Publication day for Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability
The book brings together much of what Gerry Gaffney and I have learned about creating better forms over more than a decade of practice, consultancy, teaching and research.
Here is what the publishers Morgan Kaufmann have to say about the book:
Forms are everywhere on the web – for registration and communicating, for commerce and government. Good forms make for happier customers, better data, and reduced support costs. Bad forms fill your organization’s databases with inaccuracies and duplicates and can cause loss of potential consumers.
“Designing good forms is trickier than people think. Jarrett and Gaffney come to the rescue with Designing Forms that Work, clearly explaining exactly how to design great forms for the web. Liberally illustrated with full-color examples, it guides readers on how to define requirements, how to write questions that users will understand and want to answer, and how to deal with instructions, progress indicators and errors.
Buy a copy of Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability
We are proud of our book
Here are some things about the book that we are particularly proud of:
- Steve Krug agreed to write the foreword. That’s definitely the coolest thing that’s ever happened to us.
- Ginny Redish agreed that it could be a companion book to her wonderful book “Letting go of the words: Writing web content that works”. We’ve tried hard to emulate her clear and approachable style.
- We managed to keep the book to under 200 pages, so you can read it at a sitting.
- We persuaded our publishers to let us have lots of illustrations, and even a few cartoons.
Caroline talks about the book with Tom Johnson of I’d rather be writing.
Update, 2025: We won’t be writing a second edition
People sometimes ask us whether we will be creating a second edition of this book. We’ve decided not to, because writing a second edition would be very time-consuming, and we’d rather spend our writing time publishing short articles in a more timely manner.
If you’re mostly interested in interaction design and the appearance of forms, then we recommend Jessica Enders’ book “Designing UX: Forms” (2017). She’s done a great job of covering what’s happened since our book came out.
Or visit my page on forms to find more recent articles.
#forms #formsthatwork