Xarg blog Archive

There was a New York Times article about the new web mail form sequence instituted at www.whitehouse.gov. It takes 9 clicks to go from the from page to actually sending the message. You have to state up front if you are writing a "supporting comment" or a "differing opinion" and it forces you to choose a subject from an absurd list. For example, under Legal/Judicial you have "Pledge of Allegiance" and "Pornography" but not "Judicial Appointments" or "Civil Rights" (even more entertaining is what you get if you turn off javascript, in that case your selections for "Legal/Judicial" are limited to "Campaign Finance Reform", "Pledge of Allegiance", "Racial Profiling", and "Tort Reform"). Furthermore, you are required to enter an address but there is no provision for an address outside the US. Poorly thought out and offensively bad web design.

I don't believe the black helicopters will be swooping down and I think most of what is wrong with the webmail form has less to do with intent (other than the intent to limit the mail received by the whitehouse) than with sloppy programming and a poorly thought out UI but that it went live at all in it's current state is ridiculous. I am not so naive as to hope to find inspired and creative uses of the internet by the executive branch but I would hope for a sort of plodding competence (well, EDGAR is cool and I think was innovative at the time but that's about it).

Bush better watch out because pretty soon both Paul Krugman and Jakob Nielsen will be after him and then he will be in trouble.