As a freelance UX and service design consultant, I spend a lot of time thinking about user experience, not just for clients, but in my everyday life too. One of my biggest frustrations? Forms that disallow special characters.
My first name is Anna-Kay. It is spelt that way on my passport and all legal documents. The hyphen is not decorative; it is part of my identity. Yet time and again, when I fill in forms online, I encounter this issue: forms that only allow letters A to Z, and nothing else.
Take Adobe, for example. Their form disallowed my hyphen entirely.
Adobe
This might sound like a minor annoyance, but it is actually a serious UX problem. Poorly set up validation rules cause real-world friction:
-
I either have to incorrectly submit my name as “Anna Kay” or “AnnaKay.”
-
Later, when documents or accounts are issued, they are inaccurate.
-
Sometimes, my submissions are rejected or flagged because the name does not match official ID.
It is frustrating, it is unnecessary, and it is avoidable.
Good user experience means designing for real people. Names often contain hyphens, apostrophes, spaces, or accented characters. A name is not “wrong” because it does not fit neatly into outdated system rules. If your form cannot handle real-world data, it is not the user’s fault; it is a design flaw.
If you want your forms (and your users) to succeed, allow for the diversity of real names. A little attention to validation design goes a long way.