“But why can’t you just do it?” Because I recognise the importance of consistent UX and an IA that can actually be followed.
Just like developers, (proper) designers solve problems, an we need to stop asking them for faster bikes.
The answer should be "because users will hate it and use a competing product that's better designed".
A shame that it isn't actually true any more.
However, I really wonder how formula 1 teams manage their engineering concepts and driver UI/UX. They do some crazy experimental things, and they have high budgets, but they're often pulling off high-risk ideas on the very edge of feasibility. Every subtle iteration requires driver testing and feedback. I really wonder what processes they use to tie it all together. I suspect that they think about this quite diligently and dare I say even somewhat rigidly. I think it quite likely that the culture that led to the intense and detailed way they look at process for pit-stops and stuff carries over to the rest of their design processes, versioning, and iteration/testing.
Also, turnaround times from idea to final product can be insane at that level. These teams often have to accomplish in days what normally takes months. But they can pull it off by having every step of the design and manufacturing process in house.
Let's take a credit card form:
- Do I let the user copy and paste values in?
- Do I let them use IE6?
- Do I need to test for the user using an esotoric browser (Brave) with an esoteric password manager (KeePassXC)?
- Do I make it accessible for someone's OpenClaw bot to use it?
- Do I make it inaccessible to a nefarious actor who uses OpenClaw to use it?
I could go on...
Balancing accessibility and usability is hard.[0]
[0] Steve Yegge's platform rant - https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
The same applies to fields that expect telephone numbers. They should all accept arbitrary amounts of white-space.
If you don't allow me to paste a card number in I might well not buy from you.
- Anyone who recommends disabling paste as a security feature is a fraud
- Doing UA sniffing is always a mistake
- If the user's browser doesn't support `autocomplete="cc-number"` then they're already used to it not working, you don't need to care about it
- You should always make your form as accessible as possible regardless of if the user is a robot or visually impaired
- Making your website intentionally inaccessible may be a federal crime in the USA as the ADA doesn't care what you think about openclaw.