1 Text Field vs 118 Option Select Menu

The optimal birthdate field

The birthdate field isn’t the easiest to fill out on a form. It’s common for designers to use select menus for users to select the year. However, this approach will significantly slow them down and increase their task time.

The select field for “Year” typically contains 118 options from 2023 to 1905. Even though there’s no typing involved, scanning and scrolling through such a long menu takes great cognitive effort.

You should apply the KLM model to measure how much cognitive effort a task takes. Doing this gives us a theoretical time estimation of user actions based on a list of operators backed by extensive research. For this task, let’s analyze how long it takes users to select the year “1985.”