Stop using checkboxes
Personal Share Time: I identify as genderqueer. Ask my 4-year old about their mommies and they will say that they have one that is a girl and one that is a girl AND a boy. It feels so empowering and gratifying when I hear them repeat back to me how I have told them I feel about my gender.
What in the world does gender identity have to do with data & technology? Well I started with that little coming out story to admit to a bit of bias for the statement I am about to make, and the request I implore you to take to heart:
STOP USING CHECKBOXES!!
Checkboxes. They appear in Google Sheets/Excel, Salesforce/Any other CRM, surveys and forms (where to me they are just click-bait), and every other database or tech system. The technical term for them is Boolean (I really love saying that word) - defined in this case as a binary variable, having two possible values called "true" (checkbox is checked) and "false" (checkbox is unchecked). My general outlook on gender and life is to reject binaries at every turn as a simple yet dangerous and destructive way of categorizing the world. That might be about as far as this analogy can go, because the thing I hate about checkboxes is the thing I love about living in a fluid spectrum-based world instead of a binary world: Uncertainty.
Let's say your checkbox is trying to represent something like "Opt Out of Emails". We would assume that when this checkbox is unchecked that we can feel good about emailing this person, and if the checkbox is checked, we should definitely not email this person. So what about all the people who have not yet had the opportunity to tell us if they want to receive emails or not? We are UNCERTAIN. Their checkbox remains unchecked, but not necessarily on purpose. And unfortunately we might accidentally think that these folx are in the group of those we can feel good about emailing - but we can't really feel good about that if we don't know if they chose to receive emails or not.
How else could we handle this situation? One way is to make it a picklist or dropdown. Now the "Opt Out of Emails" options are "Yes", "No", or blank. Yes means we definitely don't email, No means we definitely can email, and blank means we need to make a call on whether to email or not based on context and case-by-case for the outreach. This simple transition from checkbox to picklist can make a huge difference in the quality of your data and how that impacts the quality of your interactions and relationships.
If you've got checkboxes - don't worry! It isn't the end of the world, and it is actually a fairly simple and easy path towards transitioning to something with more certainty. And if you are building something now like an Excel data tracker or a new field in your favorite tech system, please consider avoiding the use of checkboxes.
OK, let's bring out the comments! When have checkboxes led you down a road of uncertainty? What situations have you used checkboxes in that were super successful? What other types of data collection should we avoid or transition to?
