Date input

[davidhunter08]

Use this issue to discuss the date input in the NHS digital service manual

[mcheung-nhs]

Should we follow recommendations from gov with regards to not using type="number"?
Due to their research noted here:
https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2020/02/24/why-the-gov-uk-design-system-team-changed-the-input-type-for-numbers/
They updated their guidance here:
https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/text-input/#numbers
Which resulted in updated guidance on their date input component:
https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/date-input/

[frankieroberto]

Just a quick note to say that the Date input page says this:

Our date input is based on the component in the GOV.UK Design System. GOV.UK says that they need to do more research to understand if users struggle to enter months as numbers and whether it's more helpful to let them enter months as text.

However the Date input page on the GOV.UK Design System was recently updated (by me) to say this:

Accept month names written out in full or abbreviated form (for example, ‘january’ or ‘jan’) as some users may enter months in this way.

and the research section was updated to say this:

Findings from the Apply for teacher training service showed that hundreds of users were inputting months using full or abbreviated month names and getting an error. They changed the component to accept month names to be consistent with this observed behaviour. Since changing the service the number of errors has dropped dramatically.

Some users with dyscalculia may struggle to convert month names into numbers, but accepting full or abbreviated month names may help these users.

You might like to consider something similar for the NHS Design System?

[steph-w-nhs]

NHS heath assessment tools have many multi-field inputs, such as date of birth of height and weight (feet/inches and stone/pounds).

This led us to look closely at this gov guidance on DOB error messages: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/date-input/#error-messages

We had an internal discussion on whether it was clearer to "stack" the error messages, so you can see which field they refer to, or whether to combine them and still highlight both fields.

Our hesitation in doing this was where the messages referred to 2 different priority orders (stated in the gov guidance). For example, one message refers to missing information, and one refers to numbers that cannot be correct (out of range).

After gathering some opinion from other designers, we have decided to remove the "stacking" behaviour but keep highlighting both fields if there are 2 errors present. This should allow the user to correct their error.

We are in the process of changing the behaviour and looking at the content to combine the message into 1.

[frankieroberto]

We had a user in a research session strongly expect to be auto-tabbed between the day, month and year fields - to the point where they typed 2510 into the day box and then had to correct themselves.

There’s definitely a lot of potential issues with auto-tabbing too, but worth noting.