I am entertaining the notion of a single field for name entry on our scheduling web app. I think this is an excellent case for a "forgiving format" to make it easy to enter their names quickly. I would label it and possibly put additional placeholder text guiding the user. Like this:
It's important to catch first and last name correctly because it gets saved in our contact database that we provide to our users. However, people could enter "Joe De Maggio" or "Dr. Chopra" or "Ms Sally Ann Mc Dumont". The possibilities are many.
Is this choice wise? Is the engineering worth the UX? Does anyone know a plugin that tackles this?
Answer
There are a great many assumptions people make about names (also: W3C: Personal names around the world.)
Thankfully the W3C have some excellent advice on field design for names, of which the simplest is to use two fields (but not for first/last):
- Full name
[________________] - What should we call you? (for example, when we send you mail?)
[________________]
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