[hyperbovine]

Be that as it may, this is exactly the type of form I routinely see people filling out on 80s-era WYSE terminals at airports, rental car agencies, the DMV, hardware stores, and so on. It seems like a lot non-tech people find them fairly easy to get the hang of.

[stephentmcm]

Having worked in places where AS/400 terminals where the norm I'd argue that "non-tech people" don't so much as get the hang of it, as rote learn the system and then moment they step out what they have learnt fail miserably to recover. I've experienced push-back on updates to programs that take a five step process back to one or two simply because the person actually using the software didn't understand what typing the commands did and they weren't will to learn the new method.

[jahewson]

What evidence do you have that people find it easy? My experience with such forms is that people make mistakes constantly. Just because awful forms are common doesn't make them easy. I'd argue that there are many easier styles of form.

Old terminals were fairly space-constrained so I can understand why this choice was made, but modern computers with their high-res screens do not have this restriction, e.g the iPhone has a full keyboard instead of a number pad with letters on, like feature phones had, because they had the space to do so.

[Gigablah]

Speaking of the iPhone, input forms in iPhone apps are more or less grid style.