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| FORMS THAT WORK
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Designing Web Forms for Usability
To order this title, and for more information, click here
By
Caroline Jarrett, Effortmark Ltd, Leighton Buzzard, UK
Gerry Gaffney, Information Design and Proprietary Ltd, Kingston, Australia
Included in series
Interactive Technologies,
Description
Forms are everywhere on the web – for registration and communicating, for commerce and government. Good forms make for happier customers,
better data, and reduced support costs. Bad forms fill your organization's databases with inaccuracies and duplicates and can cause loss
of potential consumers.
Designing good forms is trickier than people think. Jarrett and Gaffney come to the rescue with Designing
Forms that Work, clearly explaining exactly how to design great forms for the web. Liberally illustrated with full-color examples, it
guides readers on how to define requirements, how to write questions that users will understand and want to answer, and how to deal with
instructions, progress indicators and errors.
Audience
HCI professionals, web designers, software developers, user interface designers, HCI academics and students, market research professionals, financial professionals
Contents
Introduction: What is a form?
What is a form?
1. Persuading people to answer
Pick the right moment
to ask a question
Think about relationship question by question
Follow three rules that that influence response rates
Think about who
will answer your questions
SummaryInterlude: Registration forms: rules and suggestions
2. Gathering the right information
Find out why you need the information
Check if your organization already holds the information
Find out what others ask for
Summary:
only ask for information that you needCase study: conference registration form
3. Making questions easy to answer
How questions work
Make it easy to understand the question
Make it easy to find the answer
Judging the answer: avoiding privacy errors
Placing the answer: avoiding category errors
Summary: writing questionsCase study: avoiding choice points
4. Writing
instructions
Writing instructions
Rewriting instructions in plain language
Cut the instructions that aren't needed
Move the
instructions to where they are needed
A before- and after- example
Summary: Writing instructionsInterlude: help for forms
5.
Choosing between drop-downs and other controls
Picking controls for your forms
How users expect controls to work
Use these six
questions to choose the right control
Specialist controls may help
Think about the form as a whole
Summary: Providing the answerInterlude:
names and addresses
6. Making the form flow easily
Make the form flow easily
Use progress indicators
Avoid surprising
users with sudden changes
Be gentle with errors
Say ?thanks' to close the conversation
Conversational flow – summaryInterlude: why
we hate pop-ups
7. Taking care of the details
Taking care of the details
Where to put the labels compared to the
fields
Colons at the end of labels?
Sentence or title case for labels?
How to indicate required fields
Choosing legible text: fonts and
words
SummaryInterlude: serif or sans-serif
8. Making the form look easy
What makes a form look good
Make
sure users know who you are: logos and branding
Make your form look tidy with grids
Make it look organized with grouping
Avoid two-column
forms
SummaryCase study: an appearance makeover
9. Testing (the best bit)
We're passionate about usability
testing
How to do really good usability testing of forms
Final message from this book
Appendices
Suggestions for further reading
References
Acknowledgements
| Bibliographic details |
Paperback, 288 pages, publication date: NOV-2008
ISBN-13: 978-1-55860-710-1
ISBN-10: 1-55860-710-2
Imprint: MORGAN KAUFFMAN
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| Price and Ordering |
Price:
EUR 26.95
GBP 22.99
USD 49.95
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Last update: 25 Nov 2009
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