Hi all,
Last night I attended the #MidsTest meetup in Coventry. The main talk was about Address Matching and its many challenges.
Did you know that there is an address in the UK with the house number -1? I was surprised as well.
With so many different address formats, implementing validation rules can affect the usability of the application.
What issues have you encountered when completing address forms?
How do you test address form inputs?
Sketch-notes from the meetup can be viewed here:
Most accurate approach is to invest in a data quality tool like Trillium Software Suite. Take advantage cross referencing published address information made available by postal authorities
Just found this interesting blog, with examples where the negative houses are, and even one calling itself Minus Two.
http://www.paulplowman.com/stuff/uk-address-oddities/
The title at least is different than the meetup topic.
Testing address inputs vs testing address matching
E.g. of inputs:
type in a text field,copy paste, mouse virtual keyboard or speech input, OCR input, store a value to a db, send a value to an api;
Address matching requires some context: what’s the input, what’s the system that processes the input, what’s the purpose of the matching, what accuracy is needed, what happens if you don’t match, what kind of addresses you want to match(e-mail, ip, building), is there something to match against, can an address be faked, what if an someone uses someone elses address, full match or partial match, are there private/restricted addresses, etc…