Dec 28, 2022 14:00:00

Report that `` Safari's date selection mechanism '' was producing one-third of the complaints received by customer support

Safari, a web browser developed by Apple, is the standard browser used on iPhones, iPads, Macs, etc. However,

Robert Thomas , the founder of Geneticure , a genetic testing startup that recommends effective high blood pressure drugs, said that ``Safari's date selection mechanism'' confused elderly users and sent it to Geneticure's customer support. generated one-third of complaints.

Safari's date-picker is the cause of 1/3 of our customer support issues GitHub
https://gist.github.com/Robert AKA Robin/850a408e04d5414e67d308a2b5847378

Geneticure is a service that uses genetic testing technology to diagnose 'which hypertension drug is most effective for that user'. For medical reasons, users using Geneticure must enter their date of birth, but there was a problem with this date selection system.

The image below shows in the browser This is the screen displayed in Safari when the date selection form is installed using . The year and month are displayed at the top like 'December 2022', and the dates are arranged below it in a calendar format, and the user can select the appropriate date from the calendar.

At first glance, it seems that there is no particular problem, but considering that ``this is a date of birth input form'' and ``Geneticure has many users in their 60s and older who are taking antihypertensive drugs,'' there is a problem. It comes to the surface. First of all, when the default date is the latest 'December 2022', users over the age of 60 must rewind the time for at least 60 years. However, if you try to rewind by one month by tapping the arrow icon in the upper right, you need to tap 720 times to go back 60 years.

Also, if you are accustomed to operating smartphones and tablets, you can intuitively understand that 'If you tap 'December 2022' in the upper left, the year and month selection form will be displayed.' It is said that the hurdle is higher than expected for users who are not accustomed to finding this.

In addition, Mr. Thomas pointed out that there is also a problem with the following year and month selection form displayed by tapping 'December 2022'. According to Mr. Thomas, ``You can choose the year and month, but you can't choose the date.'' ``Unintuitively, the month and year move separately.'' ``The non-digital native generation is not used to the roller-style swipe up and down.'' For these reasons, it seems that there are many elderly people who cannot handle this type of year and month selection form well.

Due to these issues, complaints from users trying to use Geneticure from iPhones and iPads accounted for one-third of all customer support inquiries. Recognizing the problem, Mr. Thomas adjusted the fields and widgets of

Django , a Python web application framework, over an ``amazing amount of time'' to create ``MM (month)'' and ``DD (day)'' as follows. I created a form to manually enter 'YYYY (year)' separately. About this fix, Thomas said, 'It's not fancy, but it works. In fact, it works because it's not fancy.'

After that, referring to the comments sent to GitHub, Mr. Thomas selected only 'Month' in the drop-down format as follows, and modified the form to manually enter the year and date. There are only 12 options for the month, and many people see the month as 12 items of 'January-December' instead of numbers, so drop-down instead of manual input It was decided that it was reasonable to do so.

Mr. Thomas pointed out that although he personally does not care about the UI of iOS, it may be difficult for the elderly to perform detailed operations. Small businesses like Geneticure are not in a position to lose a lot of money because of this problem, but they said it's important to test usability in standard web browsers.

Hacker News, a social news site, also talked about this matter , and one user said, ``I wasn't the only one who was dissatisfied with the date selection in the browser. The date picker system is ridiculous,' commented . Also, a 59-year-old engineer who has elderly parents and mother-in-law said, ``I noticed that there are terrible UIs everywhere. Services that perform basic tasks, including interacting with the service, are literally unavailable to many people over the age of 70, even if they 've been using PCs since the 1990s.'