UX Lessons From a Misleading Star
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“If the user can’t find it, it doesn’t exist.”
This thought kept echoing in my mind while I stared at a tiny star icon on my screen, trying to understand what purpose it actually served.
After a Sunday brunch, I pestered my dad into teaching me a bit about intra-day trading on Zerodha Kite or just Kite, as most people know it. I wanted to understand how he actually reads charts and makes decisions in real time.
He walked me through his process. Once you select a stock, you open its chart to see how it’s moving over a certain time frame. But the chart alone isn’t enough, you layer it with different indicators (like RSI, MACD, Moving Averages). Each one helps you read a different aspect of the market, and usually, you combine a few of them to get a clearer picture.
That’s when I noticed some friction with the interface. This made me realise, in a trading environment, where users are making fast decisions involving real money, even small moments of uncertainty can slow decision-making and reduce confidence.
- The star icon doesn’t really signify the right action.
Inside the indicators panel, there was a star icon sitting beside every indicator. Naturally, I assumed this was the action to select or apply an indicator to the chart. So I tapped it.
The star changed colour. But nothing happened.
No indicator appeared on the chart. No feedback. No clarity on what just changed.
At that moment, the interface created a gap between what the user expects and what the system is actually doing, a classic case of invalid signifiers. The UI visually suggests one action, while the functionality behaves differently.
So now the user starts questioning the system:
-Did I apply the indicator?
-Did I save it?
-What exactly did the star do?
2. The actual selection interaction is unclear.
Since there’s no clear feedback, the user begins experimenting. Next, I tapped on the indicator name itself. And that worked. So now the user starts questioning the system:
-Did it actually get selected?
-Why is there no clear selected state?
-What exactly changed?
Alas, the uncertainty didn’t disappear.
There was still no strong selected state indicating whether the indicator had actually been applied. No clear visibility of system status.
Because the interface never fully reassures the user, the user begins double-checking their own actions. In my case, I instinctively tapped the same indicator multiple times just to deselect it after selecting it.
When I returned to the chart, the same indicator had been added repeatedly. Now the user has to manually clean up an error that the system unintentionally encouraged.
Suggested Fix: The star should be replaced with a more familiar selection pattern, like checkboxes, for applying indicators.
What fascinated me most was that my dad navigated through all of this effortlessly. He already knew what to tap, what not to tap, and how the system behaves. Even though experienced users learn the product’s quirks over time, the mental effort still exists underneath the interaction:
- Remembering unclear patterns,
- Validating actions manually,
- Correcting avoidable mistakes,
- Compensating for weak system feedback.
That effort becomes normalised.
For a beginner, however, these gaps become immediately visible and frustrating.
Good UX here isn’t just about making the interface cleaner. It’s about reducing uncertainty, lowering cognitive load, preventing avoidable errors, and helping users feel confident in every action they take.
