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> Just cause someone else does it doesn't mean that you should do it. The same is true for the advice in this article. Our testing, combined with legal require
by ktsmith 15y ago
> Just cause someone else does it doesn't mean that you should do it.
The same is true for the advice in this article. Our testing, combined with legal requirements, has shown that we get the best results when fields are split apart and match the paper version of the form we are digitizing exactly.
> If you need to match against another data provider, e.g. government database, then you should tell you users that. Tell them that you can't continue unless they "enter their name the same as it's in their passport".
We can't ask the user to "enter their name the same as it's in their passport" for a number of reasons including: we don't know what type of identity documents they have, foreign identity documents may contain name information in a different format than stored by the US government, it could be considered discriminatory.
The data is submitted to the government long after the users involvement with the process is complete. There's no way to have it checked in real time or while the user is still present. The government provides no useful feedback about what information collected was incorrect. We are simply directed to have the user contact one of several government agencies. Getting it right the first time is extremely important, trying to combine fields and break them out on the back end can lead to negative consequences for our users and liability for our clients if done improperly.
> I assume you users are interested in your service, so they will want to enter the correct information.
The users don't have much of a choice and when they were doing this process on paper they would routinely get it wrong. Making the electronic data collection process as error free as possible is much more important than a few seconds saved by unifying form fields. Especially if incorrectly processing those unified form fields may have negative consequences for the user as it can in our case.