Calendar problems to pick years

Need help
1

Hi!

I’ve found that if I add a “time/date picker” to allow users to select their date of birth, it doesn’t work well because you cannot go more than 5 years in the past (and 5 years in the future). Is that normal? Is there any way to use a calendar picker to select a date in the long past -not only 5 years in the past-?

Thanks and best regards!

2

Is there any reason you’re using a calendar instead of using a date picker?
If all you need it to pick dates then you can used any of the following elements:

  1. The default date/time picker
  2. The Air Date/Time picker plugin
  3. Input field with Content Format set to Date or Date_2
    I will personally recommend the second option( Air Date/Time picker) not because i’m the developer but because it addresses some of the usability issues with the other two elements.
    If you choose to go with the default date/time picker make sure to check the option "Display dropdown to select month/year" else your users will have to perform hundreds of clicks to to their birth date.
    If you’re using the date input field option note that on there are some issues on mobile devices.

Happy bubbling.

1 Like
3

Hi,

Thanks a lot, @seanhoots. Indeed, I meant the date/time picker, not a calendar (my mistake). However, I can´t select years previous to 5 years in the past… Am I the only one with this problem? I tried the Air Date/Time picker plugin, but after some navigation test, many people has reported that it´s not very user-friendly, so I need a standard one.

Thanks a lot and looking forward to knowing a bit more about a solution for my problems.

Best regards!

4

Perhaps the best solution is to collect the inputs in the same way facebook.com does on their homepage (when not logged in) - which is to have 3 fields, each of which are separate drop-downs. I suspect they’ve tested every possible variation of this and decided this gets the best conversions for their audience.

Then, translate those inputs into a date field and store it on form submission.

That’d be my approach anyway. Best of luck!

Scott

1 Like
5

Hi @eurogar,

I will be happy to know exactly what the concerns with the Air Date/Time plugin are. What makes the picker not user- friendly to your users? Need feedback to be able to improve it.

As @sridharan.s suggested you can use the 3 dropdown fields. Have used that approach in some cases myself.

Thanks
Good luck.

2 Likes
6

Hi guys,

@sridharan.s, thanks a lot for the alternative. It´s a pity there is no a perfect solution, so let´s be a bit creative…

@seanhoots, thanks as well. A lot of people has reported that the selection of a year is difficult (groups, sub-groups and so on), and that there is a bug when they try to write the year manually (when they try to delete some data, as the year, a lot of info related to the time zone is displayed, so they cannot make the changes correctly). That´s why I have to stop using it. Hope it´s helpful :slightly_smiling_face:

Best regards!

7

Hi @eurogar,
Thanks for the feedback.
With regards to selecting the year, it is a very common design for picking years from a date picker especially on mobile devices.
From usability point of view it is always good to follow what is common and expected.

This is actually not a bug. It is by design. You cannot manually enter a date in the Air Date/Time picker.
So when you click in the date input the data shown is by design to let you know what time will be stored in your database. This is desired by some users.
If it is confusing users i will remove that information. But again note that the input is not manually editable.
In a future version i may consider enabling manually entering the date as well as using the picker.

Do you have some ideas in mind for a more creative design that is very user friendly?
I think the 3 dropdown approach is very simple, user-friendly and efficient.

Thanks again for the feedback

1 Like
8

@seanhoots, thanks for your words and efforts. I didn´t know you made the plugin. Good job, really!

My feedback is bases on a navigation tool I run today with some users (actually, users that are well used to the IT world in general, some of them with good programming skills), bu it could happen that you find that other people don´t have the same issues than my testers.

When you´re designing a Signup form or a submission form, you have to be really careful about the UX. Otherwise, the churn rate could increase dramatically. This is why I run navigation and usability tests.

Another problem we found is that the placeholder usually shows the logo of the plugin, so it can be a bit weird (that´s my opinion, not users´ opinion, though!)

Actually, what would be great now for me is a 3-dropdown menu in a row: DD MM YYYY, al together, and it automatically parses the 3 values and creates a single DD/MM/YYYY date to be stored in a database as a simple date. That would be the simplest and most efficient thing for me. If this also displays a calendar that is filtered as you select values in the 3 dropdown menus (once you select the year, the calendar goes to that year, then you select the month and the calendar goes to that month), that would be super-user friendly :slight_smile:

Thanks for your effort and let´s keep going!

Best regards!

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