Making mistakes in your UI is easier than you think. There are quite a lot of pitfalls on your way of delivering smooth user experience, and I want to talk about some of them today. Without further ado, let’s get right to it.

Phone Number Form Fields

Phone number field is a beast. In my other article, I mentioned a post on Imgur that presents you the best UI/UX practices from hell, mostly concerning phone number input. But there are less obvious ways to ruin user experience.

Everything is permitted

The most common misbelief is that allowing users to enter whichever format they like is the key. But it’s not entirely true.

Check out an example above. Is this filled out correctly? No? But hey, you decided to let users run wild, so someone clearly did. How will your database handle this input? And if you throw in a validation there, it will further confuse users. Do they need a country code? Do they need to put dashes or spaces between number groups? Users will most likely abandon filling out the form, rather than spend time guessing which format you meant there.

Let me show you the way

Some developers think that by showing the user an example how the field should be filled out they will avoid confusion, but in reality, most users just ignore the example and fill out fields the way they like. This, again, causes validation errors and leads to form abandonment.

We are the many

Other designers split input forms. But adapting form to just one country isn’t user-friendly at all. The example above will mostly suit some users, but others may be left aside because they have different formatting and number lengths in their countries. This approach is also difficult to fill out from mobile phones.