Common Sense in Technology Design & Implementation

Wow, what an incredible change/upgrade of the user interface. I am talking about the MS Office 200o suite. It begs a question - why? And, where's the simplicity that MS is so famous for.

Isn't this a big risk? The first reaction that I have seen is people being put off, including me. I never had that reaction to any radical design change to any product, but this time it just lost me. It's a struggle to find functionality, that I so used to finding it all in one view.

Is it wrong? No! But, is it exaperating? Yes!!!

This is one of the most respected and profitable airlines, no doubt. But where's the QA?

The image on the right hand side shows the login screen for Southwest Airlines. This has a checkbox that says, "Remember my account number for future login". Have you ever noticed that it actually never does remember it? What's up with that? It's probably the easiest test to automate.

This also happens to be irritating. Had it not been there I would have been OK. Since, it is there, I now actually want it to work, everytime.

Look at the service unavailability message on the right hand side.
This message is, in gist, telling the user to try later as the service is available only during certain hours.

Where are those hours listed? What time do you open?
And, this is an eCheque service, which allows the user to write electronics checks to users from other banks. Why can't this service be asynchronous?

Not to mention that it is one of the leading banks of India, ICICI

This is probably one of the most ridiculous error messages that I have ever seen on a prominent web page/portal. Recently, I was trying to register myself as a MySpace.com user and wasn't able to because I entered my birthday in the year 1910.

First of all, shouldn't the site allow a 97 year old to become a MySpace member? And most important of all, if there's an option to display and select the year 1910, you better allow it, or else don't display it. Isn't this obvious to the users? And, what makes my birthday real? The message displayed should be more sensible.