How Not To Do a Web Form – Air France
I wanted to do something very simple, considering it’s the last year of the first decade of the 3rd millennium (Gregorian calendar, of course). Namely, to check the status of an Air France flight from Miami to Paris Charles de Gaulle.
I typed airfrance<Ctrl+Enter> in the address bar, which brought me to airfrance.com, where I clicked “USA Site,” which in turn redirected me to airfrance.us. I don’t think this is the best way to do things, but that’s just a minor complaint. Another minor one: it doesn’t automatically redirect on subsequent visits (hint: set a cookie!).
I had this scanned itinerary to go on (ignore date, AF95 flies daily):
I got to the flight status page:
My first attempt was af95 (the fact that I’m counting attempts should give you an idea of what’s to come). I hit search, without crossing fingers:
No info! This is quite misleading. What exactly do you mean you have no information? Is it lost in your system, is it top secret, has the flight disappeared? If it’s bad input, be explicit and say “please check the flight number and ensure that you have not included dashes,” etc. This is a perfect time to include additional help, even though the user hasn’t specifically asked for it — I call it Just in Time Contextual Help™. Add things like “please don’t include letters such as AF in the input” if your developers are too lazy to filter it in code. Although really, they should — you want the user experience to be as seamless as possible. Especially when your target audience includes grandparents checking flight status!
But, the show must go on! Let’s try just 95:
No info again. Nice. Let’s try af095:
I wish I could say the 3rd time was a charm, however something seems to’ve been lost in translation. Attempt #3 was a non-starter, as the text input box only allows 4 characters.
I finally gave up and searched using “Departing from” / “Arriving in.” This hinted how to find it via flight number — it must be padded with a zero, as in 095. This is very, very bad and completely unacceptable in this day & age.
The icing on the cake? If you type something in the flight number box and hit tab, it deletes what you’ve inputted! That’s the result of an overzealous attempt to enforce strict rules while completely missing other use cases such as tabbing out to the submit button for those who prefer using the keyboard (hello, and goodbye, accessibility!).
This user experience takes me back to a time when web usability standards weren’t even an afterthought. Companies with an internet presence need to ensure their websites, today more than ever, accurately project their corporate image and vision. Due to the interactive nature of the web, usability is just as important as visual style.
