Random musing on UI misdesign
A particular egregious error (seen in websites too numerous to list) is to validate a form, rejecting some field's value as invalid input, and then not telling the user the correct or acceptable values/formats. In other words, leaving the poor user in the dark over what they did wrong.
Only the most motivated and perseverant user will try more than once or twice before simply giving up and going away. And you will fail to capture some information/data the presumably would have been of some value. (Otherwise why would you have constructed a form in the first place?)
Example: Dzone user-profile editing rejects phone numbers entered in a format identical with the example displayed below the phone-number input field, and never provides and explanation of why. Just "Invalid input" over and over again. Result: users do not (cannot) provide valid registration information.
Somehow this failure is even worse when your form absolutely refuses to accept an entry that is perfectly valid in the user's world, but, through your own ignorance or provincialism, you reject as invalid in your own part of the world. A classic example of this crops up on websites requiring a postal-code (zip-code) as part of their input, but insist that postal codes contain exactly 5 or 9 digits. This might be a requirement for valid postal-codes in some parts of the world, but it is patently false for the vast majority of global users. Admittedly this problem has abated some over the past 10 years, but not enough, yet.
So: When you reject a user's input, please tell them how to provide something you will accept. Even better, use input mechanisms that only produce valid values in the first place, and both you and your users will be happier. e.g. Clicking on a map to indicate a position is inherently easier and more error-proof than typing in a latitude and longitude into a textbox.
[Repost from http://mikro2nd.net/bits/Wiki.jsp?page=UIDesign]
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