Usability Best Practices for Accepting Debt Account Numbers

Question

Recently, a user asked (OK, complained) why the 19-digit account number on our website was divided into 4 separate text fields in length [5,5,5,4]. Not being the original designer, I could not answer this question, but I always assumed that this was done in order to maintain the quality of the data and, possibly, improve the quality of user experience.

Other more general examples include Phone with area code (10 consecutive digits compared to [3,3,4]) and, of course, SSN (9 digits compared to [3,2,4])

I am wondering if there are any well-known standards on this subject? When will you split your ID #? In particular, regarding user experience and minimizing data entry errors.

Answer 1

I know that this was some kind of research, at present I can only find a Wikipedia article on short-term memory , in particular chunking . There is also a magic number of seven, plus or minus two .

When I provide the identifier to end users, I personally would like to break it down into blocks of 5 that seem to match the original designer of your system. I have no logical reason that I can give you for choosing this number, except that it “feels good”. Unable to spend a lot of money on research, gut instinct and subsequent statements from other systems is probably the way to go.

, :

• , delete ,

• , - " " ( , HTML, ), "_____ - _____ - _____ - ____" "1235 - 54321 - 12345 - 1234"

!

Answer 2

, :

• , , .
• , //, , . , / "dd/mm/yyyy", , , / . "23/8/2010" .

Answer 3

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In general, I would say that as browsers become more and more usable, you should use the mechanisms that they provide using fallback solutions, and not create complex solutions yourself. Today you can take a step in front of them, but in two years the browsers will catch up and your site will suck.