govuk-design-system-backlog
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Recover from errors
This pattern was redesigned to be added as guidance for the 'error message' component
This pattern is in development
Contributors
- @stevenaproctor
Design review
This pattern was reviewed by a panel of designers from GDS, HMRC, DWP and Home Office on 22 March 2018.
The panel agreed that the pattern should not be published in the GOV.UK Design System until the following changes have been made.
Recommendations
- The pattern should clearly communicate what needs it meets and how it relates to the error message and error summary components.
- Change the name of the pattern - the word ‘Recover’ was felt to be confusing.
Working group review: helping users to recover from errors (validation)
On 13 February 2020 the Design System working group approved this new pattern.
We made lots of small changes in response recommendations, and in particular clarified the position on when to validate users’ responses.
We'll publish the new pattern over the next few days.
Thanks as always for the useful feedback.
@StephenGill would you mind sharing the outcomes of the working group session and what actions are or aren't being taken forward please?
@StephenGill I'm also interested in what the decisions are on this. My feedback contained some bigger issues that I'm keen to have a response—are you able to address that too, please?
@adamsilver @whatterz sorry, that's my fault.
Will post something more detailed tomorrow - and happy to follow up with a chat if that's useful.
Here's a a more detailed summary of the recommendations and responses. Sorry about the delay @adamsilver @whatterz.
Working group review: helping users to recover from errors (validation)
On 13 February 2020 the Design System working group approved this new pattern.
We made lots of small changes in response to recommendations, but here's a summary of the main issues -
Recommendation: consider whether there’s enough evidence to support turning off HTML5 validation.
Decision: no action. Disabling HTML5 validation has been standard practice on GOV.UK services for quite a while, and we’re not aware of it causing usability problems. On the other hand, we think it’s fairly clear that not disabling HTML5 can cause accessibility problems. See, for example, this: https://adrianroselli.com/2019/02/avoid-default-field-validation.html and this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53786512/screen-reader-and-html5-validation
Recommendation: add a ‘When not to use’ section - this would make the ‘When to use’ section more concise.
Decision: added a ‘When not to use’ section.
Recommendation: consider adding information about being flexible in the types of input you accept.
Decision: added examples to clarify this - eg you should accept postcodes with spaces and names with non-alphabetical characters.
Recommendation: add guidance on not using the validation pattern for ‘you’re not eligible’ scenarios.
Decision: we’ve covered this in the revised ‘When not to use this pattern’ text.
Recommendation: reconsider just saying not to use client-side validation.
Decision: we’ve added some more nuance to this, and added something to the ‘Research on this pattern’ section inviting teams to share research on use cases for client side validation. We still think the right approach is to start with something relatively simple and easy to maintain, and only add complexity when you’re convinced that the pros outweigh the cons.
We'll publish the new pattern ASAP.
Thanks as always for the useful feedback.