[IxDA Discuss] Small usability issue - forms

[Katie Albers]

>One of the values in this particular case is that many people (are 
>trained to) think of their birth date as a single string of numbers 
>-- 41663, rather than 4, 16, 63 -- so the ability to enter them in a 
>swell foop may be of use.  I think there's something less of that 
>mental model with telephone numbers -- I tend to think of them as at 
>least area code/number, if not as areas code/prefix/number -- and 
>thus less usefulness in the autotabbing.
>
>Is it familiar enough to be a standard?  Maybe not, but maybe it 
>could become one.  The first time I encountered auto-tabbing in a 
>useful context, I had a little user "cool" moment.  The more places 
>the feature shows up, even with marginal utility, the more people 
>will come to anticipate, then desire, then expect it, which could 
>drive to a standard.  Someone has to lead the charge; go beer!
>
>-- Jim
>    Seattle

This may not be an issue for any particular audience, but if you're 
talking about an international audience you immediately run smack 
into the month/day--day/month issue. This can be handled a number of 
ways, but simply entering the string of numbers isn't one of them, 
unless the interface then displays the date in a format that includes 
the month in a text format, allowing the user to make changes if the 
date's been translated wrong. There are many ways to handle this at 
different levels of the overall interaction (for example, the user 
may enter the country first and the date order then orients to their 
preferred order or you can have 3 fields, each of which is labelled 
and echoes the data input in the form that the computer will 
interpret it).

Katie