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Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

uxmovement.com

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Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#31

Post by jordanlev »

StillBored wrote: post #30

Uh, apparently the author didn't notice that on a couple platforms, you can generally type into a select box and it will act sorta like an autocomplete. I do this all the time for US state select boxes, I tab into them and press 'T', 'T' which generally gives me 'TX' which follows 'TN'. Select boxes are for long exclusive lists. I would like to see all the US states in a radio grouping... Not..

I hate that US states are so commonly in a dropdown/select field -- it is so much easier to just type the 2-letter code into a textbox!

(As a web developer, I of course totally understand that sometimes you need to ensure the input is the 2-letter code and not the full word or not mis-spelled... but it's not like zip code are dropdowns, and those are often more important than the state in terms of matching up to an existing record in some database somewhere.)

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#32

Post by agateau »

I disagree with the article for two reasons:

1. Many computer-illiterate users always click to switch from one input to another, so clicking on a select does not make them much slower

2. Many users are not aware that the text part of a radio button is actually clickable and will loose time precisely aiming at the round circle to select it. And they are unfortunately often right to aim at the circle because of the many loosely design pages which do not make the text part of a radio button clickable.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#33

Post by blacksmith_tb »

ramanathanrv wrote: post #27

The article is postulating only a theory. We have seen the opposite true in credit card forms where users have to input card expiry date. No matter what sort of formatting we did, users always typed expiry wrong and our JS would point it out. We finally had to abandon input text boxes in favor of select boxes for card expiry month & year. We measured the eventual success rate and that turned out to be higher as well.…

This is something that is badly implemented on many, many checkout forms, partly due to using selects/dropdowns (since they conceal how the choices are formatted), but mainly because an amazing number of sites seem to think it's reasonable to offer only January, February, March instead of the 01, 02, 03 that actually appear on all credit cards. This not only stops you from focusing that element and typing to choose it, but opens up the possibility the user will choose July for 06, for example.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#34

Post by nathancahill »

curiouslurker wrote: post #20
EdiX wrote: post #15

More users start forms than finish them Imagine if the opposite happened!

It does happen. I am from a third world country and one year my friend worked on the databases for counting election results. In certain regions where the ruling party rigged the elections, there were more votes (for preferred candidates) than registered voters! The internal database checks would not allow this and the minister in charge of elections called him in the middle of the night to complain that the system w…

Which county? Same thing happened in Guatemala where I'm from.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#35

Post by girzel »

Select menus are bad, but multiple select menus are a new level of anti-user hostility. With single select at least you can use the keyboard; with multiple select you're in for keyboard-plus-mouse-plus-squinting pain, and a real possibility of screwing it up and having to start again.

I run a site where user input often takes the form of long select menus. I'm typically dead against javascript "helpers", but this is a use case that just screams for ajax and dynamic field munging. I still haven't gotten around to doing it, though...

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#36

Post by wccrawford »

StillBored wrote: post #30

Uh, apparently the author didn't notice that on a couple platforms, you can generally type into a select box and it will act sorta like an autocomplete. I do this all the time for US state select boxes, I tab into them and press 'T', 'T' which generally gives me 'TX' which follows 'TN'. Select boxes are for long exclusive lists. I would like to see all the US states in a radio grouping... Not..

The author, and a lot of computer users. My parents would have no idea that that kind of thing could work. Even if they were told, they would likely forget because they do it so seldom.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#38

Post by StillBored »

wccrawford wrote: post #36
StillBored wrote: post #30

Uh, apparently the author didn't notice that on a couple platforms, you can generally type into a select box and it will act sorta like an autocomplete. I do this all the time for US state select boxes, I tab into them and press 'T', 'T' which generally gives me 'TX' which follows 'TN'. Select boxes are for long exclusive lists. I would like to see all the US states in a radio grouping... Not..

The author, and a lot of computer users. My parents would have no idea that that kind of thing could work. Even if they were told, they would likely forget because they do it so seldom.

Well, computer users aren't the problem its all the UX "experts" that have never read a HID document for any major platform (especially desktop ones).

I don't care if grandma once a week has to reach for the mouse to fill in an select box. What I care about are the applications/sites that break any number of imput devices (particularly keyboard, but frequently desktop touch, or pen based) because they think they know better and decide to invent some new paradigm without understanding the existing ones. This is part of my gripe with much of the last 10 years of windows, which broke a lot functional paradigms without replacing them with an alternative. Or they 1/2 broke something.

Take the right click on the task bar to open an applications system menu which worked from windows 95->vista. That operation now gives one the nearly useless option to pin the application. Now when a window is offscreen and I need to move it onscreen, and the app developer broke the alt-space keyboard combination you have to know that MS changed (and didn't really document it anywhere) the behavior too the very mac like, shift click. Pretty much the only place in windows that the mouse buttons have keyboard modifiers. Its like the guy who wrote it couldn't figure out how to add a "pin to taskbar" option to the system menu.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#39

Post by curiouslurker »

nathancahill wrote: post #34
curiouslurker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does happen. I am from a third world country and one year my friend worked on the databases for counting election results. In certain regions where the ruling party rigged the elections, there were more votes (for preferred candidates) than registered voters! The internal database checks would not allow this and the minister in charge of elections called him in the middle of the night to complain that the system w…

Which county? Same thing happened in Guatemala where I'm from.

can't say unfortunately!

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#40

Post by fibbery »

agateau wrote: post #32

I disagree with the article for two reasons: 1. Many computer-illiterate users always click to switch from one input to another, so clicking on a select does not make them much slower 2. Many users are not aware that the text part of a radio button is actually clickable and will loose time precisely aiming at the round circle to select it. And they are unfortunately often right to aim at the circle because of the man…

I think that's why they were suggesting to make it a button with a radio button inside it(?), but that seems kind of wacky to me
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