Contrib.social

Prioritize 'add existing' in nested entity creation UX to prevent duplication.

Open on Drupal.org →
Created on 22 February 2016, almost 9 years ago
Updated 9 June 2024, 6 months ago

The current user experience for this widget is non-intuitive and goes against the core UX when using autocomplete reference fields with multiple values.

The current UX forces the user to determine if a reference value already exists BEFORE entering the value. For instance, if I'm adding authors to an article, I must already know if that author exists in the system before checking, so that I can press the "Add existing author" button. See image:

The current UX does not make it clear that pressing the "Add existing" button will bring up the autocomplete field.

The interface should use the existing core paradigm of displaying the first field and allowing the user to type in part of the search term and allowing autocomplete to attempt to look up the value. If, and only if, the author DOES NOT exist, should the user then need to "Add new Author." Otherwise, users will be constantly adding new records because (it appears) that they have no way to check for existing records. See new image:

In this example, the "Add new Author" button would fill in the second blank form field upon completion. If the user then needed to add a third item, he would press the existing "Add another item" button, which would show a third autocomplete field, thereby allowing the user to again, test for the prior existence of the author, before needing to use the "Add new author" button.

This approach is far more intuitive and easier for inexperienced users to understand. It also eliminates the need for the "Add existing" button at all. If the widget options only allow new items to be added, then the old UX will work.

✨ Feature request
Status

Needs work

Version

3.0

Component

User interface

Created by

🇺🇸United States zoon_unit

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