Usability Hell

Transport for London - who have a pretty good website, do one thing so brainless, so webtarded that it must be the work of a person who can only exist in the public sector (because any profit making business they work for goes bust rapidly).

The type of brain dead fool that is ‘promoted out of the way’ by their dumb ass boss so they’re no longer their problem.

I’d imagine this is how the meeting went between a Web Developer & said Upper Management COCK:

UMC: What are we doing about security, my daughter’s Windows 95 PC got a virus trojan when she was 12 15 years ago.

WD: Passwords must be 8 characters.

UMC: If we make the user enter 1 capital letter, 1 lower case letter and 1 number will that make the password harder for a script kiddy to guess?

WD: Theoretically yes, though surely you can see why that is in the top 5 dumbest things I’ve heard in my 32 years on this planet, including stuff Sarah Palin says.

UMC: Oh so you don’t like security?

WD: You’re right, I’m wrong. Why don’t we also make them come in for a retina scan and send everyone USB retina scanning units who wants to use the site?

UMC: Right.

WD: Why stop there, lets require the password to be 20 characters long, and, here’s the good bit, scan it for words. If any memorable words in any language are in the password, say it is invalid because script kiddies could hack it.

UMC: I like this. We are using 128-bit encryption. I want to use 1000-bit encryption because more is better. I am a highly paid consultant, I once read a blog post about this on Geocities.

WD: Good idea. Why didn’t I think of that - a bigger number is better. You really should go and work for Google, they could use a person like you. What is your background out of interest?

UMC: I started as one of those TFL ticket guys who used to be needed to let people with bent paper tickets through barriers, but now isn’t due to Oyster so just stands around getting pissed off they are going to be made redundant as they have nothing useful to do now.

WD: I’m seeing a pattern.

How can NO ONE at TFL realise this is F****** STUPID???

I can’t think of a SINGLE other website I’ve EVER used that needs capitals & numbers. Even my bank doesn’t!

I just went to signup for a Barclays bike key - same sh!t.

Having to remember upper & lower case letters and numbers is inherently difficult. Usability testing would surely have exposed this.

TFL: WTF?!