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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

The requirements of the software to check specific boxes that are not obvious is going to make this incident part of some UI 101 classes.

This all screams that the feature was grafted unto an existing form and no one wanted to spend the time to update it or no one wanted to create a dialog and form dedicated to what they wanted to accomplish.

sadly, co opting existing forms and code isn't unique to Citi

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Even given the bad UI form, the error, and likely many others like it, could easily have been avoided by a more verbose confirmation. Rather than a simple warning, "money will be sent out of our accounts" a warning showing a brief synopsis of the totals and where they will be sent would be much more helpful.

The software isn't Citi-built though - it's Flexcube, which is an Oracle product. Still Citi's mistake (among multiple other mistakes along the way) for not a) throwing their weight around and demanding new features or b) building something in-house.

A situation like this can arise without new features, whether grafted onto an existing form or not. All it takes is a use case for which the system was not designed (which seems quite likely here), but which can just about be accomplished by abusing the purpose of the existing system.

One software-independent thing Citi could have done that might have reduced the risk of procedures like this would have been a rule that the reviewers must reconvene, and all concur, before proceeding past a warning.

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