Ignore The Following Fields
Two weeks ago I stayed at the Sheraton Wall Centre for a few days. I made liberal use of their Internet access (priced at about CAN $12 a day, which is a deal at a four-star hotel). As usual, to sign up for their service, you had to complete an online form that popped up when you opened your browser. Here’s what it looked like (as always, click for a larger version):
Hilariously, the bottom half of the form is labeled “Ignore the Following Fields and Click Submit”. Then there are three fields, each labeled ‘Ignore This Field’.
Obviously this is a UI disaster. I’m sure there’s some peculiar explanation why the developer could edit field labels but not actually the form itself, but that’s not really satisfactory, is it?
There are actually two separate design disasters here. The less obvious one is the use of the software design term ‘field’. I don’t think the average hotel internet user understands that those blank areas are called ‘fields’. Most people just call them ‘boxes’.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I wonder if those fields were for internal use only but their form can’t exclude columns?
March 27th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I also snagged a screenshot of this hilarity. Particularly funny since otherwise the hotel has such attention to detail - clearly a case of the outsourcing firm not matching the user experience of an otherwise outstanding location.
As an example of the user experience of the hotel: they have a nifty weather report hooked in to the mirrors (so words like sunny or, more often, cloudy light up to let you know what the weather is) - nice ambient information. (I believe I was in the North Tower where I saw this.)
@Karen - if I recall correctly, the fields to be ignored are on the second page of the sign-up form and just carry over values from the previous page - usually one would use hidden fields, not in this case.
Ironic that the fields that were supposed to be ignored actually cause us to stop and talk about them.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Jeffrey: You’re dead right on the user experience–the hotel was otherwise really good. I dug that weather info display. I particularly liked that it could show multiple states (like both ‘cloudy’ and ‘windy).
March 27th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
The biggest thing that bugged me was paying for net access in such a nice hotel. :)
March 27th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
David: Oddly but predictably, there’s an inverse relationship between the poshness of a hotel and the amount they charge for internet access.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Maybe the developer forgot to REM.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:03 am
I’ve seen this sort of thing before. It has to do with nomenclature and configuration. The hotel probably doesn’t have any devs on staff but they can still alter the labels in their app through some sort of config mechanism that the app came with.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I guess they don’t have any of their $12/day budget to spend on improving the form.
By the way, the AirPort Express or similar portable Wi-Fi base stations are great ways to share pricey connections like this among several friends staying in adjacent rooms.
Alas, when my wife was in Las Vegas, the hotel only had for-pay Wi-Fi (i.e. no plug-in Internet). You can still share that if you have a Mac by plugging in other computers with an Ethernet cable, but that’s not so much fun.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Yes , Ironic that the fields that were supposed to be ignored actually cause us to stop and talk about them.
March 29th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I agree with David - and that’s interesting about the inverse relationship…
Both my recent hotel stays were middle-of-the-road, with free internet.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:18 am
Uh, don’t you mean a direct relationship?
Expensive hotel = pricey internet?