37signals > Design Not Found takes a look at what is a depressingly common error-- a form field has a required attribute that the user is not told about, until they've made their error.

it's back to the heuristics, kids-- here we've got a violation of "error prevention"

If more designers used heuristics to design with, usability specialists would get less use out of them in evaluation-- and users would have an easier time.

Oh, how I so agree. Always let the user know what they are about to experience. If there is a required field it should be labelled as such. If there the button submits information it should tell the user this, but if it will take the user to more form fields and not submit information the button should tell them this information. It is common courtesy.

I submitted the paypal thing to the 37 signals guys after getting that frustrating error. What really got me peeved, so much so that I took screenshots and tipped them off, was that the pre-set message given to you in the paypal interface is within a fairly sizable textarea, and that they preload it with a few sentences, almost filling the entire textarea. When I went to make a denial, I added two short sentences, and got the error, which told me nothing about how bad my error was, or how to fix it.

Bottom line: people like metrics on their behavior.

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