Blog – The Architect’s Log

How to create an effective and useful web form:

1. Don’t ask too many questions.
   Only ask for information that you’ll actually use. For example, if you plan to respond to form submissions via email, only ask for an email address, not their email address and phone number. Short forms are more likely to be completed and most of us don’t like giving away all our contact information anyway.
   
   
2. Ask specific questions.
   In a generic web site contact form, for example, ask the user for a specific piece of information in the “message box” field. Asking something like “What type of of service are you most interested in?” or “What is the biggest challenge for you in X area?” will give you better information to work with than “Enter your message here:”. (With more specific information, you can address a user’s specific needs right away when responding to them.) Continue Reading »

Odds are this has probably happened to you before: You painstakingly fill out an online order form and it malfunctions in some way. Maybe you hit the “submit” button and nothing happens or you get a “file not found” 404 error. Maybe you’re trying to enter a message on a contact form and the text box isn’t big enough to accept your answer. Worse yet, maybe you submit your information, nothing happens, and you’re left to wonder if the information even made it to it’s destination.

Once any kind of web form has been created, it needs to be thoroughly tested before released to web site visitors. We do a good deal of testing on the development end, but it’s a good idea for you to conduct testing as well, from the user end. Here’s how: Continue Reading »

This weekend, I had the pleasure joining around 100 of the DC area’s foremost thinkers and practitioners of User Experience for the 2010 UX Camp conference. The purpose of the gathering: to define “user experience,” to “explore the interactions of experience design,” and to share the “big ideas that inspire”. Continue Reading »