With recent projects of mine I keep stumbling across a recurring question. And although I have a rather firm opinion on it, I started hearing opposite opinions on this. So I wanted to get some more educated opinions on this.
Is it 'better' to have a single input box (textarea) with a description on how "structured" the input has to be entered, OR is it better to design a form with a multitude of several little inputboxes, that are arranged and labeled to make it visually easier to understand what goes where? A few examples to illustrate this:
1)
Betting-Slip: We have a sports-betting game: 11 Matches and for each match you can enter a 1 or 0 or 2 (homewin, draw, guestwin). So "One Guess" consists of 11 numbers (out of [102]). We want the user to be able to enter up to 12 rows/guesses, resulting in a total of up to 132 numbers.
Now we have several possibilities:
a) Singe textarea with a description on how the data has to be formed, for example: 11 numbers per row, up to twelve rows.
b) One textbox for each row, total number of textboxes would be 12.
c) One textbox for each match and row, total number of textboxes 132.
d) One Selectbox (choices 1,0,2) for each match and row, total number of selectboxes 132.
An additional 'challenge' is that there exist (realworld)paper-forms for betting, where you enter one row/guess from top to bottom, which requires the user to reorient them when entering rows left to right (as it is with the textboxes/textarea). See
example c) [wettware.de] and
example a) [wettware.de] live.
2)
numbers & keywords: We want the user to be able to enter several numbers (no min or max limit) and for each number he should have the option of entering 0, 1 or x (unlimited) number of keywords which will be associated with that number. We have the following solutions:
a) A Single textarea. The user is asked to enter one number per row, and can append (sperated with a space) a arbitrary number of keywords in each row.
b) A couple of textboxes vertically aligned also with one number per box followed by space-seperated keywords. And further a button to add additional textboxes below if he nedds to enter more than the number of textboxes we gave him. (So this needs an extra submitting of the form).
c) like above ( b) ) but having seprated boxes for numbers and for keywords (ie two textboxes per row)
d) like above, but having a single textbox for each number and for each keyword, with yet an additional button to add 'columns' for more keywords per number
e) ...(your idea here)
Obviously going from a) to d) we have an increase of necessary keystrokes and switches between mouse and keyboard, which leads to needing more time to fill the forms out, but we also have more 'understable' form, which leads to less frustration with the user and less learning time. In both examples we have users that are using these forms (more or less) often.
I do not want to leave the choice up the user. Usually there is a better way to do it. And I believe that a developer that decides this will take more facts into considerationm which will lead to a better choice, than letting the user choose a preference, who will listen to a gutfeeling and stick with choices even if they are worse, just to avoid change (which the user usually tries to avoid).
So restating my qeustion:
Is it 'better' to have a single input box (textarea) with a description on how "structured" the input has to be entered, OR is it better to design a form with a multitude of several little inputboxes, that are arranged and labeled to make it visually easier to understand what goes where? What would your choice be and more important why? I', looking forward to hearing your opinions.
[edited by: ruserious at 12:20 pm (utc) on Mar. 27, 2003]
