[IxDA Discuss] Form Validation

[Caroline Jarrett]

From: "Janna Hicks DeVylder" <janna at devylder.com>

<on using client side validations>

: Look at Mint.com <http://mint.com/>'s
: sign up process as an example.
: Not only do they deal with blank fields,
: they deal with inconsistencies as well.

I've watched users working with forms like this. My concern is that 
they pretty much all (no matter how web-savvy) seem to jerk away from 
the screen in surprise as the ordinarily docile page suddenly starts 
changing on them before they've even typed anything much in the field.

This worries me. For years, I've been advocating doing validations as 
soon as you can, but there seems to be something 'too soon' about 
interrupting the user's typing process to warn them about an error.

It seems particularly bad on Mint.com - can't type a whole email 
address before it starts barking at me.

So my current advice is to refrain from interrupting the conversation 
in this way. Let the user complete their entry as they naturally 
would, and only seize back control of the page when they've returned 
control to you. For example, by clicking on something else.

Right now, I'm not 100% sure about validations on the previous field 
as you leave the next field. Users focus remarkably narrowly on the 
left-hand portion of the field to type into, and I suspect (but do not 
have evidence yet to prove) that they may very well fail to spot the 
validation on the previous field. But I think that may not matter, so 
long as the page-level validation gracefully handles the situation 
where users have failed to correct as they go.

Best,

Caroline Jarrett
caroline.jarrett at effortmark.co.uk
01525 370379

Effortmark Ltd
Usability - Forms - Content