Comfort of Bloated Web
susam.net
susam.net
* The text doesn't get cleared from the comment box after the comment is sent
* The submit button has no visual affordances to indicate whether it is valid. It looks exactly the same when the form is populated or empty. A conventional UI approach would inactivate the submit button until all the fields are filled.
So despite the message that the comment has been posted, it doesn't appear as if the state has changed as a result of pushing the button.
I think clearing the comment box and inactivating the submit button (which doesn't appear to be a native OS UI element) after submission would help users understand that the state has changed. Alternatively, I think displaying the acknowledgement message on a new page with no submission form would achieve something similar. It could even have a "post another comment" link back to an empty comment page.
This is exactly what nearly every other form I've used in the past does. I didn't try this one but it sounds like it redirects back to the form again? If so, I can definitely see double/triple-posting happening.
I know some forums will actually compare contents with the last post you made, and show a warning message "You already submitted this post".
I recall a blog post about TurboTax or some other tax software. The part where it says "checking your returns" -- if it takes longer, people view it as having "done something".
You can probably check a tax return, which is really about 100 numbers, or maybe 10,000, in less than a millisecond. But it's better if takes like 10 seconds.
Someone might know what I'm talking about and have a link ...
I do think it's partially the latency, but the UI concerns you pointed out are probably more important in this case.
Users have been trained by years of experience that errors are often immediate, while real 'work' takes a little while to happen. From that POV the conclusion is correct - adding an artificial delay is the common solution, though it can also be handled by other forms of feedback.
In this case, the success message is appended after the form. A few tweaks that could help:
- make the fields become read-only after submission
- hide the submit button after success
- replace the whole form with the success message
These would help both to eliminate confusion, without the introduction of artificial delay, and to prevent double submission.
I don't mean it bad, it's very hard to deep digger when people literally identify the thing you assume the issue is. It's why in usability/UX/any design it's so important to dig deeper, ask "why" a bunch of times, play the devils advocate, try to proof yourself wrong, and never ever take any sort of feedback at face value.
It's what I like about usability/design, you can assume a bunch of things based on all sorts of seemingly quality information, make a coherent plausible argument, and still be incredibly wrong. It can be very humbling. This case might be pretty basic, but this is a very common pitfall. It's why testing and validating your assumptions is so essential.
I have not tried the form (don't want to spam), but the fact that people are able to submit the same comment twice is probably a good place to start. Fixing that with some improved feedback will likely go a long way.
This applies to any user feedback, not just UX... faster horses and all that. Most users do not introspect enough to figure out the core of the issue they are experiencing - if we do our job well, we do not merely empathise, but go on to dig deeper than they are capable of.
e.g. on hackernews comments are submitted fairly quickly, and I find myself reloading very often to check if the comment really has been placed.
The users click the button, get told it worked, but their comment is not visible to them. The fact they can't see it is why they suspect a problem I think.
A UX improvement might be to update the success page to show their message back to them with a prominent "Pending review" message very close and very obvious next to their message.
If my comments (posted to the site before coming back to see the HN discussion) are reviewed and pass muster to be posted, they’ll reflect these thoughts as well.
This is really obvious.
It seems most form builders either have the form clearing behavior by default, or redirect to a new page. The person creating the form never even has to think about it that much.
It's obvious to anyone who routinely submits forms online...
I don’t think the problem is the speed. More likely the UX.
I submitted a form. Don’t show me the form again upon success. I am trained to think that I have to input everything again.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3061519/the-ux-secret-that-will-...
http://www.cond.org/deception.pdf
https://90percentofeverything.com/2010/12/16/adding-delays-t...
Double-clicking on a lot of sites will submit the form twice. If people are waiting, they will click again, and again.
My expectation was that this was going to be a case where users were trained to double click, and they were triggering multiple requests that way. Of course the solution to that is to prevent the second click before it happens, and visually indicate that the button was clicked. The same approach applies here. Users expect to see state change when they perform actions.
Also, I suspect some of the delay in handwritten stuff is important processing like antispam checks.
CPU and network efficiency are wonderful things. But if a lightweight solution can't provide the same level of features and convenience as a modern package, I would toss it without a second thought.
My original personal site was handmade HTML with a PHP header. I eventually got rid of it for DokuWiki and never looked back.
If it was a pro site, I think I would just use WordPress.
It is an impressively high performance site you have though!