I would try another approach: use drop-downs but modify the typing behavior, so if you type 12 it selects 12,not 2.
That way is easier to use on mobile, faster for all use cases on the desktop.
Asking for a date of birth (2013)
11–20 of 97 posts
Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)
#12It's 2022 and input=date should be used instead for date pickers on the Web.
https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system-backlog/issu...
Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)
#13So macs appear to be used for testing, handy to know.
(D)D/MM(M)/YYYY
Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)
#14> In this design, we use a text field for day, month and year. So far this has tested well, with the main issue being that some people pause and wonder whether to include a leading zero (for example '01' ).
Just put it in the example below...
Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)
#15That was pretty light on details. Why havent they tested a date picker widget or used native date pickers on ios/android?
I will take a wild guess that they try to only use Web APIs that works everywhere and are consistent.
Consistent for someone who uses the same site on lots of different devices and browsers. I wonder how many of those there are?
Not consistent for someone who uses lots of different sites on one device. There are about seven billion of those.
"Consistent experience across devices" is not just a waste of time, it's actively harmful.
Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)
#16Usually the best solution is not to ask for date of birth. I guess about one in ten of websites that ask me that actually have a legitimate reason for needing to know.
(In the present case, a UK Government website might well have a legitimate reason.)
Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)
#17One thing I always felt was an anti-pattern was in any input where months are numbers they don't explicitly mention in an adjacent label the name of the month. Besides the US/UK order confusion, you'd be surprised how often people think August is the 7th month of the year.
It depends on what the date input is for. If it’s for e.g. a credit card expiry date, then the date is already in numbers, so you may have the August=7 mental conversion errors but in the other direction.
Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)
#18Usually the best solution is not to ask for date of birth. I guess about one in ten of websites that ask me that actually have a legitimate reason for needing to know. (In the present case, a UK Government website might well have a legitimate reason.)
If you're verifying (air quotes) something like whether someone is 21, I wonder if it would make better sense to ask the year of their birth, then ask the month and day only if they answered with the year where it mattered. You don't need to be that granular most of the time, so why put people through the hassle?
Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)
#19One thing I always felt was an anti-pattern was in any input where months are numbers they don't explicitly mention in an adjacent label the name of the month. Besides the US/UK order confusion, you'd be surprised how often people think August is the 7th month of the year.
When I registered for Lufthansa FF, the form was just numbers. My birthdate has two single-digit numbers in it, and I ended up with Month-Date backwards (US vs. rest of the world conventions - e.g., 4/8 is either April 8, or Aug 4).
It wasn't an issue, but a minor annoyance to fix it every time I traveled, so that it matched my travel documents.
Until a couple of years ago, when I was traveling back from Germany and the flight crew thought it would be nice to surprise me with a bottle of champagne at midnight on my "birthday".
They were so proud of doing this over the top "random kindness" (it was pretty thoughtful), and couldn't figure out why I was confused and annoyed. I still feel bad for not acting more excited or grateful...
Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)
#20Do note that their new guidelines at https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/dates/#asking-... suggest using `type="text" inputmode="numeric"` instead of `type="number"`.