The form below is from the Xbox.com website. I was entering a contest to win an Xbox 360 when it launches, and was given this form to register:

Right away, you’ll probably see some of the issues it has. I’ve seen text fields used to get date info before, but usually with some instruction on how to enter the data. Something like (mm/dd/yyyy) for example. Or, if the developer wanted to guarantee the date format, they just used some combo-boxes to select the month and date. So, not knowing how to enter the format, I took a guess:

Apparently, that’s not what they wanted. Looks like they forgot one important thing - if you want info a certain way - SAY SO! Sure, as a developer, I was thinking that entering ‘12′ should work, but I figured if they’re going to let me type ‘december’, let’s see what happens.

Also, how am I supposed to read these Terms of Use? Oh wait, maybe I’m not supposed to.

I don’t claim to be any sort of usability expert, but at least I know enough not to build a form like this.