Able to add multiple person with the same name

[Incogdino]

More than one person with the same name can be added to the application. The only difference here is to identify them by their phone number. This can be confusing for the users when they use the findp command to search for a contact only to have to differentiate them by their phone number. This means that users will have to identify their contacts by phone numbers.

A better workaround is to disallow duplicate names. Users will have to enter the duplicate persons using their own mnemonic (which serves as a better way for a person to identify others)

[nus-se-bot]

Team's Response

Hi, thanks for the feedback! We understand that at first glance this may seem like a flaw but this is actually intended.

We chose to keep duplicate names we felt that a name the user inputs should not need to be changed just to accommodate duplicate names. This would be more intuitive for users where the app directly models the real world where they have different people with the same name but different phone numbers for example. Should the user desire and feel that he/she needs very fast searching he can still opt to use mnemonics for certain people, put it in the name and use that as a search param even in the current implementation.

Items for the Tester to Verify

:question: Issue response

Team chose [response.Rejected]

• [x] I disagree

Reason for disagreement: I disagree with this as I believe this will cause inconvenience to the user.

Let me reiterate my issue here (if it wasn't clear enough):

Users are able to add duplicate names with the same characters. This is inconvenient when the user tries to find a person using the findp command and is returned a list of users with the same name. The only potential identifier for the users is to use the other fields such as tags or phone numbers.

According to your suggestion:

Should the user desire and feel that he/she needs very fast searching he can still opt to use mnemonics for certain people, put it in the name and use that as a search param even in the current implementation.

It is exactly the solution that I proposed. However, this does not solve the cause of the inconvenience.

When a user is allowed to add duplicate names with the exact same characters, it gives them a chance to be confused in the future. Users may mistakenly update, delete, or contact the wrong person, leading to significant consequences in professional contexts. The reliance on additional fields like phone numbers adds unnecessary complexity and cognitive load, especially in a large database.

Thus, by disallowing duplicate names, the user will be forced to input a custom mnemonic that is unique to them in identifying the person that they are looking for. And this is why this is a flaw in the feature and a potential for improvement, and response should be NotInScope.

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