It happens every time…

A client of mine – a very good client who understands what I do and listens to what I have to say – sent me an email about a form I’m designing. I’d been expecting this email. Why? Because it happens on every form project I’ve come across; it’s the email that says ‘the form is too long’.

I have yet to write the standard reply, which is that because it has the same questions in as the original, the new design is in fact exactly the same length.Many forms that exist are the classic examples of the mistake of ‘fitting information around the design’, or more often than not ‘fitting the information into the space available’.

This space saving comes at the expense of the users’ ability to understand what they are being asked, and their ability to act on it when they do understand.

My approach in these situations is always to ‘fit the design round the information’. True, this usually means ‘extra length documents’ but in all probability these will be easier to complete, take less time to complete and reduce the amount of unusable information entered into them.