I had one of those very strenuous days today.  These are the ones that as a web developer you just feel like taking your computer and throwing it from the highest location you can find.  The problem?  A website checkout process that was failing over 50% of the time with its users. 

I sat back and said a prayer for a moment since I believed that getting angry was not going to solve my problem.  And just like that I had a thought....approach this problem as if I were my 6 year old son using the form.  Within minutes I had the problem figured out, put in a quick javascript validator to make sure the values would be entered correctly and just like that...the problem was solved.

So I decided to blog about this since many times not only developers, but business owners will have their websites so complex that it will cause more problems than successes simply because they are not thinking like a user who's prime source of income would be a nice chocolate chip cookie.

I've actually had my son test quite a few of my websites and even though I may have to read the form to him to fill out, he has discovered some issues with my sites and I've coded appropriately to deal with them.  So the next time you're ready to launch a new form, or a new functionality of your site, think to yourself....if I were 6 how would I look at this.  Or better yet, if you can snag a youngster from your family or your close friends, use them to test it themselves and pay them with a nice big cookie for their good work.

Happy Coding!

Doug.