BAD UX

I am somewhat of a connoisseur of bad user experiences and I seem to find them often. I am not sure if it is because I have built UI/UX for so long that I know what they look like? They are always staring me in the face. It isn’t like I go looking for trouble, but it ends up finding me anyway.

In this installment, a company I won’t name MUST verify my identity every time I visit the site, even though they promise that I won’t have to but every 30 days. I’m the same device and browser, but that doesn’t matter either. When I try to verify myself via an email link that lasts only 10 minutes, it never arrives. Upon chatting with support, they tell me that it is MY EMAIL’s problem for being too slow. Now, that very well may be, but without a way to change my email, I have no options. They must DELETE my user account, because their 2FA “feature” is dependent on email being instantaneous.

Well, sure it SHOULD be fine MOST of the time. That’s my issue. It is faulty logic. you should NEVER base your SECURITY system on something that uncertain. I’ve tried the txt (SMS) method but of course the page won’t save that preference. Just another web dev team that refuses to think things through or write good code. UX never goes far enough. When you don’t think things through, you CREATE more issues for people than solve them.

Just because you decided that 10 minutes is a good amount of time for ALL email systems to process through, doesn’t mean you’re right. It is highly arbitrary and locks me out all the time. BAD!

It would be much better to use ACTUAL 2FA systems like everyone else. It is at least somewhat secure and WORKS. It is amazing how often things don’t work and I don’t just mean the ancillary parts but the main thing that makes things happen. If that isn’t working for people, you’ve done it all wrong. I guess people bad at UX still get paid and it is “good enough” for them, obviously, but I care about the user in a much deeper way. I want them NOT to notice my work because they get in, get out, and get on with life without the friction of a bad website. If I could hunt down bad UX like a Blade Runner I would.