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The main question we should ask ourselves first is what problem and in which context exactly are we solving and how can a date picker help there or, more specifically, what kind of a date picker would help users move forward in completing their task seamlessly. Indeed, we have many decisions to consider, and most of them aren’t that straightforward at all. Is a date picker the right pattern to use for date selection in the first place?.How do we avoid displaying unavailable dates or zero-results dead ends?.Should the week run from Monday to Sunday or from Sunday to Saturday?.For date-range pickers on narrow screens, should the overlay automatically disappear once two dates are selected, or only when the user clicks on the “Continue” button to proceed?.Should we enhance the experience by displaying availability, price, etc.?.Should we include some sort of “previous, current, next” navigation? If so, how do we design it for days, months and years?.Should the date picker contain default prepopulated values? If yes, what values should be default?.Should the date-picker overlay appear when the user clicks on the input or when they click on the calendar icon (or both)?.
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Should the user be able to type in a date in the input field or only select predefined values using a date picker?.Are we designing a date picker, a date-range picker or a time picker?.If we look closely at the nature of a date picker, there are a good number of design questions to be resolved - and many of them aren’t straightforward at all: Subscribe to our email newsletter to not miss the next ones.Part 2: Perfect Responsive Configurator.However, it might not be the best option for your particular case. And more often than not, all such websites tend to use the same (jQuery) implementation, plugged into the UI a while back and happily forgotten ever since.
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In fact, there are plenty of contexts in which date pickers matter: whether it’s for a medical appointment, a spa treatment, a boat rental, a TV guide, online banking, a flight ticket or a summer cottage rental - pretty much anything that requires date input is likely to have some sort of a date and time picker. But what if we set a budget on the date input as at most two taps? Three taps for a date range? Five taps if we bring a time slot into the game as well? You might be wondering if it’s really a big deal after all, it’s just a tiny little date picker! If date selection is front and center in your interface, you should expect users to use it a lot, and going to extremes to optimize date input isn’t really a matter of optimization, but is rather a core element of your website’s experience.
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The best input is the one that matches the user’s intent, without having to ask the user to be precise, of course. Our job, then, is to carefully study our own scenarios and figure out an optimal way to frame the question of time and date to help users provide the input quickly and easily. Now, there are situations where date pickers are extremely helpful, and there are situations where they just slow users down. But just like any other form element, sometimes they should be the method of last resort, aiding the user’s input if it can’t be inferred in a better way. Having looked into the design of accordions two weeks ago, let’s look into the design of date and time pickers today - in all the various facets and flavors of their visual appearance and interaction design.įirst things first, though: Date pickers are often considered to be a foolproof component for date selection - predictable, consistent, generic - and so more often than not, we use them just because they seem to be a universally accepted pattern for date input. Over the course of months, we’ll be exploring everything from carousels to car configurators.
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This series of articles is a summary of observations and experiments made throughout that time. Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time working with various companies trying out various approaches and studying them in usability tests. But when a date picker is required, quite often it’s just a bit too tedious and annoying to specify that one date, and too often it produces irrelevant results or even a zero-results page, although just a few minor refinements would make it much easier to use. Well, not every date picker fits every interface, just like not every interface actually needs a date picker.