<from your site>
Now imagine you need to set your birthdate using the above control.

We could initialise the date with an arbitrary date such as: 1980.06.15.


One of the problems with setting an arbitrary date is that users might
not change it to the appropriate date unless it actually behooves them
(they get some sort of reward for being below or above a certain age),
thus if you are trying to track the age groups of your users, this would
skew your results. Since they won't get an error when they try to submit
the form and if they don't get some type of reward, then why would they
take the time?

Another problem would be that it might make people think that the dates
start at 1980, thus no one older than 27-28 could sign up for whatever
service/product you're offering. This would skew the age group that you
end up with.

In looking at your tumbler, my first thought is what happens when I
click the tumbler? There seems to be no way to go up or down as in a
normal up/down arrow spin button control, so if it starts at 1980, does
clicking it once move is to 1979 or 1981.

Courtney Jordan 

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of
Shaun O'Connell
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 11:10 AM
To: disc...@ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Type or select?

Hi IXDA'ers,

I was trawling through the archives looking for a suitable discussion
topic
to post against, and this one came up.

I was recently inspired by a blog entry concerning calendar-based
date/time
pickers<http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/lovemores-world/2009/02/25/an-effect
ive-jquery-date-time-picker>to
create a more intuitive date/time picker.
I'm not sure about the rest of you, but some calendar controls frustrate
me
as a user.  Sometimes I'm forced to use a calendar control because it's
easier than interpreting the format for the single date field.

Anyway, the post got me thinking about a different approach to date/time
pickers, leaning heavily on those old mechanical alarm clocks that had
dials
or cogs next to the hour and minute displays.  Read more on the idea
here:
http://ndorfin.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/rl-date-picker/

Will this idea end up being harder to understand than a fly-out calendar
picker? i.e. Does convention over-rule out-of-the-box UI ideas?

Has anyone had any experience testing up-down-arrow or slider controls
in
web-based forms?  Could something like my 'tumbler' idea work if the
graphic
design is done properly?

I'd love to have some feedback on this idea.  Thanks!

Cheers,
Shaun

On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 11:14 AM, Pietro Desiato
<pietro.desi...@gmail.com>wrote:

> hi all,
>
> I think that the date format could be an issue. I'd rather prefer a
> text field for day and year and a dropdown for month (it's also
> easier to select the month instead of either writing it or understand
> which format has been used). If you feel that the conversational
> paradigm is the way to go (as I do), think also about the label you
> want to associate to these fields. Maybe (I don't know your
> context\users) you can "melt" these input fileds with the label.
> Something like "I am born on [month dropdown] [day], [year]. Imho
> the calendar is a complex interaction (opening, browsing, selecting,
> closing) and I'd avoid it.
>
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> Posted from the new ixda.org
> http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36010
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________
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