Last night’s Miss Universe screw-up could have been prevented with good UX

Poor Steve Harvey. The guy was just reading a card, but it ended up as one of the weirdest, most cringe-worthy events of 2015.

The Miss Universe winner was from the Philippines, but Harvey announced the Colombian contestant as the winner. Why? His cue card was a mess.

In correcting his error, Harvey gave us all a glance at what he was looking at, and a collective groan rippled across the internet. Not because Harvey erred, but because his card was a mess.

On the left side were the two runners up: USA and Colombia. They’re noted as ‘2nd runner up’ and ‘1st runner up,’ which seems easy enough to grasp. The problems only start there, though.

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The actual winner is noted on the bottom right, far away from any runner-up mention. While ‘MISS UNIVERSE 2015’ was big and bold, it was removed from the other text.

The countries of finishers was clearly added last-minute, and that’s fine — the actual card format is the issue. In a moment like that, nothing should be left to chance. Harvey was left out in the cold; that card was just not designed with readability in mind, plain and simple..

My submission, which you can see above, took three minutes in Pixelmator. It gives a few clear directions to the host up top, with the order in which the finishers should be announced. The winner is still last, but larger and in-line with the others.

If the card were printed ahead of Harvey receiving it — as it seems to have been, considering the countries associated with contestants was printed text — there would also be room to add a picture of each finisher. While keeping text in-line helps, seeing three pictures would also signal to the brain that three ladies need their time in the spotlight.

I’m no designer, but I think my simple card would have at least helped Harvey out a bit. Like anyone else reading English, Harvey went top to bottom, left to right. It’s more intuitive to have things in-line. Shoving the winner off to the bottom-right of the card suggests its a footnote, not the most important part of the evening.

In the heat of the moment, Harvey screwed up. He handled it like a champ, but a bit of UX help before he even got the card in his hand would have been welcome.