In our book "Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability" we have quite a lot of discussion about the merits or otherwise of validating input data. (More details about the book: www.formsthatwork.com )
I think the key word in your original post was "force". What makes your stakeholders think that forcing users to do something they are unwilling to do is likely to result in good data? As others have pointed out, forced data can simply be harder to detect and rectify than non-validated data. You could be storing up long-term problems with poor data quality, whereas spending design time now to find out why users are unwilling to provide the data can be a bit more troublesome now, but provide far better data quality and user experience in the long term. Luke's interesting article on Alistapart underlines this point, in my view. His research found that: - validating data that shouldn't be validated (e.g. first names) was regarded as weird and confusing (my paraphrase) by users. - speedy, immediate checking of data that should be validated (e.g. is my choice of username available?) is welcomed by users and helpful - attempting to validate data before the user has finished typing is intrusive and disliked by users (a point we explore further in our book: it's all about interrupting the user's turn in the conversation). Underlying this, I think we need to encourage stakeholders to stand back and think about _overall_ user experience and the underlying business reasons for publishing the form: factors that I call 'relationship' in our book. What is the priority here: the immediate 'tidiness' of the data as collected at this instant, or the long term quality of the data that will be relied on for the continuing business relationship? Best Caroline Jarrett www.formsthatwork.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
