[HN Gopher] Asking for a date of birth (2013)
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Asking for a date of birth (2013)
Author : edward
Score : 58 points
Date : 2022-06-16 12:40 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (designnotes.blog.gov.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (designnotes.blog.gov.uk)
| durnygbur wrote:
| The dozenade 2000-2012 will surely make many people confused and
| many badly designed UIs will let incorrect date to slip through.
| Myself have one date from this range on one of the documents and
| have to check twice every time I need to enter somewhere this
| date.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| you're off by one, that's a trizenade
| nishs wrote:
| I've seen some US government forms use [01] [Jan]
| [1970]
|
| where [01]: one- or two-digit day, typed
| manually [Jan]: three-letter month, picked from a dropdown
| [1970]: four-digit year, typed manually
|
| I think this is a good (the best?) presentation.
|
| By using a manual day entry instead of providing a dropdown, as
| the programmer you can avoid requiring client-side logic to
| restrict the number of days displayed in the dropdown based on
| the chosen month and year (e.g. 31 for Jan., 28/29 for Feb.,
| etc.).
|
| Having the month represented in letters, not numbers, minimizes
| the chances of user confusion between `dd-mm` and `mm-dd`
| presentations.
|
| The year presentation matches the one in the OP article.
| Tepix wrote:
| > I think this is a good (the best?) presentation.
|
| I don't think so. It has problems with i18n. For example, the
| abbreviation for December is "Dic" in spanish and "Dez" in
| German, not "Dec" as in english.
| nishs wrote:
| The twelve month names for the month dropdown could be
| localized, unless I'm missing something. The entries don't
| necessarily have to each be three characters; they can be
| longer if the localization requires it.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| It is. It's the military format.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| So macs appear to be used for testing, handy to know.
|
| (D)D/MM(M)/YYYY
| needle0 wrote:
| Different cultures have different standards for ordering day,
| month, and year. Encountering one that you're not used to throws
| you off quite hard, especially regarding day & month since
| they're both often two digits.
|
| Relying on input=date would probably abstract that away at the
| client side, but as people said, browser support for it still
| seems to be bad.
| grenoire wrote:
| Do 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"`.
| moron4hire wrote:
| What does that do? Allow letters to be input in the field, but
| show a numeric keyboard on touchscreens? Wy would you do that?
| joelanman wrote:
| we have a blog post on why:
| https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2020/02/24/why-the-gov-uk-
| des...
| rougka wrote:
| UK gov development is very impressive when I compare it to the
| government websites here which have a distinct 90's scent. Both
| in open source projects and these design blogs. Seems like a
| highly professional software organization
| mihaic wrote:
| One 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.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I heard a standup with a very dark joke, something to the
| effect of, 9/11 had a silver lining because now he could
| remember what number month September was.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| It took me years to figure out that 9/11 was not on the 9th
| November. I always wondered why there was no snow on the
| images of the incident. Americans and their correct date
| system...
| adastra22 wrote:
| Well, it doesn't snow in New York in November, either.
| corrral wrote:
| Confession: I'm nearly 40 damn years old, and I still second-
| guess month numbers enough that I usually just count starting
| from January, ticking them off on my fingers, and going through
| them one by one, to reach the one I need.
| function_seven wrote:
| Same here, but _only_ for July and August!
|
| I don't know why, but I can easily map 1-6 to Jan-Jun. And I
| can easily map 9-12 with Sep-Dec. But July and August always
| trip me up.
| tehlike wrote:
| Must be software engineers.
| zarzavat wrote:
| 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.
| hbn wrote:
| There's an unspoken privilege in being born on a day beyond the
| 12th of any given month, because you'll get a validation error
| if you mix up the day and month in a form
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I was born on December 9. The doctors wanted to do a
| C-section for my kid on December 9 but I said to my wife that
| my kid shouldn't have to share a birthday with me, so they
| scheduled for December 14 instead. This might have been a
| better argument than not wanting to share.
| pphysch wrote:
| Even better, just have the same value for each
| scoot wrote:
| Yup. 11/11 for me. Can't go to far wrong. Just wish I was
| born in 2011 (for reasons other than having the same
| number!) :)
| Lex-2008 wrote:
| oh wow, you don't even need to move your finger when
| entering digits - it's "one"s all along!
| blitzar wrote:
| I have to take off a shoe when it gets to the tail end months
| of the year.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Only two that don't fit on fingers, so you could leave your
| shoes on and count feet for November and December. :)
| blitzar wrote:
| well well, I think you might be on to something. This is
| going to save me quite a lot of time, not to mention that I
| might be able to go back to wearing shoes with laces again
| and not having my productivity totally destroyed.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I have, occasionally, thought that (for example) October = 8th
| month because it starts with "Octo".
|
| Yes, I know, historically it was.
| FredPret wrote:
| That would be cool. So June would be Hexember, Hexober, or
| Hexuabry. January would be odd though - Mono-vember.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Not quite - they're off by two. Historically July and
| August were Quintilis (fifth) and Sextilis (sixth) before
| they were renamed in terms of Julius Caesar and Augustus
| Caesar.
| jcstauffer wrote:
| 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...
| protomyth wrote:
| Saw one site that had buttons for the decade (e.g. 1960's) that
| turned into a group of ten year buttons (e.g. 1960, 1961) and a
| back button. Thought it was a bit faster than the standard drop
| down. Month / Day did the same thing. Wish I remembered where it
| was, might have been some conference registration site.
