I’ve been to Amazon.com so many times, but today I noticed something that really struck me funny. Because I’m still logged into the site from a previous session, they greeted me (like any well planned website should.) However, there exists this precarious link “Not Sean?” In this case, if I clicked my name, the site would log me out of my account. Why? In the web world, my account username, as a link, should be a link that takes me to my profile page. On the other hand, if the link included the word “Not” and read “Not Sean?” then I would expect the site to trigger the action intended for a user who is not Sean, which would be to log me out.

Bad design pattern? Some would call this a nit-pick but I believe in the world of usability, it’s about getting all these little things right and following convention. In other words, don’t surprise the user and trick them into logging themselves out.