Part of my app requires extracting a date from the line of text. To do this I use a regular expression to pick the substring that has the date, then use a date format to parse it.

Heres a screen shot my first version of getting that information. The user inputs both the regex and the date format.

After a while it became clear to me that the regex could be derived from the date format. Because each symbol in the date format maps to a symbol in the regex.

Heres a my second version.

The last improvement I've made is to try work out what the date format is by guessing each format from a set of known formats. By doing this its possible you wont need to do anything, just click next.

The app is no where near complete, if there is such a thing. But these small usability improvements make a big difference. Now when I have to do some manual testing, it takes a fraction of the time.


Heres  a fantastic book Dont make me think worth a read.