Filling in the forms

Designing a useful online form takes thought and diligence.  Lately some software writers haven’t even tried.

People have been filling in forms since the invention of printing.  (Before, actually; the handwritten legal documents of the Dark Ages often followed a specific pattern.)  The aim has been to collect the information that some organization or entity needs into a compact and easily-handled document.  Unfortunately, form-fillers are not always familiar with the needs and practices of the organization; worse, the information at hand may not actually exist in this way.  In the pre-online days, difficulties could be handled face-to-face.  One would sit down with a representative of the bank, for instance, and go over the application for a new account, clarifying any possible difficulties.  “Is that your actual monthly income?”  “Is that Markarian Street, or Martorian Street?  I can’t quite read your handwriting.”

When online forms came in, the writers of the parsing software had to think of all the possible ways a person might express even a simple thing.  In an address, the program must be able to accept Street or St., Saint or St., and not confuse the two, nor confuse either with South or S.  There are several different ways of writing dates, even sticking to one country.  And the number of variations on “two size 10 in dark brown” is immense.  We ask you to salute all those unsung software-writers who somehow anticipated all (or most) of the incredibly large number of ways people can misinterpret questions, for a large number of these online forms actually work.

Or worked.  We find that lately writers have not just failed to do this task, they haven’t even tried.  When setting passwords, many sites require special characters but only accept some of them, without telling in advance what they are.  Our tutor has had plenty of experience with answer-key software that insists on either a fraction or a decimal, with no clue as to which is required.  A student who enters 2/3 or 0.667 will be marked wrong, for instance, if the key wanted 0.67.  These are fairly simple.  More frustrating is the online purchasing process where, if one checks the wrong box through a misinterpretation, there’s no way to go back and fix it; indeed, at times we’ve had to shut down the entire computer and start over from scratch.  Most frustrating is the message that something has gone wrong, with no clue as to how or where, or what can possibly be done about it.  Those have gotten more frequent over the years.

The prompt for this posting came when our tutor in the process of moving had to enter his new address in one website.  There was no pretense of parsing possible variations; he was instructed to find the form that matched the database.  Unfortunately, his new address includes all the bits mentioned above, and there were many different possibilities that just didn’t work.  Even spelling out “Saint” and “Street” got nowhere.  It eventually took many tries and a lot of poking around, just so he could establish a way to pay someone.

Maybe AI will help.  We’re not optimistic.