American Public Media’s popular program Marketplace ran a story on Friday about Ticketmaster finally removing CAPTCHAs from their ticket-buying process. Reporter Sally Herships contacted me to share my thoughts.
Captcha-22: When online security hurts sales
CAPTCHAs demonstrate that a company cares more about thwarting spam than they do about making things easy for their customers.
Most common CAPTCHAs are very challenging for people to get right, and usually as the very last field on the page, it’s a hurdle to overcome in order to complete their task. It demonstrates a lack of empathy for the user’s needs and mindset.
An alternative to CAPTCHA is to use what’s called a “honeypot” — a field that’s invisible to a human, hidden with CSS, that is meant to be left blank, but that a spambot will undoubtedly fill in. It’s a great way to weed out spam without putting up unnecessary obstacles for people who are trying to be your customers.
CAPTCHA was developed at my alma mater Carnegie Mellon University, and stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” I’m sure the inventors meant no harm, but it has long been the bane of existence for those of us working to make a more accessible Internet.
Bravo to Ticketmaster for finally eliminating them.
Related Posts:
- Bill Maher makes fun of Captcha’s poor usability May 12, 2010 | 8 comments
- The Enduring Misconceptions of User Experience Design February 8, 2013 | 27 comments
- Why I detest the term “Lean UX” February 27, 2011 | 22 comments
- A Q&A with the Speakers of UX London January 26, 2010 | 1 comments
- Don Draper is the Antithesis of User Experience February 27, 2012 | 14 comments
About Whitney Hess
Whitney Hess is a coach and writer helping product teams and senior leaders make better decisions through the principles of user experience. She believes empathy builds empires.