Intuitive Date Input Selection?
“DateBox is a pure JavaScript library using DHTML and advanced Date parsing to generate the date based on the grammar passed. The purpose of DateBox is to simplify the date entering process using grammatical terms we are all familiar with.”
“Intuitive” is such a loaded term but let’s play with it.
Is this tool intuitive or not? Consider that it is not generally intuitive. It might be intuitive but that is because the programmer was able to catch the case that met your needs this time. If the programmer didn’t meet your needs would it be intuitive still? If it worked this time but not next time would it be intuitive?
At best, this slick little tool is specifically intuitive. It is good when it is good. That doesn’t make it intuitive. Usable? Certainly. It handles date input selection very well and it covers many cases and exceptions. It even fails in a reasonable manner.
Intuitive? Generally, for everyone, in all cases? Nope.
January 27th, 2006 at 8:13 am
Test (I tried to post a comment, but nothing came up)
January 27th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Since I cannot post my actual comment, I have posted it here instead: http://www.baekdal.com/x/webword.htm
January 27th, 2006 at 8:51 am
Intuitive is a word I very much dislike, and about which I’ve previously ranted on my own blog. Intuition is variable between individuals, depending on their education, their prior experience, the house they grew up, the country the live in etc etc etc etc etc . . .
Using the word intuitive masks all these differences, by suggesting that interfaces can be objectively ‘intuitive’, so I agree with what you’ve said in the article: usable is a much better term.
Numbers are a good example: I type “1.523″. What do I mean? In the US, I mean one whole unit and five hundred and twenty three parts of a unit. In France I mean one thousand five hundred and twenty three. How do we make this number entry intuitive? By trying to make it understand our user’s experience . . .