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Usability Hall of Shame

Twelve broken interfaces, each failing one design principle from Don Norman or Jakob Nielsen. Try each task in the broken version, see what it cost you, then try the fixed version. Every failure here has a real counterpart in clinical software.

How it works. Each exhibit counts your clicks, errors and time. If you're stuck, Show me the fix skips ahead. The ugly gray boxes are the point: they imitate legacy software on purpose. The rest of the page is meant to be easy to use.
Completed 0/12 Clicks 0 Errors 0

Your scorecard

Finish some exhibits to see how the broken and fixed versions compare.

The vocabulary

Slips vs. mistakes (Norman). A slip is the right intention carried out wrong: clicking the button next to the one you meant. A mistake is the wrong intention: choosing IV push because you misunderstood the code. Slips are fixed with layout, spacing, constraints and undo; mistakes with clearer language and better conceptual models.

The two gulfs (Norman). The gulf of execution is the distance between what you want and knowing how to make the system do it (the door, the stove, the nine-level menu). The gulf of evaluation is the distance between what the system did and your ability to tell (the silent Sign button, the cryptic error). Good design bridges both: visible options going in, clear feedback coming out.

Blame the design, not the user. When many smart people make the same error, it's a design problem. In medicine that's the difference between "the resident ordered the wrong dose" and "the order screen made that dose easy to enter".

Sources

  1. Nielsen J. 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. Nielsen Norman Group, 1994 (updated 2020). Builds on Nielsen J, Molich R. Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces. Proc CHI 1990:249–56.
  2. Norman DA. The Design of Everyday Things, revised and expanded ed. Basic Books, 2013.
  3. Hill RG Jr, Sears LM, Melanson SW. 4000 clicks: a productivity analysis of electronic medical records in a community hospital ED. Am J Emerg Med 2013;31:1591–4.
  4. van der Sijs H, Aarts J, Vulto A, Berg M. Overriding of drug safety alerts in computerized physician order entry. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2006;13:138–47.
  5. Institute for Safe Medication Practices. List of Error-Prone Abbreviations, Symbols, and Dose Designations.

Explanations are paraphrased; the heuristic names follow Nielsen's list. Clinical examples are generic and don't describe any specific vendor.