I faced exactly the same dilemma recently when testing a hotel reservation process. When presented with an entire page of terms and conditions users overwhelmingly requested to see just a basic summary of the salient points (cancellation policy, late check in/out, etc.) with a link to read the full terms and conditions if they so desired. The modified design tested extremely well in the next round.

A simple “I have read and agree to the terms and conditions” checkbox which must be ticked before submitting is surely enough to cover you from a legal perspective, but then again I’m not a lawyer.

Thanks for the comment!

Another entertaining and timely article from a man who can use the phrase “collective panties” in reference to usable design.

I am currently working on the site design for a large multi-national organisation and we are in the midst of a fierce debate between user experience designers and lawyers, directly related to the implementation of a click wrap agreement.

The story…

Our lawyers have drafted three A4 pages of Terms of Use (presented within a small text box similar to the Foviance comments field), with a further requirement to force users into physically scrolling the entire Terms before the “I Accept” button is enabled.

When testing mock-ups of this design with users, the overwhelming feedback was that they are not interested in reading the Terms, find enforced design frustrating (i.e. not enabling the acceptance button until the Terms are “read”), yet still wished to understand the basic messages within the Terms.

Our design recommendation was to place adjacent to the Terms text box a dot-point summary of key information (for example, Your rights, Your responsibilities, Our responsibilities) and not force any scrolling of Terms before the user can click “I Accept”.

This compromise tested extremely well, with users feeling they understood enough of the basic facts to commit to accepting the Terms.

In the final phases of building this design, our lawyers have seen the implementation of the recommended Terms of Use design and deemed it unacceptable.

From a usability point of view, Im not keen on forcing a user to scroll the Terms. If a user wants to read the full Terms, they will read them. Otherwise, it’s just a hindrance to a user who just wants to get the job done.

From experience, lawyers always err on the side of more legal being better than less, regardless of the reality of situation. We can be as legal as we like, but if people don’t use the site cause it’s onerous, complex and confusing, its a fail all round.

Here lies the tension – real world usability or theoretical legal opinion?

You’re thoughts, comments and free advice much appreciated.

Cheers, Gunter