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Cont: Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 11

TragicMonkey said:
It's best not to leave calculations in the hands of the end users. Make them tell you what they think they want, gently correct them into wanting the right thing, then return results that nobody can prove aren't precisely what they think you meant when you told them what they're supposed to mean. If there are any questions explain the mechanics of the logic very thoroughly until they give up and accept what you already gave them.
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Especially given their obstinate proclivity for getting data entry wrong, PARTICULARLY DATES! Every programmer will tell you that there is yet to be a 100% successful date entry routine that a user cannot break.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Especially given their obstinate proclivity for getting data entry wrong, PARTICULARLY DATES! Every programmer will tell you that there is yet to be a 100% successful date entry routine that a user cannot break.
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Those horrible "scoll to find the year of your birth" things because users cannot be trusted to type four digits correctly. Not even month/day order issues, or whether to include a zero or not, just a simple four digit year and still they screw it up.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Those horrible "scoll to find the year of your birth" things because users cannot be trusted to type four digits correctly. Not even month/day order issues, or whether to include a zero or not, just a simple four digit year and still they screw it up.
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Man I hate the scroll to find birth year things, mostly because I'm an old fart and it takes forever to scroll back that far, especially since the default on most of those things assumes I am a baby.

Everyone is absolutely correct on not trusting users. No matter how hard you try to idiot proof things, some idiot will be perversely clever enough to screw it up.
 
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CORed said:
Man I hate the scroll to find birth year things, mostly because I'm an old fart and it takes forever to scroll back that far, especially since the default on most of those things assumes I am a baby.

Everyone is absolutely correct on not trusting users. No matter how hard you try to idiot proof things, some idiot will be perversely clever enough to screw it up.
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It amazes me sometimes how often "it seems simple enough" looks to me like a low enough bar anyone can reach, only to find out how many can't.
 
rdaneel said:
It amazes me sometimes how often "it seems simple enough" looks to me like a low enough bar anyone can reach, only to find out how many can't.
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You ever find a sticker reading "Do Not Eat" on something that is patently, obviously, incandescently not edible nor resembling anything edible? That sticker is there because somebody, somewhere, at some time decided to try to eat it.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Those horrible "scoll to find the year of your birth" things because users cannot be trusted to type four digits correctly. Not even month/day order issues, or whether to include a zero or not, just a simple four digit year and still they screw it up.
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Could be worse. My GP practice decided the verification for the "contact us" function would be your date of birth. The idiot used a java script date picker widget for appointments so it started with the current month and you clicked back a month at a time. Me being 65 that's 780 clicks.
Also I hate those scrollers as you have to start from the year which is rightmost as all the ones I've seen don't let you set the day to the 8th if today is the 7th etc.
 
Wudang said:
Could be worse. My GP practice decided the verification for the "contact us" function would be your date of birth. The idiot used a java script date picker widget for appointments so it started with the current month and you clicked back a month at a time. Me being 65 that's 780 clicks.
Also I hate those scrollers as you have to start from the year which is rightmost as all the ones I've seen don't let you set the day to the 8th if today is the 7th etc.
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Often when I have to fill in my state from the drop-down scroll, I can just type the first letter and it scrolls and fills in the corresponding states. Hitting the letter a few times quickly gets to my selection. I'm not sure if that works with numbers or all software.
 
alfaniner said:
Often when I have to fill in my state from the drop-down scroll, I can just type the first letter and it scrolls and fills in the corresponding states. Hitting the letter a few times quickly gets to my selection. I'm not sure if that works with numbers or all software.
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The well programmed date pickers will let you enter digits. In most browsers, a simple drop-down will let you jump to the first letter or digit of an entry by typing it, and better ones will let you type two or three letters or digits to zero in on the entry you want.

Also, did you know you can usually go to the next field of a form by pressing Tab? An enormous number of people don't.
 
Blue Mountain said:
The well programmed date pickers will let you enter digits. In most browsers, a simple drop-down will let you jump to the first letter or digit of an entry by typing it, and better ones will let you type two or three letters or digits to zero in on the entry you want.

