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Forms That Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability

Caroline Jarrett,

Gerry Gaffney

3.83 · Rating details · 154 ratings · 10 reviews

Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability clearly explains exactly how to design great forms for the web. The book provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. It features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability clearly explains exactly how to design great forms for the web. The book provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. It features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. It includes dozens of examples - from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color).

This book isn't just about colons and choosing the right widgets. It's about the whole process of making good forms, which has a lot more to do with making sure you're asking the right questions in a way that your users can answer than it does with whether you use a drop-down list or radio buttons. In an easy-to-read format with lots of examples, the authors present their three-layer model - relationship, conversation, appearance. You need all three for a successful form - a form that looks good, flows well, asks the right questions in the right way, and, most important of all, gets people to fill it out. Liberally illustrated with full-color examples, this book 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.

This book is essential reading for HCI professionals, web designers, software developers, user interface designers, HCI academics and students, market research professionals, and financial professionals.

*Provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective.

*Features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers.

*Includes dozens of examples -- from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color).

*Foreword by Steve Krug, author of the best selling Don't Make Me Think! ...more

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Paperback, 199 pages

Published by Morgan Kaufmann (first published October 1st 2008)

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Lists with This Book

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People by Susan M. Weinschenk

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3.83 ·

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· 154 ratings · 10 reviews

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May 21, 2009 Alice rated it it was amazing

Shelves: usability

Jarrett and Gaffney have written a very practical book for people who design forms. They've limited their examples to Web forms, but the principles they are espousing apply as well to forms on other systems, and to paper forms up to and including the tax forms we all know and love, whatever country we call home.

The authors take us from considerations of the relationship between the form and its filler to "the truth" about planning a form for success in a number of different languages. Sometimes ...more

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Feb 26, 2010 Nathanael Coyne rated it liked it

Shelves: work-related

Good introduction to forms but not substantial enough to be a useful ongoing reference to hit developers over the head with. Many of the examples could have been additionally abstracted and analysed; the principles and guidance seemed unsubstantiated, giving the book a feeling of lack of credibility, although as I know the authors are experienced I was happy to overlook this. Others might not be so forgiving. Book could have easily been twice as long.

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Mar 22, 2012 David rated it liked it

Please don't take my three-star review the wrong way. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this book. I liked the presentation. I thought it was very clever to illustrate the end-user thought processes with callouts next to screen shots of good and bad web form examples (example: "Why do I have to enter the same information twice?").

Maybe I think about web forms more on a regular basis than your average bear. There simply wasn't anything in this book's 200 pages that I haven't already thought a ...more

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Jul 06, 2013 Danielle Wills rated it it was amazing

Really useful - a lot of things you'd already know / common sense, if you already have some background knowledge of web form usability. Still some points and tips for those that aren't new.

If you are new - great read!~

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Nov 30, 2009 Alaeddin Hallak rated it it was amazing

Shelves: usability

Awesome book on Web forms usability. Short and to the point. Lots of examples and funny illustrations. I've used this book as a basis for a public presentation I gave (in Arabic).

http://vimeo.com/9488513

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