It is a web designer’s duty to communicate as clearly, accessibly and articulately as possible. I will admit, as the Internet has become ever-pervasive into our daily lives designers are working harder than ever to make this dissemination of information as digestible as possible, and for the most part on most “credible” sites one visits are mostly successful in this venture. It is on occasion that I happen upon something that makes me sit back and wonder what was going through the minds of the people that created what I am looking at. Case in point: go to any number of retailers online and make a purchase. When prompted to enter your credit card information, I give it a 50/50 chance that in the area concerning the expiration date, selecting the month requires going through not a list of numbers, but of the actual names of the months. I don’t understand this practice. I have never seen “August 200x” on a credit card, debit card, ATM card, any kind of card. I have found myself actually counting on my fingers to arrive at the correct month. Why? Not only does it take more time to construct a form with the names of months vs. the numbers, but it takes up more real-estate on the page making it not only inconvenient in the usage but also in the execution.

I propose this: all web designers, developers, back-end coders PLEASE, do not use the name of the month in the expiration date field. Use the numbers instead. It is faster, easier to design around, and an easier experience for your audience.

-d