Missing Features

Joel on Software is the well-written blog of Joel Spolsky, CEO of FogCreek software. They make FogBugz and CoPliot, two outstanding software programs. Indeed, FogCreek is the only software developer with two products on your correspondent’s great list of software.

While FogCreek makes great software, the organization is still susceptible to the occasional usability gaffe. (Huh? Camel case shouldn’t be used in a URL.)

But the worst oversight is the search page for the “US/Canada” region on the job boards at joelonsoftware.com. Take a look. Can you spot the bad design decision?

Instead of three fields for location you actually only need one. Why do zip code and city have to be different boxes? Why do you need a drop down for state? Using the drop-down for state actually takes more time than typing in “CA” or “California”.

Here is what you need: One field where you can enter in a zip code, a city, a state, or a city, state. For state you can even enter in a state abbreviation of a full state name. Actually, you could even enter in a short part of a state name.

Put the Burden on the Programmer, Not the Customer

Why didn’t they do this? Probably a lazy programmer. You mean I have to write a regexp to detect zip code entries? Meh. I haven’t done regexp’s since college, so I’ll just create three form fields. (Well, you don’t really need a regexp.)

Once you have this new US/Canada box working well, the programmer can take the model a step further and do away with the needless six-category tab structure on the jobs search screen and just have one little filter/search box that appears on every page, letting the user adjust the search criteria accordingly to get the job listing they want.

Remember: One lazy programmer can impact the experience of every visit to your page for every single customer.

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