User Experience in Form Design

Form is way of communication

The content of this section is from Jessica Enders’ book, Design UX: Forms: Create Forms That Don’t Drive Your User Crazy (Aspects of UX)

Four-state Model for Question Answering

1. Comprehension: understanding words and meaning
2. Retrieval: searching memory, feelings, thoughts, and resources
3. Judgement: checking answer suitability and making adjustments
4. Answering: physically providing the answer.

Comprehension

Use plain language:

• shorter, simpler words
• shorter, simpler sentences, each of which expresses just one idea
• the active voice
• words that are familiar to the person filling out the form.

Avoid ambiguity

– “Where do you work?”

– “I work for Google.” or “I work in Fargo.” or “I work at home.”

Retrieval

Ask the questions that users can easily answer.

Judgement

Let the user know why you ask the questions. and provide instructions.

Create a welcome screen

This could be followed by an introduction page. If you put everything in one page. The user probably would not read the paragraphs.

Then start to tell the story

Yours or Mine?

What pronoun to use

Are your users telling their stories?

or

Are they having conversations with you?

Types of Forms

Stepper Form

Natural Language Form

Conversational Form