Miirage.com

6 Responses to “Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability”

1. Jessica J. Enders
   March 21st, 2010 at 6:22 am

   

   The web design world has been lacking in a books focusing on forms for a long time, then along come two: “Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability” and Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Both books are truly good but if you had to choose just one, I would recommend “Forms that Work”, for two reasons.

   Firstly, while Wroblewski comes from a general web interface design perspective, Jarrett has a forms background. This is important because as anyone who’s read texts like Asking Questions: The Definitive Guide to Questionnaire Design — For Market Research, Political Polls, and Social and Health Questionnaires and Measurement Errors in Surveys (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics) will know, the exercise of collecting quality data is not a trivial one. In my opinion, someone with data collection expertise can apply that to the web medium more easily and effectively than someone with expertise in the web medium can learn the complexities of collecting data.

   Secondly, in addition to specific advice about key aspects of a form’s design, “Forms that Work” gives clear overall models for thinking about forms. These models enable the reader to make informed design decisions for cases beyond those covered in the book. This makes “Forms that Work” so much more than a reference.

   Add to this the fact that “Forms that Work” is written in a conversational tone, has loads of real life examples (of both what to do and what not to do) and goes into just the right amount of detail, and you’ve got a extremely valuable resource for anyone who has to design forms for the web.
   Rating: 5 / 5

2. Benjamin S. Boyle
   March 21st, 2010 at 8:17 am

   

   Forms that Work are fantastic – both this book, and the forms you’ll create after reading it! If you’ve ever read a book on web design and thought “I wish it had more advice about forms” this book will fill in all those blanks.

   Caroline and Gerry write exceptionally well, and evidently practice what they preach. This book is a concise and enjoyable read, and absolutely packed with useful and practical approaches to form design, beautifully illustrated with examples and backed by the years of research they have conducted into how people really use forms.

   It gets straight into explaining effective techniques to approach the design of forms – it’s all about the conversation between a form and a person. But it doesn’t shy away from sticky design details. Do you wonder about placing colons on the end of labels or not? Do you ponder whether to put your labels above or next to fields, right aligned or left aligned? Read this book. Caroline and Gerry’s straightforward advice not only answers those questions (and more), the answers relate back to the customer and the conversation in a way that truly will make better forms. Forms that work.

   Why are you still reading this review? Buy the book.
   
   n.b. buy it here and you’ll get to fill out some forms during the purchase!
   Rating: 5 / 5

3. M. Niederberger
   March 21st, 2010 at 9:44 am

   

   As a web analytics consultant I often need to dive into the world of Usability in order to see the big picture. Measuring shopping cart or sign-up form abandonment rates is only ‘my’ side of the story, trying to understand which checkout process are stopping a visitor from completing your form or process is the other half.

   Caroline Jarrett’s and Gerry Gaffney’s book “Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability” gave me instant insights into the inner workings of forms. Using three layers of understanding “Relationship”, “Conversation” and “Appearance” Caroline and Gerry explain in a very fluid style of writing how to design an effective form.

   The books reads very easy, but don’t be fooled. Even though it is not heavily filled with often worthless specialist jargon, it is filled to the brim with important definitions, visitor’s perspectives, design techniques and case studies. Just like “Don’t make me think” by Steve Krugg, this book is an utter joy to read! I highly recommend this for anyone wanting to get the most out of their online forms.
   Rating: 5 / 5

4. Megawhat Baby Buggies Review (Part02of02)
   March 21st, 2010 at 7:02 am

   

   [...] Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability | Miirage.com [...]

5. Gabriel Svennerberg
   March 21st, 2010 at 11:36 am

   

   I found Forms that Work fun and easy to read. It’s filled with illustrations and real-life examples which makes it easy to understand how to put the concepts into practice. What I love about this book is that it’s compact and succinct. The authors deliberately decided to keep the book under 200 pages which I think was a very wise decision.

   There’s no doubt that after reading this book you will be able to design better forms. I highly recommend it.
   Rating: 5 / 5

6. Craig Tomlin
   March 21st, 2010 at 2:12 pm

   

   I’m kind of surprised that this book didn’t sell out shortly after printing. By reading and using this book, any web site manager that has forms on his or her web site could probably double conversion rate!

   It’s a well-known fact that the vast majority of your form visitors will at some point abandon your form. Why? This book will help you easily answer that question.

   By applying the knowledge you gain from the best practices and principles in this book, you’ll decrease the number of abandonments, and increase the number of conversions.

   You’ll probably get a raise, or at least a bonus, and can finally take that trip you’ve always wanted to go on to Paris, the South of France and Italy (unless of course you happen to live in Paris, the South of France or Italy in which case you’re probably going to Walt Disney World).
   Rating: 5 / 5