by D. Sproul | March 1st, 2009
I have to take issue with the design of most online forms, hoping that these issues will stop. I am so tired of drop-down lists for the state. Why, you ask? When someone is typing in their city, they tab to the next field (should be the “state” field, but sometimes it jumps to the “zip code” field). If your hands are already typing on the keyboard, it is not helpful to have to stop and reach over to use the mouse to go back to the state field (from zip code) and choose the state from the list. Sometimes you can tab from the “city” field to “state”, and then hit the first letter of your state, and use arrows to move down the list from there. That’s acceptable. But when it tabs to the zip field, skipping the state, it makes me irate! It would be faster to just let me continue typing and add a two letter state code.
The Cure:
Filling out zip code should make the computer fill in the city and state, right? The example above is based on paper forms, not the website-driven internet reality of having the computer look up something on its own to make your life easier.
That’s my two cents on the design of forms.
