Top 10 Design Tips For Usable Forms
Well designed forms result from an appreciation of the role they play in an organisations interaction with people
. Organisations have a responsibility to minimise the burden forms impose when gathering information from people. Here is ten top tips for best practice form design.
1. Form length doesnt directly correlate to complexity
Many assume that making forms shorter makes them easier to complete. Though shorter forms might be cheaper to produce initially, if the reduction in content results in user confusion, the cost of resolving completion errors form fillers make as a consequence can significantly outweigh any initial savings. In general forms do need to be as short as possible, but never at the expense of clarity and usability.
2. Provide examples and guidance and notes at the point of need
Have you ever got half-way through a form and suddenly come to a question that asks you about something you dont understand or have no idea about where to find the answer? Its even more infuriating if the question says something like See our Guidance notes, page 6, paragraph 2. When filling in your forms people want the information they need there and then. Put yourself in the form users position and think about which questions they might have a problem with. Provide examples of the sorts of answers you are looking for, and where appropriate, provide guidance notes as near as possible to the question they relate to (i.e. in the actual form).
3. Make structure clear, and provide navigation to reinforce it
Your form will be divisible into sections so think about the broad groups of questions being asked. Whatever your groups of questions are, make sure they follow the right order and give the groups clear section names. Make the form sections visually distinct by setting the section name in bigger and bolder type, and consider including a contents list on the first page or screen to help people navigate their way through the form. Also make sure that you make good use of features like running headers and footers on every page to remind people what the form is, where they are, and what page number they are on.
4. Customise response boxes to reflect required answers and reduce completion errors
If asking for a persons date of birth, it makes sense to provide a box with the exact number of required digits and an example or guidance note to explain the format that the date should be entered in (DD/MM/YYYY). People from different cultures have different conventions for answering seemingly innocuous questions like this.
Users will become frustrated if when you ask for an email address, for example, if the response box only allows for 20 characters. Its similarly annoying to them when its a long free text box, making the customer question whether they are answering correctly and sufficiently. Providing response boxes that reflect the anticipated answer length and format reassures people that they are filling them in correctly.
5. Provide checklists
As users complete your form, you may well be asking them to provide supporting information or attach supplementary documents where required. Providing a checklist, often at the beginning or end of a form, helps remind users about all the things they should remember to attach, and any further steps they need to go through.
6. Progressive revealing
When implemented well, progressive revealing gives interactive forms a head start over traditional paper forms. When asked a particular question in a form it may be the case that, depending a users response, they are asked a set of specific sub-questions, or alternatively routed to the next appropriate section of the form. In paper forms the specific sub-questions cant be hidden from the user when they are not relevant to them but in interactive forms this is relatively easy to do. Use progressive revealing as much as possible in your
form design to shield your users from questions they dont need to see.
7. Pre-fill where at all possible
If a person has already filled in a form for your organisation they will be frustrated if they have to fill in the same information again. It is difficult for organisations to get their systems to pre-fill known information but when pre-filling is achieved, customers really feel valued.
8. Use colour strategically
Colour in forms should be used with care - but used well it can really aid form completion and navigation. In general, yellow, for example, is a colour to avoid as much as possible text set in yellow on a typical light background can be very hard to read and people can find yellow aggressive. A light shade of a colour, like blue, across the whole background of a form relieves the eye from the harshness of a stark white background. And if the answer spaces people have to fill in are white, the tinted background both cues them in to where they write, and allows them to visually sense how much they have to fill in.
9. Use appropriate response mechanisms
Paper forms have the disadvantage that users can miss, or simply disregard, an instruction. For example, only tick/check one box from a list of 15 or 20 options. In this context interactive forms can be programmed so that the user can only tick/check one (known as a radio button as distinct from check-boxes), or presented with the options in a drop-down menu from which the user can only select one. When designing forms make sure the response mechanism is appropriate to each question.
10. Let people know what happens next
Having gone to all the trouble of filling in your form, the least you can do is provide users with information about what happens next.
Customer communication is key, and since youve made the form so easy to fill in and return, processing it could also be a breeze!
by: Andrew Boag
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