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To be sure, this is an ugly UI but this is not necessarily a pure UI issue at root. Internal applications have to be more complex that external applications -

To be sure, this is an ugly UI but this is not necessarily a pure UI issue at root. Internal applications have to be more complex that external applications - that's why you sometimes have to call a company to do something the consumer frontend doesn't support. The employees are expected to operate a more powerful/flexible system than the customer, and I think there's always a risk inherent there. In this case, it's likely that it's not just a dumb UI thing that the employee "needed to set the "front" and "fund" fields to the wash account as well as "principal." I suspect thank "front" and "back" are actually real business concepts in how the bank models transfers which the employee/reviewer did not understand well. Instead they expressed a different model of a transfer (an external one) which is a totally legitimate use case, just not the intended one. That's kinda one level of empathy, I suspect this really happened because these users think about these operations as "I check this box, then I check that box" rather than "I get how transfers work and I am going to express my intention using that understanding." So it's probably much more of a training issue, because to give these people a very narrow and polished consumer-style frontend would take away the flexibility they likely need to actually execute their roles.

onlyfortoday2 6y ago
To be sure, this is an ugly UI but this is not necessarily a pure UI issue at root. of course it is...
shuntress 6y ago
There are limits to this. A ten pound sledge hammer can be used to drive finishing nails in fine furniture but it would be absurd to claim that all the dented furniture coming out of your shop is a result of poorly trained workers rather than inadequate tooling. A generic hammer, like this UI (at least, as much as is apparent from the screenshots in the article) can drive basically any nail. But specialized hammers exist for good reasons. This is equally applicable in software tools. A good tool should enable you to do things you couldn't do without it but the best tools make it easier to do what you want and harder to do what you don't want.
- rkagerer 6y ago
  I would ordinarily agree, but to be honest the UI in the screenshot doesn't really look all that terrible. Not saying it couldn't improve to clarify effects, incorporate documentation and nudge the user away from making mistakes - but overall I agree with the grandparent post. Clearly the operator is supposed to have business knowledge of what those GL fields mean. I'd bet there are more experienced operators who would be frustrated and less productive if they were forced to use a dumbed-down UI where you couldn't just put the amounts you want in the fields they should go. My decade-old Quickbooks software similarly lets me create GL entries and assign amounts to the accounts involved. If I let my $12/hr intern who doesn't know what they're doing use that feature and they post to the wrong accounts, then of course bad things will happen. Instead, he uses other more specialized interfaces (like you suggested) to enter things like invoices, bills, etc. We give children safety scissors, and expect adults to be able to handle the real thing. I really do have sympathy for the employees involved, and strongly agree with your sentiments that software should be engineered for safety. But I encourage anyone else reading this and forming an opinion to click into the article and have a glance at the screenshot.
  - ggpp 6y ago
    You should at least pay your intern a livable wage, $15/hr
s_dev 6y ago
The fact that three people independently verified the UI (all highly experienced with this exact GUI) before issuing the transaction betrays the notion this was a lack of training.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mint2 6y ago
  Training cannot substitute for Engineering controls aka physical safety features that make it impossible to explode the entire lab or send 1 billion dollars by mistake. This is no more user error than Boeing’s recent sensor disaster. Sure if the pilots had the proper training none of that would have happened, and Boeing didn’t make sure they had it. But it wasn’t a training failure that was the issue with with the Max 8. Training was only a second order cause.
  - s_dev 6y ago
    What does training here mean -- because if it means a lad sitting down and explaining what the checkbox does then it's certainly the UI to blame.
Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
> I suspect thank "front" and "back" are actually real business concepts Honestly with names like "front" and "wash" the whole thing should be checked by tax officials. The words probably mean something else, but ... wow
- xyzelement 6y ago
  > Honestly with names like "front" and "wash" the whole thing should be checked by tax officials. The words probably mean something else, but ... wow It's funny how worked up and self righteous one could get even while recognizing that they don't actually understand the concept. It's particularly amusing that you were alarmed by "front" (what, like a mafia front?) when there's also a "back". I have never worked at Citi but I can make reasonable guesses as to what these accounts are. Wash is a term that means "funds did not leave the firm" (you may have heard the expression "it's a wash" to mean "things net out to 0." Front and back may have to do with direction of funds flow, or perhaps a hierarchy of accounts (like "we are pulling from account X on the back-end and into account Y on the front-end") Not saying these are exactly right, point is that as someone who's been in finance for a long time these are totally innocent.
  - Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
    worked up? self righteous? alarmed? You seem to read with a lot of -bad-faith- (edit: no that's the wrong idiom.. ähm read while assuming the worst?). Take a step back and relax. It's obviously not about mafia fronts and money laundry ^^ The whole story is about the user interface being unclear and not being understood by those who use it. Could have made it clearer i am playing with that theme ... maybe an /S would have helped, or one of those smiley things i keep hearing about that are so uncommon on this page.
    - machello13 6y ago
      It's something about the way your original was worded. I think if you had written only the first sentence, the joke would have been clearer.
- 6y ago
crazygringo 6y ago
That's an excellent point. The form looks like it can accomplish all sorts of things and business logic, just like a SQL query can accomplish all sorts of things and business logic in a database. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. But like you say, the issue is with training. The fact that 3 people who were presumably trained in how to use this tool, used it wrong, means it's absolutely a failure of training. Business logic very often isn't "intuitive", because tools are used in all sorts of ways. When it comes to business logic, what's often most important is documented procedures and checklists. The real question is, since this was a procedure that had been performed regularly and correctly in the past, why did it fail this particular time? Why were these 3 employees left to assume they were using the tool correctly, rather than referring to a definitive documented procedure that would give them the answer for sure? Oftentimes it's an employee turnover/transfer/vacation issue that exposes the lack of documentation, and the real issue is too much knowledge in employee's heads that isn't committed to paper in the right places -- pure sloppiness of business procedures.
- jkaptur 6y ago
  There were documented procedures: > The Fund Sighting Manual explains that, in order to suppress payment of a principal amount, “ALL of the below field[s] must be set to the wash account: FRONT[;] FUND[; and] PRINCIPAL” and checklists: > Raj then emailed Fratta, seeking final approval under the six-eye review process, explaining “NOTE: Principal set to Wash and Interest Notice released to Investors.” and confirmations: > which prompted a warning on his computer screen — referred to as a “stop sign” — stating: “Account used is Wire Account and Funds will be sent out of the bank. Do you want to continue?” But “The ‘stop sign’ did not indicate the amount that would be ‘sent out of the bank,’ To answer your question "Why were these 3 employees left to assume they were using the tool correctly, rather than referring to a definitive documented procedure that would give them the answer for sure?" My guess is that the manual is a million pages long and incredibly confusing. My takeaway from this is that you can't train and document your way out of a core human factors issue. Your point about SQL queries is apt; that's why you don't just give humans access to prod.
  - dmix 6y ago
zorrolovsky 6y ago
Looking at the evidence, I would say this is a pure UX/UI issue at root: three people got confused about what they needed to do, and they all thought they completed their task successfully when they didn't. The first UI issue is the obvious lack of intuitiveness. There is ancient software that is resonably intuitive to use, because the people who led development took responsibility to do the right thing: invest in UX/UI so that their software is a success. Others however cut corners to get more short-term profits, or dismiss design as if it was decoration (it's not, good design is form + function and most serious designers pay more attention to the latter than the former). The second UI issue is (an assumed) lack of feedback in the output of the transaction. After doing the transaction, if there was a feedback screen confirming to the user what they've done, the error could be caught much more easily. For example, before actually sending any transaction there could be a screen saying: - Summary of transaction - X$ will be sent to account XYZ - X$ will be sent to account ABC This looks like obvious stuff, but is often obvious stuff and small details what turn a problematic user experience into a succesful one.
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  > three people got confused about what they needed to do, and they all thought they completed their task successfully when they didn't. > For example, before actually sending any transaction there could be a screen saying: - Summary of transaction - X$ will be sent to account XYZ - X$ will be sent to account ABC These sums up what I think too. I get that internal software is more complex, and bank transaction are also complex, but when three people checked it, though it was good to go and didn't realize a mistake until the next day, that's a problem. Showing a summary of how much is being sent to where, and how much is going to stay in the account is the minimum I would expect for a finance software that's used to transfer millions of dollars in a single action.
  - behringer 6y ago
    Did 3 people really check it though? I've worked with many groups where the one guy takes the lead and the other 2 are like "sure, whatever."

