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Comment by shp0ngle | Hacker News Reader

Do people actually use and like date pickers?

As a user, every time I see one, I groan and fight it instead of liking to use it.

But I haven't seen any A/B tests. Does date picker really improve user experience?

Conceptually, it needs to take in account the type of date it handles. The question to ask is “does it matter when in the week or a month a date is selected?” or similar.

Under these considerations, I can say that for a "well known" date, like a birthday, or an expiration date, where the context of the calendar doesn't matter, it's not needed, and probably undesirable. (Under these contexts I would use bare selects/inputs with one for each of YYYY/MM/DD.)

For an appointment, or a time span? Date pickers are useful. “Which days are mondays?” “I want to book from a monday to the friday the next week.” Raw controls won't provide the context to help the user.

I feel the ones you fight against are more than likely those where you already are aware of a precise moment, in the first scenario. The others are more likely to leave no impression if well done.

With that said: Always de-compose the date picker in their discrete parts that a user can use. Make the picker fill these.

Ahhhh that makes sense.

Yes, I hate when I see a date picker for birthday. I don't need to pick a date on birthday!

But when it's meeting or airplane ticket, it makes sense.

So, picker is good when you don't actually know the date yet.

OK, thanks!

Most important thing date picker helps is user doesn't need to understand required input format. Coz there is no standard format across apps and localities.

They are also useful for date range input. Or if the user needs to work out the date by looking at a calendar which is pretty common if you are doing something like booking a holiday or time off work.

Sad ISO 8601 noises

There is one, it is a standard, it is a format, it is "an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date- and time-related data". But not everyone uses it.

They are nice for hotel and flight bookings to try out different dates, visualize the length of the stay and quickly see what day if the week you are picking.

I think they would be good where additional info can be inlined such as existing events.

But without those advantages I prefer to type it. Especially date of birth!! A year older is another 10px to scroll!

A competent date picker? Sure. One that has doesn't function as expected, even slightly? Then no.

I like date pickers especially for when I need help deciding a date, e.g. when booking a haircut: I don't know exactly what day I want to go in, but I'll know it when I see it.

Date pickers are also useful for ranges of dates (although the UX for these is hit-and-miss), since it helps visualize duration nicely and always makes it easier to pick an end date.

I'm 50/50 when it comes to a date that I know, but usually, I'll prefer a ISO8601 input field for that.

Also, is it internationalized? Many government forms in Japan require Japan's era date, not a Gregorian date

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_era_name

I just hate when they’re mandatory. Sure, let someone use the picker if they want. I’ll jam in my MMDDYYYY in a second flat.

Every year I get older those DOB selectors take longer to complete.

How do you book flights or hotels then?

I don’t particularly have a string opinion on date picker, but I find myself typing in dates when possible. Particularly when entering something like a birthday, so I don’t have to navigate to the prior century first.

There are date/time pickers that let you type in the input field if you click a little area with a calendar icon next to it. Our date/time fields are like that.

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