Visa Application
Thu Apr 8, 2010 2:16:17 am

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A client asked me to help her fill out a visa application. I was wondering why she didn't do it herself, but the reason soon became clear. https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/ is one of the most horribly designed websites I have ever seen for the following reasons:

1) It caused Internet Explorer 8 to crash several times. When I switched to Firefox 2, I got an SSL error and could not add an exception until I upgraded to Firefox 3.

2) There is a ridiculous time limit for activity. If you take too long to answer a question, the session terminates. This happened several times while answering questions at a slightly hurried pace. I don't know the exact time limit, but I estimate round 4 minutes per page. This is ridiculous for some pages.

3) There is an option to save your work to prevent total loss when time limits are exceeded, but saving can only be done after all items are filled out on a page.

4) There is an upload size limit of 240kb for the photo and the minimum photo resolution is 600x600. In my first attempt to upload, the file was 255kb. This was easy for me to remedy by changing to 90% quality, but it is ridiculous to expect the average person to understand how to do this.