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| > 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...
| dsjoblom wrote:
| Or just allow both versions (01 or 1). Edit: this works best if
| the form is validated client-side, otherwise you still get
| people wondering what is allowed in the field because there is
| no immediate response to input.
| Daimanta wrote:
| Interestingly, some people have administrative birthdays were
| they are born on an uncertain day of the month which is
| registered as day 0. So, somebody could be born the 0th of june
| 1950.
|
| If there is even less information available the same goes for the
| month of the year. I have seen passports where people are born on
| 0-0-1970
|
| Must be a frustrating situation in many software systems.
| silveira wrote:
| What really bothers me is that most of time when the date of
| birth is asked it is done as a way to determine some age
| criteria. The same could be achieved simply asking "are you older
| than N years old? [Yes] or [No]".
|
| For example, I want to buy Quake on the Nintendo eShop. The
| website wants to know my age in order to show me a age restricted
| game. So it will always ask me the age same question even if I
| have already answered hundred of times. So does Steam and many
| other websites. Is this a by-product of some compliance or self-
| regulatory requirement like ESRB?
|
| If not, it would make much more sense to just ask a yes/no
| question for the age criteria. Usually this argument is answered
| with "what about fraud?". Well, asking the birthday is no
| guarantee at all that the birthday is correct. It only adds
| friction.
|
| As a small revenge I always use an absurdly old birth date on
| these forms. This way if they are collecting this data, my input
| will be discarded or pollute their datasets.
| 0xcafecafe wrote:
| I remember some liquor site in the US (totalwine IIRC) used to
| ask are you born after <date> to ascertain age and it worked
| pretty well.
| tyrfing wrote:
| > The same could be achieved simply asking "are you older than
| N years old? [Yes] or [No]".
|
| The term of art seems to be "neutral age gate", and something
| like a checkbox to indicate you're under 13 is explicitly not
| OK according to FTC guidance. So where it's to comply with
| government regulations, this is not enough.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-co...
| jfoster wrote:
| > As a small revenge I always use an absurdly old birth date on
| these forms. This way if they are collecting this data, my
| input will be discarded or pollute their datasets.
|
| Or the micro-frauds get detected, linked to your credit card &
| email address, your identity, and credit rating. Before you
| know it, your transactions are failing fraud checks, you can't
| get loans, and BigTechs unilaterally cancel your accounts.
|
| I exaggerate, but I fear we may be heading in that direction.
| vinaypai wrote:
| Literally no part of this makes sense. You can fear anything
| you want, but this scenario only exists in your imagination.
| lfpeb8b45ez wrote:
| And China.
| 33degrees wrote:
| > Is this a by-product of some compliance or self-regulatory
| requirement like ESRB?
|
| Yes, Steam addressed this an announcement a few years ago:
|
| > Q: Why do you KEEP asking my damn age throughout the store?
|
| > A: We're with you on this. Unfortunately, many rating
| agencies have rules that stipulate that we cannot save your age
| for longer than a single browsing session. It's frustrating,
| but know we're filling out those age gates too.
|
| https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail...
| Geonode wrote:
| Steam always remembers my date of birth: Jan. 1 1900, just
| like half their users.
| unsafecast wrote:
| For me it's always 1990-01-01
| zhfliz wrote:
| why isn't 1970-01-01 more common?
| Tepix wrote:
| It's surprising that they are not even allowed to remember
| that you are older than, say, 21.
| cowsup wrote:
| I can understand the "better safe than sorry" mindset. If I
| have a 15 year old son who wants to play Resident Evil, I'd
| be willing to let him play it, despite the "M" rating. But
| I wouldn't then want a service to set it so that he's
| allowed to view M-rated games in perpetuity, since M-rated
| games can vary greatly.
| BFay wrote:
| I also enter an absurdly old date, and usually I'll try setting
| an impossible day/month combo like February 31st... sometimes
| it actually works!
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| I always go for January 1st, 1970. It is (nearly) always
| accepted on the form because it is a perfectly valid date to
| be born, but I like to imagine that some analyst is pulling
| their hair out thinking they have a null coalescing bug.
| Tepix wrote:
| 1970-01-01 is the way to go! The more, the merrier...
| function_seven wrote:
| My favorite irritating date is "1969-12-31" because now I
| know I have 2 problems: the coalescing bug and a timezone
| issue. :)
| MikeTaylor wrote:
| Usually 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.)
