Poorly Designed Online Apps

When I first heard about Nav Canada’s plans to make filing a flight plan available on the net I was quite excited. Then the project was delayed such that the application wasn’t released until well after the promised date. I don’t remember the length of the delay but I recall that it was several months at the very least. I also have no idea why there was a delay but I can only assume it had to do with the code that they likely had to build to integrate the web application with the existing system. Why? Because the web application is terrible.

Professionally built web applications these days, as a whole, are generally good and most of the older apps have been updated as time goes on so as to take advantage of the features offered in modern browsers. The Royal Bank’s Online Banking is one such example. I’ve been using their web banking since it was made available and though the years they’ve added more features and made things easier. Their design hasn’t changed much, though I think that is a reflection of a good design in the first place. The applications built by Solium Capital are also very good, though since I was a part of that, I might be somewhat biased. Nav Canada’s online flight plan filing, on the other hand, is a step backwards. Maybe two or three in fact.

The first impression of the app is frightening. There are 32 sections that are required to be filled in, all listed on one long page. To Nav Canada’s credit every field has a link which popups a reference within the user manual so you can read about what each field means or how the field is to be filled in. But, that said, there is no per field validation when storing a flight plan. For example, the cruising speed field expects N0140 for 140 knots or M082 for Mach 0.82. That’s fine except that I’m not a flight service specialist nor have I ever flown an aircraft that would require me to file the cruising speed as a mach number. So my first ever stored flight plan has 105 in that field.

Perhaps if I used this system every day I would eventually remember this but given that I fly a few times a month, it would be much easier to have a help icon of sorts that popped up a small window. Inside that window could then be a text field and a drop down. The drop down would have two choices: knots and mach. In the text field I would enter 105 and then select ‘knots’. Then when I pressed the submit button, my choice would be converted to N0105 and filled into the proper field on the original page. The same could be done for most of the other fields. And while the documentation is fairly thorough, it would be nice if the gave a couple of complete examples for the route field. They have a samples of single points but not of a complete route.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s great that Nav Canada is using the Interenet to try and make it easier for me to file a flight plan. But I’ve gone on perhaps a dozen cross country trips since I registered for the online flight plan filing. But I haven’t actually used it once because it takes me 15 minutes to make sure I’ve filled in the fields properly but only 2 minutes to call up the 1-866 number and talk to a specialist. I actually tried to use the system once but when I went to submit the flight plan I found that I needed to enter my PIN, which would be fine except that I couldn’t find it and it wan’t anything I normally use. That’s because the PIN (which is different from your passowrd needed to login in the first place, is a randomly generated four letter password per se that is assigned when you register for the system. There’s no way to reset or change the PIN and if you ever lose or forget it, Nav Canada can’t reset it either. They have to delete your account (thus losing any saved flight plans) and you must re-register. Not even the online banking apps are that archaic or poorly set up.

After all this, I’m curious as to what others think of the web app? Am I just being snobbish because of my past experience building web apps or are others hesitant to use the system also?

1 comment »

1. By Frank Ch. Eigler about 23 hours later:

   
   
   It's not a great web application, sure. But if you think of it as nothing other than a mechanised way of filling out the standard ICAO flight plan form that pilots end up using since student days, the "N140" should not be unnatural.