Citibank Secure Login and Payment Facility

This is Citibank’s login page.
For the sake of security, Citibank thought it was a better idea to click on a keypad rather than the good old style of typing in a password for authentication.

This seemed like a neat concept if I had Private Banking in mind (Banking in Citibank Kiosks or someplace like that) But I don’t think this is really secure considering I’m at open cyber cafe and clicking on this keypad (giving anyone crossing my desk to take a peek at my monitor and guess my password).

Wasn’t typing the password using a keyboard a better idea?? Considering my hands is covering the keyboard reducing the chances for anyone to guess my password.

Citibank has a feature “View and Pay”. This feature helps make paying monthly utility bills a lot easier. The bill account details need to be entered once and then a message and email is sent to the user every month for a payment confirmation.

It’s pretty convenient, but there is no way of cancelling a payment.

For example, I have my telecom provider registered with Citibank. I pay the bill through the website every time. But, this one time, I paid the bill when I was at the Telecom store and not through the website. After the payment was done, it did not reflect on my website. It still asked me to pay my bill I had already paid for. If a user makes a payment through the website once, they assume that he is going to do the same every time, not handling multiple payment methods.

Do you guys have any comments???

(Written after discussion and inputs from Nikhil Chandran)

Placement of Buttons

I was trying to book my ticket on Air India website (https://www.indian-airlines.org/internetbooking/ialform1.aspx) and realized the importance of the placement of buttons.

I filled up the flight details and subconsciously clicked on the Reset button instead of Continue button. Then I realized normally the button which is more likely to be used is placed first followed by the less likely one. E.g. Ok, Continue, Submit followed by Cancel, Reset.

On the second page the Continue button is followed by Reset button whereas on the first page Reset button is followed by Continue button. This even shows the consistency in the placement of the buttons on the website :)

Figure 1: To enter the journey details

Figure 2: Shows the flight information

Lotus Notes Attachment

Lotus Notes provides an option to the user to multi-select the files.
In addition to it, it even gives an option to the user to zip the files while attaching, offering a good User experience(UX).

MS Office Consistency..!!

When you select different words in MS Word of different fonts what would you see in the font details drop down box?

- You would see the font details drop down box is blank as the fonts are different which is expected behavior.







Try doing the same in MS Excel and you would find that it show the font of the first cell you started selecting from. Being consistent with MS word the font details should be shown as blank.







I found that this is the not just the problem with word 2003 but even the Microsoft's latest release word 2007. That’s the consistency in MS Word and MS Excel…!!

Gmail Attachment

To attach a file on Gmail, you need to click on the “Attach a file” link, on clicking that a text box comes along with a “Browse” button. If you want to add one more file, again you need to click “Attach another file” and then you need to click again on “Browse” button to browse through the files in your machine.

To attach a file you need to do 2 clicks. So that means for 5 attachments, you need to do 10 clicks and browsing through the file 5 times. It’s obvious that the user wants to browse when he clicks on “Attach a file” link. So a “File upload” window to browse should pop up on clicking “Attach a file” link, reducing one click per attachment.It should also provide an option of multi selecting the files in a folder. These files can be shown to the user the way multiple email addresses are shown. For that the UI can be changed a little bit as shown below. To remove a file, just delete the way you delete the email addresses. And for attaching more than one file from different folders, just clicking on browse button and select the file.

Viewing pictures of Zipped folder

When you open a picture from a picture folder in windows picture and fax viewer, you navigate through the pictures with the help of the arrow keys.

Try doing the same in a zipped folder of pictures.

You wont be able to navigate through your arrow keys, instead if you press the arrow key to view the next picture the same picture would come up again or you may see some picture which you never expected. This is because WinZip shows the picture, which is already stored in the Temp folder of your hard drive.

WinZip should automatically open and store the picture in the temp folder whenever user clicks on the arrow key to view the next picture.

This will allow the user to navigate through the pictures in a zipped folder with the arrow keys.

Invisible mode on Gtalk

Gtalk should provide the feature of invisible mode, giving us (the users) the freedom of remain logged in the way we want.

In comparison Yahoo provides an option of logging in as well as switching to the invisible mode after logging in.

Gmail : Open in a new window/tab

Why do you commonly right click on a link??

To open a link in new window or tab.

I am sure you must have tried to open mails in yahoo, rediff or hotmail in a new window.

“Open in a new window” is the first option in the right click menu.

But try doing this in Gmail –

“This frame” is the last third option on the right click menu, on selecting that another menu comes up, from where you need to select “Open frame in a new tab/window” option.

On clicking that, the selected mail wont open in a new window, but the inbox (very same page) opens in a new window.

• You land up clicking once more to read a mail from your inbox.

• “Open in a new window/ tab” should have been first or second option in the main menu instead of being in the sub menu.

Browsing through your mails takes more time, as user tends to navigate in the single window only.

Below are the screenshots of yahoo mail, rediff mail and hotmail showing how easy it is for the user to navigate and read their mails.

Scroll bar on Templates page on Blogger

On blogger.com the page that displays the templates options for the blog have an inner side bar instead of just having the regular sidebar. That page is completely dedicated to just make a template option for the blog. I see no point of keeping that inner side bar. Regular side bar also completely serves the purpose and is more standardized and comfortable.

Crtl + F in MS-Outlook

Ctrl+ F is a standard keyboard shortcut to search in MS- Office, browsers and most of the standard applications.

But have you ever tried to search in a read mail window in MS Outlook?

Just try it out….

You will see the forward mail window open instead of the ‘Find’ pop-up/ search box in your read mail window, while the read mail window remains open in the background.

Now instead you need to press F4 to search in your mail, and not Ctrl+F…!! :)

Apart from that…

• Press Ctrl -F on the mailbox (root for inbox etc..), you will get a find box.
• But when you press Ctrl-F on the inbox (root for folders), you wont see any response.
• When you press Ctrl-F when you are browsing through your mails in a folder, it opens up a forward mail window for the mail, which is selected.

So here I can see three different functions of Ctrl- F within the same application MS- Outlook...!! :)