Formulate Information Design

1,221 reputation

bio	website	formulate.com.au
	location	Melbourne, Australia
	age
visits	member for	1 year, 1 month
	seen	Apr 17 at 21:45
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From customer leads to patient records, all organisations rely on effective and efficient data collection.The tools and applications through which such data is gathered are called “forms”.

We help organisations do more with less by fixing their forms.

Our services:

advice on design of existing forms and forms management business processes;
design of new forms, or redesign of existing forms;
training in form design best practice and forms strategy; and
research into what makes forms work.

Principal of Formulate Information Design is Jessica Enders.

Find out more about us and access free articles and research posts at formulate.com.au.

	1,221 reputation	bio	website	formulate.com.au	visits	member for	1 year, 1 month
25 badges		location	Melbourne, Australia		seen	Apr 17 at 21:45

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Apr 17	awarded	Yearling
Apr 16	comment	Can I reformat personal names obtained from a single form field? Interesting solution. On inspection it looks like it will work (although for something so novel, I'd definitely want to do some user testing). I would suggest two tweaks. First, some people have just one name, so soften the validation to require just one character in one of the two component fields. Second, I'd put the "full name" options in alphabetical order, so they are easier to review. Also, is there actually any evidence for (full) names that are part names joined without spaces (3rd & 4th option in list)? (As an aside, this doesn't solve the Carreño Quiñones problem ... does it?)
Apr 7	answered	Good UX for a page
Apr 6	comment	Can I reformat personal names obtained from a single form field? I see the potential difficulty, but I think it's important not to confuse the users who enter their name with the users who are running reports. The answer to your sorting question depends on the users who are running reports: does it matter to them whether María-Jose Carreño Quiñones is sorted to appear under "C" or "Q"? If not, then you can just use the data as entered into the field.
Apr 5	awarded	Necromancer
Apr 4	answered	Can I reformat personal names obtained from a single form field?
Mar 19	answered	Does leaving a field blank - mean “everyone”
Feb 26	comment	Group of checkboxes and supporting text fields The other problem with horizontal checkboxes is that it can be harder to ensure that visually, the label is easy to associate with its respective checkbox. For example, with your mockup, it is likely that some users will think the checkbox for fax is the one on the left hand side and some will think it's the box on the right hand side. You also have the horizontal width to contend with if you go across the screen. You avoid both of these problems altogether if you align boxes vertically, as JohnGB suggests.
Feb 24	answered	Two dependent inputs in a form
Feb 16	comment	How to design the input field for recipe ingredients It is naive to say a good UX is about the user before everything else. There is no UX without an organisation behind it to build and maintain the system. And software that does everything for everyone suits no-one, so you need to ahve a clear vision. It is also naive to suggest that data can always be parsed internally. Every client I've every worked with – many of them very competent and dedicated – has had some (legitimate) barriers to doing this, e.g. legacy systems, or the data not lending itself to accurate parsing (e.g. splitting names).
Feb 16	comment	Does the size of an input influence its value? I didn't say that the email field should be longer, just that it probably needs to be longer than the password field, as the latter is usually not much more than 6-10 characters. Remember, this form has to be designed to suit everybody's email addresses and passwords – the form doesn't know beforehand who is logging in. BTW, a longer password is not necessarily a stronger one.
Feb 15	answered	Does the size of an input influence its value?
Feb 15	comment	How to design the input field for recipe ingredients I'm not suggesting that the design should just blindly replicate what is needed internally. But I don't see how any data collection interface can be successfully designed without knowing what data is needed. After all, a form is just a tool for getting data – working out what data it must collect has to be the first step. Then, once you've done that, you can work out what you need to do to ensure that collection meets users needs. In summary, a great UX is the sweet-spot between business and user.
Feb 13	answered	How to design the input field for recipe ingredients
Feb 10	answered	Why don't most forms have a hover state?
Feb 6	answered	Adding new data while filtering current data
Feb 6	comment	Accesibility vs. read only inputs I agree with Yisela, and would just add that while you should use form elements, you can style them differently to indicate that they are not editable (e.g. remove the border from text boxes).
Feb 3	awarded	Commentator
Feb 3	comment	Layout question regarding “Select existing record or create new one” pattern Another example of progressive disclosure: donations.redcross.org.au/SGOrders/Create
Feb 2	comment	Layout question regarding “Select existing record or create new one” pattern There are many places that do progressive disclosure – it's subtle so you might not notice it. For example, the payment type question on e-commerce sites then reveals the right sub-questions (e.g. for credit card versus paypal). Similarly, choosing billing address different from shipping address reveals billing address fields. For a live example, get a quote from www.colesinsurance.com.au/home-insurance and say "yes" to ownership question, and say that you have a freestanding house. Cheers, Jessica.