Also, did you know you can usually go to the next field of a form by pressing Tab? An enormous number of people don't.
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My irk is when you've filled out one field, and it doesn't automatically jump to the next one. I'm talking fields like two-digit month or day.
 
Blue Mountain said:
The well programmed date pickers will let you enter digits. In most browsers, a simple drop-down will let you jump to the first letter or digit of an entry by typing it, and better ones will let you type two or three letters or digits to zero in on the entry you want.

Also, did you know you can usually go to the next field of a form by pressing Tab? An enormous number of people don't.
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Only if the people who created the form correctly completed the 'tab-index' methods correctly.

It's one of my most common 'internet pet peeves' how often I find systems where that hasn't been done correctly, so hitting tab jumps the cursor around the page at random.
 
I hate online forms where I have to add my city, state, and then zip code. Let me type in the zip code and then you can auto populate the city and state. Sure, there may be a few zips that cover multiple cities, but for most people this is a huge time saver.
 
novaphile said:
Only if the people who created the form correctly completed the 'tab-index' methods correctly.

It's one of my most common 'internet pet peeves' how often I find systems where that hasn't been done correctly, so hitting tab jumps the cursor around the page at random.
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I think that's what I just said. :p
 
arthwollipot said:
Ooooh, pet peeve. When web designers ignore tab order on their fields. Tab to the next logical field, please, don't jump me all over the form.
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I encounter that a lot where it's not random, it's the order in which the elements were added to the page (which I assume is the default tab order). My credit union login page had this problem for years, if you tabbed out of the user ID field it didn't take you to the next text box, which was the password entry, it took you to the text line beneath the user ID field that read "enter your User ID here". A bit amateur, I'd say.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I encounter that a lot where it's not random, it's the order in which the elements were added to the page (which I assume is the default tab order). My credit union login page had this problem for years, if you tabbed out of the user ID field it didn't take you to the next text box, which was the password entry, it took you to the text line beneath the user ID field that read "enter your User ID here". A bit amateur, I'd say.
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Learned that the hard way when setting up some data entry forms for our equipment and incident logs. While I was testing it would tab in the order they were added, which wasn't controlled for. So I had to go back in and reassign the tab order to a more reasonable and aesthetically pleasing order on the form.
 
This issue that Canadians always face is entering our Postal Code. The official format is ANA NAN. But many forms require you leave out the space while others require you enter the space. And some let you uses lower case and others force you to use upper case.

A couple of minutes of programming could save a zillion hours of data entry struggle.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
This issue that Canadians always face is entering our Postal Code. The official format is ANA NAN. But many forms require you leave out the space while others require you enter the space. And some let you uses lower case and others force you to use upper case.

A couple of minutes of programming could save a zillion hours of data entry struggle.
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Amen. My work is with the data from electronic medical records and it is insane how big the difference in quality and content is between data entered through curated lists of options and data that the users can freetext in. It's grimly hilarious when someone high up really, really, really wants to see the actual data that was directly entered into freetext fields. We try to dissuade them. "Well, we can run a few translations, group by keywords..." "No! I want to see what's actually put in there!" and then they come back an hour later looking pale and thinking back on all the medical care they've received and that maybe their doctor is illiterate and/or a chimp who slams the keyboard with a toy hammer when inputting notes.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Amen. My work is with the data from electronic medical records and it is insane how big the difference in quality and content is between data entered through curated lists of options and data that the users can freetext in. It's grimly hilarious when someone high up really, really, really wants to see the actual data that was directly entered into freetext fields. We try to dissuade them. "Well, we can run a few translations, group by keywords..." "No! I want to see what's actually put in there!" and then they come back an hour later looking pale and thinking back on all the medical care they've received and that maybe their doctor is illiterate and/or a chimp who slams the keyboard with a toy hammer when inputting notes.
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One of the best decisions someone made in the design of our system to merge medical records was every single field could be traced back to the field in the row of the csv it came from.
 
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