I have had the pleasure of registering myself onto a series of different vendor apps recently. Every single one of them asked for a birthday, which is fine as they get a fake one. Every single one of them also present a "helpful" calendar picker for me to choose my birthday. And they all default to today's date!
Are newborns allowed to register?
This design oversight then requires me to tap through multiple screens to go back decades to find my (fake) birthday.
Where are the UI/UX experts? Where is the attention to detail? How is this not a fundamental failure of empathy? Of understanding what it is like to be in the user's shoes?
The sensible things to do would be:
- Provide a direct way to enter numerals. Yes, this will increase the likelihood of data entry errors, which can be caught by validation code. But it sure makes life much easier for users. Because you value your users, right?
- If you must use the calendar picker, you can at least make it default to a date that is equal to the median age of your users, or make it equal to someone who is 18 years old, today. Or whatever is the minimum age to qualify for registration.
