You're very likely to encounter a fundamental problem here: There are
many people who were born in countries that no longer exist, or who,
for other reasons are likely to enter a country name that does not
correspond to an ISO list. Not to mention that we live in a period
when the list itself is in a state of flux. One way or another, you
have to let people enter the name of the country they consider they
were born in, which means that you need to maintain a list.
This is what I did in a similar situation:
There are WAY too many countries to use a drop-down menu. I've never
seen a useful drop-down menu for the US States - and there are far
fewer of those than of countries.
I'm not clear whether you are using the ISO list as a way to error
check entries or as a way to codify entries. In either case, this is
one of those cases, where it's easiest and best to let the computer do
the standardization work.
You need 2 lists: The ISO list that you want to codify people by
The list of likely entries (see above for
why these are not the same)
Provide a text field for country.
When users enter their country, check the typed entry against your list
- If the typed entry does not correspond to an item in your list,
~ the computer generates a message with the likely correct
entry and ask if that is correct with radio buttons for yes and no
~ If yes then
= the computer displays the corrected entry
= In its database, the computer ties the entered
country to the ISO country
= the user proceeds to the rest of the data entry
~ If no then the entry is added to the computer's list of
likely entries
Or you could skip the ISO country and just spell check the entries,
which still requires a list, but a different kind of list. It also has
the potential of removing comparison possibilities if you want to do
any cross-time work on places where the country name has changed.
Good luck
kt
Katie Albers
Founder & Principal Consultant
FirstThought
User Experience Strategy & Project Management
310 356 7550
[email protected]
On Apr 15, 2009, at 7:50 AM, christine catsifas wrote:
We are developing an internal application where origin of birth is
captured. The information is stored on the client's record, but is
not used for reporting. We do not want to have to maintain a current
list of countries for the application, but to use a text field will
allow for spelling and other inaccuracies. One solution is to use a
drop down menu with the current ISO country list with an option for
'Other' which would enable a text field.
Has anyone else encountered this situation? Is there a standard
solution for this problem?
Thanks,
Christine Catsifas
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