Almost everywhere outside the United States, when short dates, e.g. 01/02/2013, are shown on computer screens, the user can't be sure whether the first two digits represent the day or the month. Is it January second or February first?
This is a big problem for people outside the United States, as they encounter both formats regularly, and can't know if the system has adapted to their locale, or has stuck with the American format. But I assume American users see mostly the American format (because many, if not most, information systems are built by or for Americans). What I'm curious about is whether American users also are confused in this scenario?
If you can point to some evidence or research, great. If not, I'll settle for your knowledgeable experience.
Note: I'm not asking for the wonderful solution of naming the month, e.g. May 21, 2013. I'm asking about the cases where a short date format has to be used.
Answer
I don't have a pointer to published research - but in my experience US folk will always assume the US MM/DD/YYYY format unless they are knowingly using an non-US site, and are already aware of the potential differences.
If you have to use numbers only then the format that causes least confusion across cultures in my experience is YYYY-MM-DD since it differs from both "defaults" and doesn't suffer from any assumptions.
That said using an abbreviated three letter month name is only one extra character - the size argument for using numbers is usually bogus.
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