Enrollment To Do List: A Case Study in Awful Page Design

This is the page you'll get to some time after your eligibility is done. Behold it in its glorious horror.

I mentioned the issue with the page in a previous post, but this post will focus on this page.

First, there is an orange bar telling me I have some outstanding issue. It provides a link. Here is the page that appears when I click that link:

I redacted some gobblety-gook just in case it contains information that might allow a hacker to get into my account. I left enough to show how ugly it is, though.

So, back the the Enroll To Do list.

There are 4 steps. You can see that I completed the first step because it has a check and a button that would allow me to change my answers. All this step did for me was ask if I smoke.

The last 2 steps are locked because you can only work on one step at a time.

My complaint with this screen is how you perform the next step. On most of the web site, the mouse pointer is the little arrow. When you mouse over a button, like the button shown which says "CHANGE", the mouse pointer turns into a little hand with an extended index finger. It also turns into the hand with the index finger when you mouse over a clickable link, such as the Application Details link or the Explain this task links shown above.

Now, on the right of the step, there is a green area with the word SET. When you mouse over SET, it just turns into the cursor which would appear if you wanted to select text for copying. It's just the plain arrow in the green area. Nothing indicates that this is an area where you can click to make something happen.

But, that's exactly what it is. It's a clickable area. It's not a button. It's not a link. And the word "SET" is near meaningless.

This is just one poorly designed page. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in the cubicle of the designer trying to explain this design to their peers and superiors.