I’m sitting in an Indian restaurant as I write this, killing time while I wait for the auto-dealer to prep my new pickup truck. I’m convinced the delay is intentional since they know I was coming in with a confirmed purchase agreement. Still never having worked at a car dealership I really have no idea what they’re doing, and as an article Credulity and Politics in this week’s Economist points out, we appear to be hard-wired to believe people, so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I had an interesting session with the finance guy signing forms with an electronic signature. I narrowly avoided buying a maintenance package I didn’t want. The options page on the tablet that the manger handed me presented three options. They were labeled something like Maximum, Premium, and Standard – or some such language – leading me to believe that Standard was the lowest you could select. We are also hard-wired to expect three options. Each of the three options had similarly labeled buttons, encouraging you to click one of them. I selected [Standard]. Tablet moved to the next page with a signature block. I signed. Then the finance guy slipped up. He asked me if I drove into Cambridge every day. I said, no – I drive to the train station and take the commuter rail in from South Acton, and that I didn’t expect to put more than a few thousand miles on the truck each year. “Oh, in that case, we can change your coverage from 8 years, miles to 10 years miles.” Back to the options page. This time it dawned on me that I was being offered additional coverage beyond the manufacturer’s coverage. I asked him if I had to pick any of the options. The answer was no, so I told him that I didn’t want the additional coverage, and that was that, I just had to sign that I declined additional coverage. Here’s the observations:

1. The options page may have had a checkbox or something to indicate that I didn’t want any of the options, but I certainly didn’t notice anything. Presented with three buttons on a page and little else, it seemed obvious that I was expected to pick one of them.
2. The signature block was on a different screen that did not show the options. With wet signatures, the signature line is usually at the bottom of the page or block, and it’s clear what it refers to. In the tablet version it was disconnected visually from the options page.

One more observation. Although some of the signing was electronic, there were still some forms that had to have a traditional wet signature. I assume that’s because those forms were covered by regulations that don’t allow for electronic signatures.

All of this has bearing on the work I’m currently engaged in for FAA where they are building a system that will do way with the need for wet signatures on forms and items that currently require them. Yes – I know wet signatures are “old century” things, and that electronic signatures offer many improvements, but they need to be accompanied by commonly understood design pattern so that folks that are e-signing have an understanding that is at least as good as wet signatures. A couple of top level requirements might be in order:

1. When selecting options, all options should be presented in a visually similar manner.
2. The signature block should be presented on the same page as the options