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I tried to help my boss once to log onto Zoom for a meeting.
| The site asked for date of birth, and not wanting to give any
| PII I naturally entered some bullshit but plausible date.
|
| Well Zoom locked him out for some time for trying to lie I
| guess and that meeting had to be moved to Teams.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| This is interesting. What triggered them to think this was a
| lie? Had your boss previously entered a different birthdate,
| which they remembered and then compared to?
| [deleted]
| 13of40 wrote:
| 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?
| hyperman1 wrote:
| 21 according to which jurisdiction? Is the USA the only one
| that counts?
| bombcar wrote:
| If they really cared, they'd do something more exact than
| asking for date of birth; it's just a "formality" to comply
| with some law somewhere.
| viscountchocula wrote:
| The point is that they can easily comply while asking for
| less pii.
| [deleted]
| birdman3131 wrote:
| The one I have seen that I think was the best is a combo of both.
| Not a web developer so not sure the actual name but it was a text
| field that filters. So when you click in the text field it does
| the year drop down but also accepts standard text input. If you
| then type in 197 it then only shows 1970-1979 in the drop down.
| jjgreen wrote:
| (2013)
| cabirum wrote:
| That was pretty light on details. Why havent they tested a date
| picker widget or used native date pickers on ios/android?
| yohannparis wrote:
| I will take a wild guess that they try to only use Web APIs
| that works everywhere and are consistent.
| MikeTaylor wrote:
| 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.
| dsjoblom wrote:
| Have you tried this in practice? It is extremely awkward to
| pick a date of birth using a regular date picker. It is worse
| than all the options mentioned in the article. It is only
| appropriate for picking dates close to the current date.
| ape4 wrote:
| Except for babies ;)
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| In the three button design, what about splitting the year? For
| example 19/20 0-9/0-9
|
| You wouldn't have to list off all of the years, and no typing
| which could be helpful for people with disability or mobility
| concerns.
| joelanman wrote:
| author here, just to note our current design pattern for this is
| slightly updated: https://design-
| system.service.gov.uk/components/date-input/
| Aachen wrote:
| Very cool to see author responses on an article from 2013!
|
| I was wondering why you chose to use the placeholder attribute
| to show labels rather than the (afaik recommended) usage of
| showing example values. The form shows example values, but
| outside the input fields. Did you test both ways and this
| turned out to be better after all, or this was just an
| implementation which worked fine in testing so it stuck?
| joelanman wrote:
| I think I just didn't realise how poor placeholders are in
| general at that point, compared to just having visible
| labels/examples. Placeholders disappear when you start typing
| and have poor contrast
| DeathArrow wrote:
| 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.
| hendry wrote:
| It's 2022 and input=date should be used instead for date pickers
| on the Web.
|
| https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system-backlog/issu...
| Spivak wrote:
| The problem is that the web didn't make the right separation
| between form fields (the composite values you submit) and the
| actual user facing widgets you use to produce those values.
|
| I want to be able to do things like <input
| type=date widget="calendarpicker"> <input type=date
| widget="mmddyypicker"> <input type=date
| widget="mycustomcomponent">
|
| so you're stuck with not great UX if the platform-specific
| picker sucks for your use-case which for this is absolutely
| does. If you're born in 1950 on iOS have fun spinning the year
| wheel for a while instead of just typing in the number.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I find that at least on iOS, selecting a birthdate through that
| is pretty cumbersome. It's great for dates where you can have a
| close-ish preset value and where day-of-week matters though.
| ourcat wrote:
| The cross-browser support and standardisation for `input=date`
| (and `input=datetime`) has been notoriously poor for years.
| It's still only listed as 'partially' supported on some
| browsers on caniuse.
|
| That's why so many people roll their own.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The interface looks usually nice, but input=date is horrible to
| manipulate in many implementations.
|
| On iOS choosing year/month is the rolodex interface, as slow
| and clunky as usual, especially if you're flipping it for 40~60
| years.
|
| On android it moves month by month at most, so it's even
| funnier to swipe for decades.
|
| I think the type=number alternative with validation +
| confirmation text with the month in letters is a better choice.
| oritsnile wrote:
| On Android you can also click on the year and it should give
| you a grid view of years
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Thanks, I didn't realize the year on the corner was
| clickable.
|
| On Pixel (android 12), it opens a scrolling list,
| temporarily replacing the calendar month/day view.
| bouke wrote:
| But how is that easier than just tapping 4 numbers?
| Tepix wrote:
| It depends. Perhaps for blind people tapping 4 numbers
| isn't so easy.
| Tepix wrote:
| iOS has improved it's date picker which is precisely why you
| should use input=date in the first place. It may have
| accessibility (a11y) benefits, too.
| joelanman wrote:
| author here, for known dates like date of birth it's still
| easier and faster to just type it in. Also type=date has
| accessibility problems and the design varies a lot, so people
| might get a decent experience on one browser/OS and a really
| poor one on another
| Tepix wrote:
| Still, if many sites use this standard the users will be used
| to its UI and the vendor has a chance to improve it for
| everyone when people complain about it.
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(page generated 2022-06-16 23:01 UTC)