Re: Writing Dates

When I design UIs I always like date entry fields to be flexible, accepting 
input in a number of different formats. However, I did come across an 
exception to my "be flexible in accepting input" guideline when I worked on 
a reservations system for a major airline. This system was used by the 
airline's agents, not by flying customers.

Since the airline is international, and has agents in many countries around 
the world, they wanted to avoid the month/day mix-up that might occur given 
the U.S. versus the rest of the world convention for entering dates. The 
system they used was DD mmm (or D mmm) where "mmm" spelled out the three 
letter abbreviation for the month (Jan, for example). Both the day of the 
month and the month were entered into a single input field for efficiency 
reasons. (A date picker was available, but was optional.) Since the 
reservation system could not make reservations for than 330 days out (a 
business policy), there was no need to enter a year...the year could be 
determined automatically.

I guess my point in writing this (instead of taking the survey) is that as 
in most cases in our field, the right answer to the question is "it 
depends." In the case of this particular client, their set of users (agents, 
not casual users), and their business logic ("can't make a reservation more 
than 11 months away") led to a different solution than what I've used for 
other applications.

--Jim Askew,
Louisville, Colorado

--------------------------------------------------
From: "William Hudson" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 4:09 AM
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: Writing Dates

> (Apologies if you receive more than one of these.)
>
> I am interested in how people write dates given free choice. Please take
> my survey at
> http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229BZRYLLZ3
>
> It should take less than 30 seconds.
>
> Feel free to pass this on to friends and colleagues.
>
> Regards,
>
> William Hudson
> Syntagm Ltd
> Design for Usability
> UK 01235-522859
> World +44-1235-522859
> US Toll Free 1-866-SYNTAGM
> mailto:[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>
> http://www.syntagm.co.uk <http://www.syntagm.co.uk/>
> skype:williamhudsonskype
>
> Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).
> Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon
> OX14 2DS.
>
>
>
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