Written by Dick CarlsonI ran across this amazing usability study of how “inline validation” helps visitors complete your web forms more easily and with a better experience from Luke Wroblewski at “A List Apart”.
(For those of you among the non-technical, it just means that as you type in your answer the software gives you feedback on whether or not it can accept that answer, or you have to say something else — rather than waiting until you answer all 25 questions and hit “submit” at the bottom.)
I’ve long railed at my developers to do this, and they keep whining about how hard it is and that they don’t want to do it. Now I’ve got the ammunition. Ha!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Great point! Personally I use a 3rd party validation framework for most of my ASP.NET web applications that makes most validation that can be done client-side only a snap. (Rules that require server interact take a bit more effort.)
But why put all the blame on developers? Any kind of additional validation work (even with my easy-peasy framework) increases the effort involved in the project and hence the cost. And some customers don’t want to pay for it, even when the developers explain the advantages. And in fact, I have one customer for whom cost doesn’t appear to be an issue, but he also doesn’t seem to see the benefits. In fact, he’s not that enthusiastic about validation rules period (other than “required”), because he thinks “users should be smart enough to figure it out”. Yikes!
I’ve seen that “users should be smart enough” mindset often–among arrogant or clueless developers, among impatient managers, and among various poohbahs and satraps who don’t have to actually use the system in question.
Most budgets don’t allow it, but a good antidote is to have the developer watch typical users trying to accomplish what they want to get done despite the software’s barriers. Even better: the developer and the client he or she is working for.
And they’re not allowed to speak to the testers while this happens. That eliminates the cop-out of explaining why something’s intuitively obvious.