Pro tip to front-end developers, QA, and anyone who builds anything for public consumption: make sure your numbers match.
The instructions are pretty clear: list three professional references (please).
Everything after that falls apart.
- Though user’s directed to enter 3 references, the site only provides 2 forms.
- Though user’s instructed to enter professional references, the form allows user to indicate that a reference is personal.
- The silly validation on the form conflicts with the labels which clearly indicate only the Name field is required. I mean, with this many mistakes I wouldn’t be surprised if the form accepted a name only.
- There’s no way to add a third reference — just none. The screenshot above shows you the page in its entirety. And don’t let that Previous Step button fool you! Hit it and you’ll step backwards, losing anything entered on the page.
So, what’s the user’s desired action here? Should she…
A) Copy/paste the code, add an additional reference form, fix the validation, post it to github, and enter the third reference there?
B) Spend a few minutes staring at the page, scrolling up and down, trying to figure out how to somehow add a third reference, before shrugging and clicking the Next Step button? Thus disregarding the instructions and instead doing what the site forces her to do.
C) Cleverly cram TWO references into the form for just one? Maybe combine first name and phone number of Ref A, the last name and email address of Ref B, and enter the sum of the total number of years she’s known the two of them?
D) Sigh and close the window, knowing that any form this sloppy will absolutely not reward completion in any way?