I'm doing a presentation on form design in a few weeks.
What's a form you think stinks? Where's the link?
What about a form that's brilliant? Where's the link?
Happy 3 Day Weekend!
2 comments:
Anonymous
said...
No particular links, but I can tell you some of my pet peeves:
1) Dates: whatever web scripting language you use, there a thousand date conversion/validation packages. There is no reason for a user to ever be faced with "(YYYY/MM/DD)." Actually, I'd make this a more general statement: let the burden of data normalization rest with the application, not the user.
2) Validation: it's 2008; forms should use AJAX/DHTML techniques to validate in process, particularly long forms. Waiting until an entire form has been completed to tell a user something is missing is just silly. Sites that require users to fill out an entire form and submit it before they tell you the username you've chosen already exists are particularly annoying. Corollary: If, for some reason, in-process validation is impossible, *all* entered data should be retained.
3) Saving/Printing a copy of your filled-out form should be simple and painless.
4) Designers should use standard names for form elements, to enable automatic data entry by browsers that support it.
Wax On, Wax Off is a blog about usability, web design, bad web sites, good web sites, bad customer service, inspiring customer service, things that make me grouchy, computers, interesting articles, blogging, stupid corporate choices, user experience, experience design, the internet, social media, web 2.0, project management, webmasters, web management, things google does to make my life harder, being a woman in IT, working in communications, coding, evil wild boars, photography, and, sometimes, world of warcraft.
2 comments:
No particular links, but I can tell you some of my pet peeves:
1) Dates: whatever web scripting language you use, there a thousand date conversion/validation packages. There is no reason for a user to ever be faced with "(YYYY/MM/DD)." Actually, I'd make this a more general statement: let the burden of data normalization rest with the application, not the user.
2) Validation: it's 2008; forms should use AJAX/DHTML techniques to validate in process, particularly long forms. Waiting until an entire form has been completed to tell a user something is missing is just silly. Sites that require users to fill out an entire form and submit it before they tell you the username you've chosen already exists are particularly annoying. Corollary: If, for some reason, in-process validation is impossible, *all* entered data should be retained.
3) Saving/Printing a copy of your filled-out form should be simple and painless.
4) Designers should use standard names for form elements, to enable automatic data entry by browsers that support it.
Those are the big things, as I see it.
Thanks, Jay!
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