[Sigia-l] Error Prevantion Heuristic (slightly OT)

[Listera]

"Richard_Dalton at vanguard.com" wrote:

> Lets say its a banking site and a user can see a couple of individual checking
> accounts and a joint checking account. The user wants to move $1000 from one
> individual checking account to the joint account, however, because of
> technical constraints or business rules on the website he can only move
> between the individual checking accounts - should the system prevent him from
> selecting what he wants to select - or allow him to select what he wants and
> give him a message telling him he can't do it on the web (and why) and
> explaining the other options for how he might do it?

Well, this is a different question, on the fundamentals. The earlier was the
classical problem of 'range checking". This is more like 'options display',
with a twist. (Normally, you don't show options that are not
relevant/possible.) The twist here is that if the user wants to transfer
between an individual and a shared account, how do they do it?

You could link to the latter option separately. Or better yet factor it:

Transfer Money
        Individual to individual accounts [LINK]
        Individual to shared accounts [OFFLINE only*]
        Shared to shared accounts [OFFLINE only*]

* Explanation of how to do it offline

Now, why show the offline options if they are not available online? I don't
know, but it sounds like a systems deficiency and it has to be explained
somehow. So you may have to display/explain it in the context it would have
been used had it been available.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba