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I have a form which is for a medical application, where a user enters his personal details as well as ailments and lifestyle information. The form is divided into 4 parts. Each part has around 8-15 fields. Currently I am using a wizard that is divided into four sections (Personal information, ailment information, allergies, lifestyle info etc). The user can go to next section by completing current section. Alternately he can use the heading on the wizard to navigate to other sections.

I am kinda skeptic about the wizard as the user should be able to edit/update the forms in future.

Is this a correct way to showcase long forms? Is there any better way?

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'A form is a conversation. And like any conversation, it should be represented by a logical communication between two parties — user and your app.'

Some points:

  • Only Ask What’s Required
  • Order the Form Logically
  • Group Related Information
  • Avoid multiple columns
  • Try multiple pages

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  • I am already following all the points that you have mentioned. This is for an online medical record where people same their personal and health information. My target audience happen to be people aged between 30-70. Most of them might not be tech savvy. Thanks you for the link you have posted. let me go through it.
    – Abhilash Ramadasan
    Feb 6, 2017 at 10:12
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Your first task should be to shorten the form. Go through it, question by question, and find out whether there are answers that you won't do anything with. Get rid of those.

Then think about whether you need that information all at once. Consider making your registration form just an email and password. Then when the user wants you to ship them something you ask for their address. Then when they want you to call them you ask for their phone number. Then when they want better recommendations you ask for their music preferences. Or whatever. You get the idea.

When presented with a huge form, a user will consider quitting. And splitting up a long form into pages only gives them multiple opportunities to quit. By providing small relevant forms in the correct context users have a motivation to fill them out and they know what you're going to do with their information.

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  • All the current fields are necessary as this is a medical record keeping application. Initially, this form was a single page multiple column form with hell lot of fields. I removed fields that were unnecessary and divided to form into 4 different sections (read four different pages). e.g. personal info, ailment info, lifestyle related info etc. One issue I came through is that since the developers are not using auto-save (budget issues), if the user leaves the machine in between while updating the form, all the data he had entered might get lost.
    – Abhilash Ramadasan
    Feb 6, 2017 at 12:36
  • Good! My answer applies to forms in general. You've got yourself a specific case. (You might want to update your question to say that this is a medical application.) I assume that your users are required to complete this form in order to accomplish something they'll benefit from. If so, then that will provide some motivation to not quit halfway through.
    – Ken Mohnkern
    Feb 6, 2017 at 17:39

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