Date Interfaces
February 3rd, 2006
Creating the interface (UI and implementation) for a date is a tricky process. The tradeoff between ease of use and speed is hard. The airline websites often use a dropdown calendar, however that doesn’t work if the form is being used for data entry. Alternatively, a text box that may have some help text doesn’t assist the user much at all, leaving questions such as do I use dashes or slashes. Month or date first? This option isn’t very learnable as a user can’t tell quickly that a date needs to be entered here.
Ideally a combination of the both would be the solution, as sometimes is seen where there is a text box that can then be dropped down to calendar. This however isn’t exactly easy to replicate for the web while still taking into account things like tab order.
Another consideration is when the date has a range, ie. In the past. This user interface should show that future date’s are unacceptable, but at the same time not frustrating users.
As a side note, an interesting way to tell how difficult a solution for an interface is, is to look at how many different implementations exist.