I was enjoying watching So You Think You Can Dance clips on the Channel Ten website when I thought one was pretty good and decided to click an “I like it!” button I noticed below. It had 0 votes so far and I thought it definitely deserved more. The page I’m talking about is here – http://dance.ten.com.au/video.htm??vxSiteId=d9d2e1e6-3a8f-46ad-8803-45a79b957d70&vxChannel=Wk03SundayPerf&vxClipId=2305_sytycd310-cutvseg8&vxBitrate=700&vxTemplate=Dance_2010_Main.swf&vxClickToPlay=false

To my irritation, the link went to a new page asking me to sign in, getting completely out of the video I was watching while it was playing. Going back just took me to the first video I’d watched, not the one it had left. I now understood why it had no votes. I’m not an expert in web design and usability (yet) but I sure know terrible design when I see it. Don’t change the page when your visitors are watching a video. For all you know they could have spent 30 minutes on dialup downloading that (in fact one of my friends upon hearing my story said that something very similar occurred to him involving the loss of a Biggest Loser clip he spent ages downloading from Channel Ten on dial up). Thank goodness I’ve got ADSL2!

The button and Matt Lee making a funny face.

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