About the Author
Sherri Martin-Hutchins is a self-employed web project manager and technical writer.
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STC UUX Community Newsletter |
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| Usability Interface |
Book Review of Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability
by Sherri Martin-Hutchins
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Forms are ubiquitous on the web these days. Nearly every site has at least one, whether it's a simple contact us form, a login box, a site registration, an event registration, a financial form, or an application. Forms are used to facilitate an interaction between a site owner and a user. Form design, however, has remained a fairly overlooked area of usability study. Caroline Jarrett and Gerry Gaffney have filled that void with Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability. At just under 200 pages, this reference is a quick read that gives valuable insight into the process of developing forms that are user friendly and, therefore, produce the intended result. To understand why user experience is important in form design, it is helpful to look at the basic premise of forms. Jarrett and Gaffney explain it as enabling a conversation between web publisher and web user. Forms that Work sets out to make that conversation a good one. |
Different users approach forms differently. This book groups form users into three types:
- Readers - those who carefully read the form
- Rushers - those who rush in to begin completing fields, reading only when necessary
- Refusers - those who won't have anything to do with the form
Not all form users are created equally. In some cases a form may serve different purposes for different users. In other cases, forms have a specific purpose to a finite group of users.
The trick is finding a balance that will give enough information to the users without losing their interest or their trust.
There are many things to think about when designing a form: what to ask, when to ask it, how to ask it. In some cases a question can be right, but delivered with poor timing, thereby turning off the user.
Jarrett and Gaffney provide a thorough knowledge base covering all of those topics and then some. In nine chapters, they walk the reader through persuading people to answer, asking for the right information, making questions easy to answer, writing useful instructions, making a form look easy, flow, design, and testing.
They teach through examples. One type of example used delivers screenshots of a web site side-by-side with a user's dialogue as the user moves through that form. This lets readers really think about how users will respond to forms. To ensure the points are expressly clear, smiley faces and traffic light colors (red/yellow/green) are added to the dialogue. The reader can see at a glance what is good or bad about a given example.
Sprinkled throughout the book are interludes on specific hot topics like registration forms, which often break one of the cardinal rules by asking a question before the user is ready to answer. Jarrett and Gaffney explore ways to best approach registration forms when they can't be avoided. Other interlude topics include providing help, using pop-ups, and applying serif vs. sans serif fonts.
There are before and after forms, where a form is shown along with the above mentioned user dialogue notations, followed by a redesigned version of the form that addresses trouble spots. The authors don't just show you what is troublesome, they show you how to make it better.
There are also side-by-side comparisons that show one type of form from two similar businesses. These examples give the reader an opportunity to compare and contrast the style of the text, the types of entry fields, the overall flow, and how all of these aspects contribute to the usability of the form.
A couple of case studies are used to further demonstrate the thought process behind form design. These, along with all of the examples throughout the chapters, help the reader see Jarrett and Gaffney's process in action.
This book is not a "recipe" book. It doesn't give a set of rules for designing forms. Instead it gives the reader the knowledge they need to build an appropriate form for a specific situation. It tells the reader what to consider, with whom to consult within their organization, how to evaluate whether a form will produce the desired outcome, and how to improve a form's success rate.
Forms That Work is filled to the brim with everything you need to know to make a form that will produce results. It is a definite addition to any web worker's reference shelf.
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