onlyfortoday2 6y ago

To be sure, this is an ugly UI but this is not necessarily a pure UI issue at root. of course it is...

shuntress 6y ago

There are limits to this. A ten pound sledge hammer can be used to drive finishing nails in fine furniture but it would be absurd to claim that all the dented furniture coming out of your shop is a result of poorly trained workers rather than inadequate tooling. A generic hammer, like this UI (at least, as much as is apparent from the screenshots in the article) can drive basically any nail. But specialized hammers exist for good reasons. This is equally applicable in software tools. A good tool should enable you to do things you couldn't do without it but the best tools make it easier to do what you want and harder to do what you don't want.

rkagerer 6y ago
I would ordinarily agree, but to be honest the UI in the screenshot doesn't really look all that terrible. Not saying it couldn't improve to clarify effects, incorporate documentation and nudge the user away from making mistakes - but overall I agree with the grandparent post. Clearly the operator is supposed to have business knowledge of what those GL fields mean. I'd bet there are more experienced operators who would be frustrated and less productive if they were forced to use a dumbed-down UI where you couldn't just put the amounts you want in the fields they should go. My decade-old Quickbooks software similarly lets me create GL entries and assign amounts to the accounts involved. If I let my $12/hr intern who doesn't know what they're doing use that feature and they post to the wrong accounts, then of course bad things will happen. Instead, he uses other more specialized interfaces (like you suggested) to enter things like invoices, bills, etc. We give children safety scissors, and expect adults to be able to handle the real thing. I really do have sympathy for the employees involved, and strongly agree with your sentiments that software should be engineered for safety. But I encourage anyone else reading this and forming an opinion to click into the article and have a glance at the screenshot.
- ggpp 6y ago
  You should at least pay your intern a livable wage, $15/hr

s_dev 6y ago

The fact that three people independently verified the UI (all highly experienced with this exact GUI) before issuing the transaction betrays the notion this was a lack of training.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mint2 6y ago
Training cannot substitute for Engineering controls aka physical safety features that make it impossible to explode the entire lab or send 1 billion dollars by mistake. This is no more user error than Boeing’s recent sensor disaster. Sure if the pilots had the proper training none of that would have happened, and Boeing didn’t make sure they had it. But it wasn’t a training failure that was the issue with with the Max 8. Training was only a second order cause.
- s_dev 6y ago
  What does training here mean -- because if it means a lad sitting down and explaining what the checkbox does then it's certainly the UI to blame.

Jon_Lowtek 6y ago

> I suspect thank "front" and "back" are actually real business concepts Honestly with names like "front" and "wash" the whole thing should be checked by tax officials. The words probably mean something else, but ... wow

xyzelement 6y ago
> Honestly with names like "front" and "wash" the whole thing should be checked by tax officials. The words probably mean something else, but ... wow It's funny how worked up and self righteous one could get even while recognizing that they don't actually understand the concept. It's particularly amusing that you were alarmed by "front" (what, like a mafia front?) when there's also a "back". I have never worked at Citi but I can make reasonable guesses as to what these accounts are. Wash is a term that means "funds did not leave the firm" (you may have heard the expression "it's a wash" to mean "things net out to 0." Front and back may have to do with direction of funds flow, or perhaps a hierarchy of accounts (like "we are pulling from account X on the back-end and into account Y on the front-end") Not saying these are exactly right, point is that as someone who's been in finance for a long time these are totally innocent.
- Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
  worked up? self righteous? alarmed? You seem to read with a lot of -bad-faith- (edit: no that's the wrong idiom.. ähm read while assuming the worst?). Take a step back and relax. It's obviously not about mafia fronts and money laundry ^^ The whole story is about the user interface being unclear and not being understood by those who use it. Could have made it clearer i am playing with that theme ... maybe an /S would have helped, or one of those smiley things i keep hearing about that are so uncommon on this page.
  - machello13 6y ago
    It's something about the way your original was worded. I think if you had written only the first sentence, the joke would have been clearer.
6y ago

