For nonfiction, I frequently skip chapters or stop reading the book when I notice that the author is just saying the same things again and again.

A lot of games these days let you buy them in sections, or partition them into a lot of different games. Angry Birds and Candy Crush come to mind.

I would read and buy a lot more if I could buy books by the chapter.

I do not see the point of Chapter 1 in every programming book or whatever to have an entire chapter on install instructions.

First of all, it takes up space. I like to read (yes, even books where "installation instructions" could be relevant) on mobile. At least put it in an appendix or something (I will award 0.01 points).
 
The installation guide is likely to be outdated. Please just give me a pointer to where I can find them. Maybe list the versions that are used in the book, and leave it at that.

​Thank you.

In most cases and most languages, words that are more frequently used than others tend to be shorter.

The same principle should apply to the keyboard. I use Ctrl far ofter than I use the Fn button. So, please do not put it in the bottom-right corner.

Yes, I am very well aware of the possibility of swapping. However, the default should not be that I have to swap.

Get it together, people.

I have to give some praise to Mobile Action. I wanted to unsubscribe from them, since I no longer work on projects where I need it.

So, I scrolled to the bottom, and I found this:

Humor for everyday things that are usually boring! Ten points!

A comedian I like got some really nasty comments on her main Facebook page. I don't like the hate female comedians (and female gamers, by the way, for those who aren't into gaming) and I think toxic people of any kind should be banned from absolutely everything, so I thought I'd just report it just for the heck of it. How many times did I have to click?

Eight. And they even make you wait a bit after the seventh click. Not only that, there are entirely pointless suggestions along the way like "send a message to the author of the comment to resolve this problem".

The internet is full of garbage, data from humans reporting some of it should be put to good use. And they should receive feedback on what is being done with it. StackOverflow does well here. I have flagged a lot of garbage on that site. As of this writing, StackOverflow tells me that I have raised 44 helpful flags (flags that have been acted upon, usually deletion of hopeless content). And Facebook does this in a most excellent manner, giving me a notification with what they did. Grade: A.

I consider this this to be a common problem. The number-of-clicks-part is certainly not hard to fix. Two clicks is enough. Simply count the number of clicks. Does it exceed two? Then it's too many. Oh, and never force me to write anything.

There is this meme called "shut up and take my money". There should be a meme called "shut up, I already gave you money".

Have you ever been to a website where you have bought a subscription, and you're now trying to log in, but you can't seem to find it? Or, that you are going to the main page of the service and you still get the "purchase now" screen?

I have one good example. This list will grow in time (feel free to post examples in comments below):

• Woopra. If you have an account, you can log in fairly easily. Then you have to click on "Lauch Woopra", as if that is not something that you want in 99 % of the cases. So now you bookmark Woopra, or just tend to go to enter woopra.com in your browser. Even if you are logged in, you get to see the "purchase" screen again.

Here is the user experience principle of the day, folks: on every "purchase" screen, there should be a "log in" button for those who have already bought one. And no "purchase" screens after having logged in and bought stuff. What is the aim here, that I will accidentally buy another subscription?

I consider this to be an increasingly common problem. It needs fixing, and it's certainly not hard to fix.

I consider this a common problem.

We click a lot of check buttons and radio boxes. Agreeing to terms and conditions, disagreeing to follow news letters.

However, my mouse is often to the right of these boxes and radio buttons, so it would be far easier for me to simply click on the text.

From a technical perspective, this is not hard to do for web applications.

Please do it. Then I can agree to your terms and conditions without reading it - faster.

This is a recent problem.

I've recently noticed that Skype, Facebook and a few things on Android now require me to swipe away notifications several times before getting rid of it.

And not only that, a lot of messaging apps will create a notification for my own messages. Write a message with the Facebook Messenger app and go on desktop, and there will sometimes be a notification.

This is madness.

I consider this to be a common problem.

I hate it when I cannot select all. Please always allow me to "select all". Even Facebook allows this when inviting people to an event.

I consider this to be a common problem.


People have sent me quite a few emails asking me to rate hotels, flights, and performances of various kinds.

I have not left feedback for any of them.

Why?

Because I have to fill in all this crap.

I usually don't take any risks when it comes to spending money on these types of things. Whenever I book a hotel, go to a concert, a stand up-show, or decide to fly somewhere, I pretty much know what I'll get. Hence, I am often in the position where I am more than willing to give the highest rating.

But I don't.

The last hotel I lived at, for example, demanded that I fill in:
- Why I traveled there (business, vacation, whatever).
- My total rating (which is the only thing I am willing to give)
- My rating for the hotel's service
- My rating for the hotel's standard
- My rating for the hotel's level of cleanliness(?).
- My rating for the hotel's comfort
- My rating for the area around the hotel. This, in particular, is huge balls. In fact, I would have liked to give my regards to their balls, because they really have a pair. My primary use case for a hotel is to sleep, not to wander around in the vicinity of the hotel like some weird tourist.

In this case I actually ended up sending in the review, just to see if that really was sufficient, or if I would be asked to enter even more stupid crap.

Guess what: they were going to first have to run it through the moderator queue before posting it live. So they actually have a moderator going through this stuff. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide if that would have been needed for a star-rating and nothing else entered.

They did ask for more, by the way, but it was optional. "How likely are you to recommend it to someone else?". With a scale of one through ... ten! Like I would ever use that entire scale ever. Yes and no would have sufficed as alternatives, but I would have accepted having a "maybe" option there also.

There is a lot of research on this, by the way. People will even stop donating to really important causes if the web site is too complicated. A simple web search for "donation user friendliness" will give you a more evidence for this than you will ever bother to read.

Conclusion: make things simple, make things that could be optional be optional.

One could maybe argue that people unwilling to fill in a feedback form would be more likely to give one star. However, I cannot remember having seen evidence for that (please post it in the comments if you know of any). In either case it annoys me greatly, and it is my opinion that everything that is annoying to me should be fixed immediately.