Michael Plant

So I have this professed love for accessibility and usability. While I’ll admit I definitely don’t know enough about both I have a desire to get my hands on everything I can. If you haven’t read anything from Interface Designer Luke Wroblewski then head over to his site and check out his online slides from his Web Form Design Best Practices on July 18, 2008.

If you are serious about web form design and accessibility then I have just inadvertently stumbled into what I have dubbed “Real-Time Form Feedback”. So imagine, as you are filling out a questionnaire on a web site; totally uninterested in the fact that they, are requesting more data from you, then you were seeking form them to begin with. But understanding the nature of the beast, I know this is how they formulate their response to my interest, so I obligingly begin answering the questions.

On the second page I stopped and spoke to Amanda for a moment and suddenly realized I was missing the coolest addition to a form that I have seen yet. Not only did I get instant recognition that I was typing in the field, but because my response was technically less than 1; I typed -1, in the hopes that someone, if a real person reading the data, would realize I wanted to say less then one. Instantly, to the right side of the form field it simply requested that I, “Please enter a number between 0 and 100.” I immediately changed my answer to 1 and to my surprise, it responded with real-time feedback stating my response was “1 Year.”

Now that is what made me stop… I turned to Amanda and said now that is cool. I immediately typed in .7 to see if I was “allowed” to input a decimal point, and as I expected, I was given my response, “0.7 Years.”

In a time where we use JavaScript libraries everywhere in order to improve the “WOW” factor of our sites, it seems we often spend the least time with the most important aspects of our work, user interface. Everything you do on the internet is about data and information. Users are looking for it and we are hopefully delivering it easily.

Now think about how easy it would be to just throw a little JavaScript in their and have Real-Time Form Feedback helping your user complete the task of giving his information to you. I was perfectly willing to just hand it over, considering the expectation of great information in return. But imagine if me, of all people, got frustrated with the fact that I had to rewrite my data again due to a very informal error created after I had, in my mind completed the task. This is the same guy, that will close a form the second I see “that” Captcha.

Instead, I was given immediate feedback that not only helped me complete the field properly but gave me the ability to give a more accurate response by realizing I could still say less than 1 by using .7 which is 8.4 months.

The site is called PayScale and it promises to give you a salary comparison for your field. Obviously in return for you giving them your career information.

Ha! Ha! I am underpaid! I think I’ll print that out for the bosses

As suggested by Teresa, let’s debate this. Leave some comments and tell me what you think!