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alphagov / govuk-country-and-territory-autocomplete

An autocomplete widget that uses data from Country and Territory Register.
https://alphagov.github.io/govuk-country-and-territory-autocomplete/examples/
MIT License
38 stars 18 forks source link

Feature: show historic names when countries change name #5

Open edwardhorsford opened 7 years ago

edwardhorsford commented 7 years ago

We've seen at least two cases in user research of users being confused by the country Czechia when searching for The Czech Republic. The country name changed in April 2016, but this is probably not well known.

This is what the picker currently looks like when you search for Czech: screen shot 2017-04-25 at 13 09 33

From the user's point of view, neither is correct. The first they've never heard of, and the second doesn't exist any more (but people may still think it more relevant). The second probably shouldn't show unless services explicitly want historic countries.

If the user types the full name they know, it works better: screen shot 2017-04-25 at 13 11 54 This is better, but unless they type enough characters, they don't get the name they're familiar with.

Possible solution

When a country name changes, for a period of time after that (3-5 years?), show the historic name as well: screen shot 2017-04-25 at 12 56 14 This feels like quite a nice use of registers - the correct current name is used, but users are 'eased' in to the new name.

adamliptrot-oc commented 7 years ago

I'd second this approach.