Stop Enforcing Date Format! It’s 2023!

Why we enforce MM/DD/YYYY and why in 2023 you can stop enforcing date formats

Today I’ve stumbled upon a post by Mark Wyner, a very talented user experience expert.

As he writes:

To support the idea he provides an illustration that looks like this:

As you can see on the left, the required format of date is provided as a placeholder. Once you start to type the date, the hint dissapears.

On the right side you see an improved version where the date format requirement is provided above the input.

That way it doesn’t dissapear. He goes to outline a number of reasons why it’s better.

I agree 100% with him on this. To go further I’d put it under the input or in a separate line above because the main text may have different lengths (and directions) based on the language.

This is only an example just to show requirements should be visible whole time.

Another great example is a password field. The worst way to make sure it’s valid is to point out problems one-by-one: