Lunchtime Redesign Challenge: Phone Number Entry
I ran across this section of a form today and thought it could use some improvement, simplification, etc. Rather than saying, ‘this is bad’ and leaving it at that, I thought there could be an interesting conversation about how to improve it. With that, it’s the first of what I’ve dubbed the ‘lunchtime redesign challenge’.
With that, I challenge you – interaction design superstar – to take a minute over lunch today or tomorrow and sketch up an improvement and post it in the comments. You have until 1pm Central, Friday August 4th 2006. I’ll post my solution and the offending website at that time as well.
RE: Fred’s questions below:
The company in question is a service company with operations in the US, Canada, and the UK. The online form is used by customers to schedule visits to the customer’s location. The phone number is then used by their agents to confirm the scheduled appointment.
UPDATE – MY SOLUTION:
My solution echos the solution Michael Cook mentions in the comments (Hi Michael, good to hear from you…been awhile). A single ‘Phone’ field.
This reduces confusion on the company’s part (which number should we call?) and greatly simplifies the form. As an added benefit, this single field could be used for both the UK and the North American sites as it makes no assumptions on number formatting.
If a second phone number is needed, put the burden on those with multiple phone numbers, something like this:
If you’d like to see this field in context, walk through the booking process at 1-800-Got-Junk
7 Comments
This looks like fun! However, we need some context to even begin to create an effective design.
1) What does this company do?
2) What are they trying to achieve with the form as a whole?
3) Does the company do business exclusively in the US or internationally as well?
lol-I chuckled when I notice that “home” number has an input for extension.
Should the solution work:
a) as part of the whole (unseen) form that this came from
b) on its own
What is this company trying to do?
Is it the Republican party?
Is it a small company who does all their bookkeeping by hand?
Is it Verizon?
is it MySpace.com?
Is it the University if MN?
A loan application?
What is the user demographic????
Not knowing this I went two different directions.
http://www.laingdesign.com/mini/form.html
1. Option 1 – appeal to the client’s instincts.
2. Simplify the process – assume the majority of this customer’s client base has cell phones and can access their email via their phone.
Keith,
It’s part of a larger appointment scheduling form, so it should act as a component within that larger form.
Clearly not a lot of thought was put into how the form would be used… but I agree that without more information, it’s difficult to really comment. I don’t think I would look twice at the snippet you posted, in terms of its usability, unless I was looking to, say, start a discussion about it. I doubt anyone would be tripped up or otherwise seriously harmed/maimed/confused by it.
I do have to say, however, that I liked Darby’s first solution quite a lot.
We ran into a very similar issue with a recent client project, in which they were also trying to confirm appointments scheduled online.
I like to think we solved the issue with common sense rather than technology, and simply asked…
“Best phone to reach you?” with fields for area code, prefix, number and extension. There was also a bit of nearby text explaining “Your phone number will only be used to confirm your appointment.”