Large web forms (dozens of fields) intended for trained/experienced users? [closed]

Question

I've been searching a long time for some guidance or examples of web form design of large forms (dozens of fields - maybe 50+) for a user base that will be trained on the application.

99.9% of the guidance seems to be geared toward "accessibility" or "intuitiveness" which are, by all means, valid goals. The issue is that a form that will be used on a one-off or infrequent basis by users who will likely be encountering it for the first (or only) time has much different considerations required compared with a form for data entry to a business application that will be used repeatedly all day long by users who are trained on the app.

• If I'm designing for a one-off (say a sign-up form) then I want to focus on designing the form so that the user can't help but flow naturally through the steps and end up completing their goal and feeling all warm and fuzzy.
• If I'm designing for an experienced user that will use the form 20x a day, they are going to want it designed to minimize the clicks and navigations, etc. They don't care [as much] about looks or flair and subtle cues to help them work through the form. They know the form like the back of their hand and just want to be able to enter data as quickly as possible and see as much as possible in one view.

The requirements that I'm getting from the users is that they want to see "everything" on one screen. They don't want to have to scroll. They want to minimize clicking to other pages to continue working.

Does anyone have any suggestions/links/dire-warnings??

Thanks, Dave

Answer 1

My instinct is to tell you to break it up into sections the user can navigate between, to minimize the amount of continous data entry they have to do, as well as keeping the sections you have to validate to a minium. Get all the way to the bottom only to have to scroll back up to the top... annoying!

Since you want a large form, however, my suggestions are:

1. Validate as you go. As soon as a user leaves an input or section let them know everything is okay. Don't glue them to a control though, use visual feedback (like backgrounds going red or similar).

2. Don't lose that page! Use whatever technique you can (including background submits) to store the user's states. Funnily enough, a certain user driven programmers community website does that...

3. Tab navigation! Set the tab order! Your keyboard wizards will love you

4. Although you might want to jam as much as possible onto one line, don't. Keep good spacing and vertical navigation - people are used to scrolling vertically, and good spacing makes things readable.

There's lots more, but, as you might expect, there's an even better answer, here

Answer 2

We touch on the key drivers for designing forms for high-usage, trained users in our book "Forms that work".

The key points are:

• Try to cram everything onto one page, as described. Having to click from screen to screen becomes very tiring very quickly when you're using the same form all day every day.
• If you must separate off some items, do extremely careful observational analysis to discover which items are genuinely used rarely. Put those ones on the 'extra click' screen.
• Abbreviate the labels ruthlessly, taking advice from the users on what abbreviations are required. They'll rapidly stop reading the labels anyway, working mostly from the absolute position of fields relative to each other...
• ... which means: don't ever allow fields to move about. Make sure they retain their absolute position; this is essential for speed of completion
• Make sure that the form is entirely navigable using keystrokes alone. This is essential for speedy completion by experienced users
• Find out where the answers come from to go into the fields. If they are typing in stuff from another document (it does still happen, believe me) make sure that the field are arranged in the same absolute positions to each other as is shown on the layout of the document they are typing in from.
• Don't worry too much 'intuitiveness'; these people are going to be trained.
• Bounce rate is completely irrelevant, so you can skip any advice you see about 'conversion' or 'bounce rate'. These users don't have the option to go elsewhere and do a different form.

Email me directly if you'd like to discuss this in more detail: Caroline Jarrett. More contact details on Forms that work - our book's web site