submitted incomplete data and lost what you...
If I had a podcast, I would tell you to close your eyes and imagine the following. But this is a blog post… You’re walking down a hallway, hand out, ready to turn a doorknob. Your hand lands on the knob… and suddenly the door slides open before you touch it. Or…
My last post was on 3.1.1 Language of the page. We talked about telling the screen reader the main language of the page. It’s like setting the thermostat for the whole house. But what if you have a guest room where the temperature needs to be different? Or a kitchen…
So, new research shows that a) LLM-type “AI” chatbots are extremely persuasive and able to get voters to shift their positions, and that b) the more effective they are at that, the less they hew to factual reality. Which: Yeah. A bunch of us told you this. Again: the Purpose of LLM- type “AI” is...