A presentation on Label placement in forms, at the Technical Communication Summit, the 56th Annual Conference of the Society for Technical Communication, Dallas, US, May 2010. Amongst the time-consuming controversies we look at are left and right alignment, labels aboveContinue reading… Label placement in forms and other time-consuming forms controversies
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Surveys That Work: Using Questionnaires to Gather Useful Data, Seattle 2010
This presentation to the Society for Technical Communication 2010 conference in Seattle, US, compares survey processes and looks at some of the detail of designing surveys – including how to avoid survey error. Surveys That Work: using questionnaires to gatherContinue reading… Surveys That Work: Using Questionnaires to Gather Useful Data, Seattle 2010
Avoid putting a reset button on your web forms
The history of RESET HTML 2.0 appeared in 1995. At that time, I was working in usability of forms – and I still am. But I didn’t have email or an internet connection. So I think it was remarkably niceContinue reading… Avoid putting a reset button on your web forms
Label placement in forms – and other time-consuming controversies
A presentation on label placement in forms, for the Technical Communication Summit in Seattle, April 2010. Amongst the time-consuming controversies we look at are left and right alignment, labels above and below fields, how to handle required fields, colons, andContinue reading… Label placement in forms – and other time-consuming controversies
Don’t put hints inside text boxes in web forms
When you are making a digital form, is it OK to put a hint inside a text box? The short version of my advice: don’t do it! Hint text is rarely effective as a way of helping users, but insteadContinue reading… Don’t put hints inside text boxes in web forms
Designing forms for technical specialists
I had the opportunity to give a talk on forms at the EBI, part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) – “EBI provides freely available data from life science experiments, performs basic research in computational biology and offers anContinue reading… Designing forms for technical specialists
Search is now normal behaviour – what do we do about that?
What information do visitors search for? What are “good” search results? What are the differences between internal search and external? How do users interact with the Google results page? And what does all of this mean for website design? ReportingContinue reading… Search is now normal behaviour – what do we do about that?
Helping a user choose from a very large list
Sometimes it is necessary for users to select a precise entry from a very large list. For example, one client described the need (for compliance purposes) to have users choose an ‘Occupation’ code from a list of almost 1000. SheContinue reading… Helping a user choose from a very large list
Questions about forms
This selection of questions and answers about forms first appeared on the website to accompany my book (with Gerry Gaffney) Forms That Work: designing web forms for usability. We’d thought of calling the section “Frequently Asked Questions” but we thought weContinue reading… Questions about forms
Can I use an asterix to indicate optional fields?
I was asked recently: ‘Our form has many required fields and few optional fields. We think that we should use an asterisk to indicate the optional fields. Do you agree?’ It makes sense but it is also a bad idea.Continue reading… Can I use an asterix to indicate optional fields?