Dropdowns

Dropdowns are huge. Since 1974 this tiny element helps us in it’s laconic way to pick and choose. But there is a problem of relevance. In SXSW Keynote 2016’ Eric Campbell & Golden Krishna dropped their hilarious lection called «You know what? F**k dropdowns» wherein in a humorous way shows the pastness and illustrates the pain points of dropdowns.

Here is a long list:

1. Difficult to access the list length
2. Takes up a lot of space on mobile
3. Forces options you might not want 
4. Degrades to awful «other» choice 
5. Can’t use keyboard on mobile to search 
6. Can’t type custom responses
7. Can’t be sorted unpredictably 
8. Can take up whole screen on desktop
9. Can encourage endless options 
10. Desired options can be far away 
11. Short responses can be typed faster 
12. Can be a useless reminder of choices
13.  Breaks down with dynamic content 
14. Degrates brand experience
15. Archaic UI element
16. Pervasive «Country» dropdowns are often unnecessary 
17. Desired option might be missing
18. Can make your company look unsophisticated
19. Indentations are difficult to navigate
20. Categorisation can create more confusion
21. «Title» field is usually superfluous 
22. All choices in database, not most common selections
23. Makes you feel like a machine
24. «0» option is inelegant
25. Error-validation for correlation fields fails
26. There’s no reason to remind someone of the month of the year 
27. No one needs help remembering their birth year
28. Sorting is rarely done by most common options
29. Long text can get cut off after selection 
30. Awful ways to navigate 
31. Put’s people into possibly offensive buckets
32. No one needs a drop down for their age
33. «Security question» drop down can be deflating 
34. A list of options for «phone type» is unnecessary 
35. Without labels, can be unpredictable