The need to know
Earlier this week, Arnar wrote about silly form validation techniques. He specifically mentioned problems with providing Icelandic phone numbers in forms, which fail validation due to the lack of area or city codes. I agree with Arnar that form validation is surprisingly hard to get right and if not done properly it can annoy your users, possibly to the point where they cancel their registration.
However, in addition to improving the form validation code, I suggest (and I am by no means the first to propose this) that we stop requesting so much information in user registration forms, and focus on information that is relevant to the application. For instance, it is very rational to ask for a username and a password that the user wishes to have. It is also rational to ask for an email address which can be used to verify the registration, as well as provide a way to handle forgotten passwords.
On the other hand, I see no reason to require phone numbers, age and so on. In Arnar’s post there is a screen shot from Apple, where they fail to validate the phone number. Why does Apple require you to register your phone number in the first place? What if I do not, under any circumstances, want Apple to call me? If they really need to reach me, they can do so via e-mail. I’m also curious how often Apple actually uses this information, has anyone received a phone call from Apple after signing up for an Apple ID?
The form that led to this post is the account creation form at Digg. I saw an article that I wanted to bump up, an action that requires a Digg account. However, after I viewed the registration form I decided not to sign up.
In addition to the standerd username, password and email address, Digg requires you to provide your first and last name, gender, birthday, and full address. They provide no rational explanation for requesting this information, so I can only assume that they use it to improve their profiling. If I ever feel so strongly about a submitted story on Digg that I feel compelled to sign up, I will most certainly register with false information.
So to wrap this up: request only the information you need in order to provide the service. It leads to simpler form validation, better privacy and less annoyed users. Sounds like a win/win situation to me.