Day 6 Notes

Forms

World events being changed by crappy form:
Butterfly Ballot - 2000 Presidential Election








The form was super confusing.
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3 Layers of a Form:
Relationship - asking + providing right information
>people types: Readers, Rushers, Refusers
Conversation - easy questions, useful instructions
>don't let them pause cause they'll probably just go away, when they mess up a form try to be friendly
Appearance - make it look and feel friendly and easy, form controls: make it as easy as possible

(people are scared to give personal info)
To combat this you need to give them reassurances, like explanation why you need the info and thank them at the end.

3 Rules
1. Establish Trust any way you can
2. reduce Social Costs: a status indicator (like how much more they have to go)
3. Increase Rewards (tangible immediate reward vs a perceive larger benefit down the line)

Make sure to measure your forms against your competitors.
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Form Instructions
- make sure to have a title
- make is consistent with branding
- offer of help if it's needed
- way to get to a different form if they need it (people often fill out the wrong form)
-thank you note at the end
-short, affirmative, active-voice messages
(affirmative: instead of telling them don't tell them do)
(active: You must fill out this form vs. This form must be filled out by you)

Give the WHY First or else people get confused.
example:
People were told - draw a triangle on top of a T because they were going to draw a wine glass.
People were told - you are going to draw a wine glass, draw a triangle on top of T.
The people who were told the WHY first got it right.


Appearance:
Branding

Label (for every field) : often times using tables is ok for forms.
If lables are on the left : you don't want huge gaps between lables and fields.
If the lables are aligned right, next to the field, the form is hard to scan (visually)
If the lables are on top it can be confusing which form and label go together.

Required Fields
Indicated by an asterisk - you need to say what the * means
Red fields vs Grey
Bold
(required)
(optional)



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The Un-styled Form
same form, different styles

HOMEWORK:
Find several form examples to share in class.