Chris Norström on ui, ux, design, ideas, and storytelling.

Windows does it when you’re entering your serial key right after installation, and online forms do it when you’re typing in your phone number, social security number, or zip code. Sometimes, online forms have multiple text boxes for numbers with multiple sets. Instead of the user manually tabbing or clicking over to the next text box to type, the developer can code up some “auto tabbing” JavaScript to move to the next text box automatically as you type in the numbers (Windows and Microsoft Office do this). Unfortunately, no one actually warns you when the form does this on its own. Many times users fill in the first set of numbers and hit the tab button manually only to find out the form tabbed over an extra time, resulting in them having to go back to the previous text box or accidentally filling in the wrong one. read…

Millions of people around the world, young and old, rich and poor, don’t know that they can move to the next text box in online forms by hitting the [TAB] key on their keyboard instead of moving their hand over to the mouse and clicking on the next text box. I made these as a reminder for these poor unfortunate souls. Just imagine all the time saved from filing out billions of logins and registration pages worldwide. read…

Take a look at this monstrosity I created about 2 years ago just for fun. I thought separating and color coding menu actions was a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, the reality is that at first glance the average user would shit themselves after seeing such a menu pop up after right clicking. Lets go through the reasons of why I thought this would work, and why in reality it would not. read…