Do we really want to use 24-hour time format?

[ggeisler]

I saw there was some discussion about the time format we use for media items that specific both a date and a time (or time range). I've lost track of where that was discussed but I'm not certain that was the right decision.

I have no problem in general with using 24-hour/military time in contexts where the user expects to see it. But do we have evidence that more of our end-users will expect to see time values in the 24-hour time format than in 12-hour format? I'd argue that if we assume (barring any other evidence to the contrary) half of our users are in the US and half from outside the US (primarily Europe, most likely), using 12-hour time would be less confusing overall. For example, is it intuitive for a US user to see this Date field value and immediately understand that is 10 am? To me, as a user who almost always sees times represented in 12-hour format on sites I visit, it feels like a typo, where the am/pm values have been accidentally left out:

I'm just guessing but I'd expect users that live where 24-hour time is the norm are more likely to understand what 10:00 am - 10:10 am means than users where 12-hour time is the norm are to understand what 10:00 - 10:10 means (the latter introduces ambiguity for the 12-hour format user; is it 10 in the morning or 10 at night?).

Also, the VT website is clearly based (branded) at a US institution. I don't think it is unexpected that a site clearly based in the US would use 12-hour time.

(To be clear, my argument is based on what will cause the least confusion for our expected end-users; I personally prefer European-style date and time formats, the metric system, etc.)

[laurensorensen]

Good question. The thinking behind having it in the 24-hour time is that the original recordings happened "in real life" in that format, in Europe. So if they say the time in the recording, they will likely not use AM or PM (I do not know if they say it in the recording - can check). I'm totally open to changing it back to AM/PM, but I'm not sure how much work that would be / time it would take.

Also, we were thinking with the 24 hour time that the information in the data itself is then not changing significantly.

Although I'm just realizing now that in the data "defense" is used instead of "defence" - so it would make sense then that the time be AM/PM if we're following the American English expression instead of American British.

I think I have a slight preference to keeping it as the 24-hour format but happy to keep discussing, as long as we decide relatively soon, since we're presenting the site next week.

[laurensorensen]

Also, I think 10:00 - 10:10 would be assumed to be during the day since the audio is all court proceedings - a type of event that typically happens during the day.

[ggeisler]

Also, I think 10:00 - 10:10 would be assumed to be during the day since the audio is all court proceedings - a type of event that typically happens during the day.

Sure, I agree. But we're making the user think about it because it is a (for many, possibly most, of our intended users) an unexpected format in which to see a time value.

Also, we were thinking with the 24 hour time that the information in the data itself is then not changing significantly.

I think that would be the strongest argument for using 24-hour time, but I also think the primary purpose of the descriptive metadata for an item is to help the user understand what the item is about so they can decide if it is relevant to them, not providing a literal transcription of elements of the document on which the metadata is based.

[laurensorensen]

Good points. I agree we should make it as usable / understandable as possible for potential users. Maybe we can re-evaluate when we see how many users are international versus in the US going forward following site launch.

Looking at the use data from September 20, 2021 to Dec 31, 2022 on the Virtual Tribunals Spotlight exhibit Google analytics, it seems like most site hits were from Germany. Though this might just be due to press from an interview David Cohen gave - who knows if this will happen in the same way for the new site.

[thatbudakguy]

fwiw it's certainly possible (and well-supported in Rails) to show 24hr time formats to users in the EU and 12hr time formats to users in the US, for the same site. but this takes us into territory of localizing the site, which is something we decided was out of scope for this workcycle.

[laurensorensen]

@thatbudakguy Good to know, though - thanks! An option we can think about for a future work cycle.