crazygringo 6y ago

That's an excellent point. The form looks like it can accomplish all sorts of things and business logic, just like a SQL query can accomplish all sorts of things and business logic in a database. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. But like you say, the issue is with training. The fact that 3 people who were presumably trained in how to use this tool, used it wrong, means it's absolutely a failure of training. Business logic very often isn't "intuitive", because tools are used in all sorts of ways. When it comes to business logic, what's often most important is documented procedures and checklists. The real question is, since this was a procedure that had been performed regularly and correctly in the past, why did it fail this particular time? Why were these 3 employees left to assume they were using the tool correctly, rather than referring to a definitive documented procedure that would give them the answer for sure? Oftentimes it's an employee turnover/transfer/vacation issue that exposes the lack of documentation, and the real issue is too much knowledge in employee's heads that isn't committed to paper in the right places -- pure sloppiness of business procedures.

jkaptur 6y ago
There were documented procedures: > The Fund Sighting Manual explains that, in order to suppress payment of a principal amount, “ALL of the below field[s] must be set to the wash account: FRONT[;] FUND[; and] PRINCIPAL” and checklists: > Raj then emailed Fratta, seeking final approval under the six-eye review process, explaining “NOTE: Principal set to Wash and Interest Notice released to Investors.” and confirmations: > which prompted a warning on his computer screen — referred to as a “stop sign” — stating: “Account used is Wire Account and Funds will be sent out of the bank. Do you want to continue?” But “The ‘stop sign’ did not indicate the amount that would be ‘sent out of the bank,’ To answer your question "Why were these 3 employees left to assume they were using the tool correctly, rather than referring to a definitive documented procedure that would give them the answer for sure?" My guess is that the manual is a million pages long and incredibly confusing. My takeaway from this is that you can't train and document your way out of a core human factors issue. Your point about SQL queries is apt; that's why you don't just give humans access to prod.
- dmix 6y ago

zorrolovsky 6y ago

Looking at the evidence, I would say this is a pure UX/UI issue at root: three people got confused about what they needed to do, and they all thought they completed their task successfully when they didn't. The first UI issue is the obvious lack of intuitiveness. There is ancient software that is resonably intuitive to use, because the people who led development took responsibility to do the right thing: invest in UX/UI so that their software is a success. Others however cut corners to get more short-term profits, or dismiss design as if it was decoration (it's not, good design is form + function and most serious designers pay more attention to the latter than the former). The second UI issue is (an assumed) lack of feedback in the output of the transaction. After doing the transaction, if there was a feedback screen confirming to the user what they've done, the error could be caught much more easily. For example, before actually sending any transaction there could be a screen saying: - Summary of transaction - X$ will be sent to account XYZ - X$ will be sent to account ABC This looks like obvious stuff, but is often obvious stuff and small details what turn a problematic user experience into a succesful one.

FalconSensei 6y ago
> three people got confused about what they needed to do, and they all thought they completed their task successfully when they didn't. > For example, before actually sending any transaction there could be a screen saying: - Summary of transaction - X$ will be sent to account XYZ - X$ will be sent to account ABC These sums up what I think too. I get that internal software is more complex, and bank transaction are also complex, but when three people checked it, though it was good to go and didn't realize a mistake until the next day, that's a problem. Showing a summary of how much is being sent to where, and how much is going to stay in the account is the minimum I would expect for a finance software that's used to transfer millions of dollars in a single action.
- behringer 6y ago
  Did 3 people really check it though? I've worked with many groups where the one guy takes the lead and the other 2 are like "sure, whatever."