Best way to reorganize large forms with niche user group?

Question

I've hit a challenge with designing a web application that has a long form with many text field inputs (30+). Solutions go against best practices.

Users are very technical and are engineers who need to constantly refer to their entered data so wizards and long vertical forms are not ideal in checking work. We get complaints about forms being too long and they have to scroll. When polling users though, they prefer to scroll rather than click through tabs as they don't like too many clicks back and forth. In the end, they prefer "nice and neat" very compact design. All fields are required for their work so engagement rules aren't as applicable.

Would it make sense to make horizontal columns and use subtle lines to break in between to help with tracking?

Text field inputs are usually all number based with their units next to them. I do try to chunk based on context. Looking for some ideas on how to meet user's needs as well as not break too many design patterns.

Answer 1

First, I'd like to encourage you to find a solution for your "niche users" - not all users and use cases are alike, and "mobile first" is not a good attitude for professional desktop users working with an app 6 hrs a day.

When polling users though, they prefer

That sounds like you have contact to your users, and do some user research. Keep doing it, and do more of it. I.e., do usability testing on prototypes with real-world tasks, and measure error rates and task duration; prioritize good measurement in these "hard" areas over bad criticism based on opinion or aesthetics.

• What monitors (smartphones, tablets) are they using? Optimize for that resolution. If the resolutions are very different, make sure the form is responsive (i.e., re-layouts when the window size is different).

• Try to find an organizing principle for the fields which your users can recognize without you telling them. Either by frequency (most used on top) or by topic (group into sections with headers), or by something appropriate to your business.

• If you use sections, ensure headers are visually different (text length, or icons, or colors) to allow navigating to the correct section from 5m away (or with only half your attention). Using "subtle lines" has the danger that the line looks identical whether it's between 2nd and 3rd or between 3rd and 4th section.

• Maybe you can combine topic (use sections) and frequency (most used on left) in placement of fields?

• Make the fields as small as appropriate for the legal values. Often, fields are way too large (long) and thereby reduce the number of visible fields, requiring scrolling.

Answer 2

We get complaints about forms being too long and they have to scroll. When polling users though, they prefer to scroll rather than click through tabs as they don't like too many clicks back and forth.

This sounds like you haven't found the root cause yet. "I need to scroll" on it's own wouldn't be a cause for complaint, after all, "doomscrolling" is something people get themselves addicted to. It sounds like what you need to do is look one of the engineers over the shoulder while they work to find out where the scrolling starts becoming a problem.

I suspect that there's one of two things going on:

1. The way you group data isn't how data needs to be filled in, and the order of the fields just needs a bit of reshuffling. If the order in which the engineers are filling out the form is field 1, 2, 93, 5, 74, 3, and so on, maybe field 93 needs to moved up to position 3.
2. The users need to reference a number of fields more often than others. In this case, pinning a field to the view would be helpful. One example of this pattern is spreadsheets where you can pin the first couple rows and columns to your view.

But again: This is speculation on my part, you definitely need to do more research on how your users exactly use your form.