«
»

Poll: A yes/no question in a web form, which control(s) would you use?

We’re creating a web application that asks a number of questions about pumps (as it happens). Some of these questions are typical yes/no questions. But we need to make sure the user makes a positive choice. We don’t want to impose a choice on them. Which controls would you use?

Here’s the question with the three options we’ve currently got:

Do you need a sealless pump?
Do you need a sealless pump?

Do you need a sealless pump?

Jakob Nielsen at useit.com in his article Checkboxes vs Radio Buttons tells us that radio buttons are used “when there is a list of two or more options that are mutually exclusive and the user must select exactly one choice” and a single checkbox is used “for a single option that the user can turn on or off”. But this case is a little special since we don’t want the user to forget to select something. The nice thing about using the radio buttons or the drop-down is that you have a way of detecting if the user has actually chosen anything yet. On the whole though, the drop-down list is probably the least user-friendly though perhaps the easiest to generate programmatically.

Which control set should you use for a yes/no question on a web form (where there is no default answer)?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

(This poll is a great WordPress plugin developed by Lester Chan)

Tags: , , , ,

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 10:57 am by DenisH and is filed under Blog Entries, Web development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Poll: A yes/no question in a web form, which control(s) would you use?”

  1. Alex McLachlan Says:
    February 11th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    I voted for radio buttons, but would put it more like:

    What type of pump do you need? o Sealless o Sealed

    … if that works in your application.

  2. I draw boxes » Blog Archive » Yes/no questions: dropdowns, radio buttons or a checkbox? Says:
    June 12th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    [...] an interesting discussion and poll on the Isocra consulting blog (who I have never come across [...]

  3. Chris Sainsbury Says:
    June 12th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    I’d definitely go for radio buttons – the user can scan the question and options quickly and easily. I’ve discussed this a bit further on my own blog :)

  4. Pete Windsor Says:
    September 10th, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    I’m with Alex – using specific values rather than yes or no is clearer in most cases. There’s also a space vs interaction time issue: if there are many questions it might be better to use the drop down to get more visible at once. Finally, the drop down is probably easier to review before submitting; whether that’s important depends on the surrounding task.
    (But I voted for radio buttons anyway).

Leave a Reply