Reviewing Data Input Designs

Reviewing data input designs

The University Of Manchester- School of computer science

This service is a feedback form on The University of Manchester- School of computer science’s website. It has been created so that the users can feedback to the University on any comments they have about the website or any problems they experienced during their viewing of the website. The information asked for is your name, your family name, your email address, comments and problems. None of the information seems irrelevant because it is all needed to identify the person giving feedback on the site. 

On the form, they have given an example of what you must put in the correct fields. For example for the comments field, they have written ‘any comments about this site’. This is an example of good design because it makes it clear for the user what they must write and where.

However, on the form the creators of the site have chosen to name a box ‘family name’. I see this as an example of bad design because the user may become confused by the term family name. People recognize the word ‘surname’ more than they do ‘family name’ so changing this on the form would improve the over input design.

Another example of bad design is the fact that the creators have decided to put ‘(required)’ next to the name, family name and email fields. This is good, however what about the comments and problem section? Are they not ‘required’? The whole point of the form is to obtain users feedback (comments and problems) yet they have decided against making these two fields a requirement.

Twitter sign-up page

This service provided by Twitter is an online form you must fill out in order to sign-up to the social networking site. The information asked for is your full name, email address, desired password and a desired username. None of the information provided seems irrelevant because it is all required to set up your Twitter account.

There are only four sections to fill in on the form which is good because the user won’t want to fill in loads of details when signing up to the site. It is also clear on what you should put in the fields. For example, the creators of Twitter have decided to use ‘full name’ instead of just ‘name’. This makes it clear to the user that they must enter their full name, not just their first name.

The trainline.com search engine

This service provided by the trainline.com is a search engine because it searches through the site for the correct train times and tickets which match the needs entered into the form.  The form requires the user to input information regarding departure, destination, how many adults/children will be travelling and also whether you have a rail card. None of the information provided by the trainline.com is irrelevant because all the information is needed to narrow down which train times/tickets suits the user best.

An example of good design is that the form is dark blue. This will be the first thing the user sees on the site as it stands out from the rest of the page. This form is more than likely what the user needed and so it is easily accessible and stands out well.

When I look at this form, my first reaction is that it looks complicated. This would be true to people who don’t often book train tickets online as the boxes are only named after one word. For example, one of the fields just says ‘out’. This is an example of poor design because people won’t necessarily know what it means.