Full name vs. First & Last Name

Our Paradigm in LiteFarm is to make the app as accessible as possible. To this end, we must minimize the number of inputs and the prescription of those inputs as much as possible. Starting from this frame, there are strong reasons to accept “Full name” wherever possible:

1. For many international users, including those we are targeting, they have more than a first and last name (e.g. Don Quijote de la Mancha).

2. By requiring only 1 field to populate, we slightly reduce effort to input

3. LiteFarm does not have a strong component of user management, so the need to filter a list of users by first / last name is not a strong use case

How should name be stored at the database level?

Name should be stored at the database level as “Full Name”.

What do we do if we need the first or last name?

Massage the full name. Tokenize it:

1. The first space delimited token is the first name

2. The string after popping the first token is the last name

Additional Reading

https://blog.prototypr.io/full-name-vs-first-last-name-ux-best-practice-8c2db7178fd1