Users will routinely ignore or misinterpret instructions like this. It takes an extra hour or two of work, but either do the three dropdown boxes or give them a free-form text field which is fairly intelligent with a suggestion that tells them how to phrase things and then attempts to discern their intent when they write things in a way which is not ambiguous.
For example, 3/25/1982 and 25/3/1982 and 1982 Mar 25 are all trivially recognizable and unambiguous. Should someone type in 3 4 82, two hours of work will let you say "We really care about your tax return being accurate so we want to check: is your birth date [March 4th, 1982], [April 3rd, 1982] or [something else?]"
You would additionally benefit from microcopy on this page to the general effect of "Your data is totally secure -- we use bank grade encryption [and blah blah blah]. You can review your return before we send it to the tax authorities."
You are absolutely correct about users ignoring and mis-interpreting instructions, we constantly struggle with this. The suggestion is very good.
I find the multi-year-dropdown cumbersome, but maybe it is more functional and there's less probability of a mistake! One minor thing I'd like to add is users in India typically write date in the form of DD/mm/YYYY.
I don't mind putting in the date really. 25/3/1982 seems to be really unambiguous and clear - well a date control could be added, but I don't think it is needed.
I have questions on passwords though. What's the reason you made this? Also what could be the worst case in sharing the password with an unknown website?
Comments
Specify date in format like 25/3/1987
Users will routinely ignore or misinterpret instructions like this. It takes an extra hour or two of work, but either do the three dropdown boxes or give them a free-form text field which is fairly intelligent with a suggestion that tells them how to phrase things and then attempts to discern their intent when they write things in a way which is not ambiguous.
For example, 3/25/1982 and 25/3/1982 and 1982 Mar 25 are all trivially recognizable and unambiguous. Should someone type in 3 4 82, two hours of work will let you say "We really care about your tax return being accurate so we want to check: is your birth date [March 4th, 1982], [April 3rd, 1982] or [something else?]"
You would additionally benefit from microcopy on this page to the general effect of "Your data is totally secure -- we use bank grade encryption [and blah blah blah]. You can review your return before we send it to the tax authorities."
Thank you for the feedback. :-)
You are absolutely correct about users ignoring and mis-interpreting instructions, we constantly struggle with this. The suggestion is very good.
I find the multi-year-dropdown cumbersome, but maybe it is more functional and there's less probability of a mistake! One minor thing I'd like to add is users in India typically write date in the form of DD/mm/YYYY.
You could still let people type in the year, as that is less ambiguous, but have dropdowns for day and month. Or just have a dropdown for month.
Yes, good idea.
Or just use a date picker which comes up when the field gets focus.
I think pretty much everyone in Commonwealth countries uses dd/mm/yyyy. We use it in Canada too.
Maybe show a calendar with a dropdown select menu for the year?
I don't mind putting in the date really. 25/3/1982 seems to be really unambiguous and clear - well a date control could be added, but I don't think it is needed.
I have questions on passwords though. What's the reason you made this? Also what could be the worst case in sharing the password with an unknown website?