I was reading this excellent slideshare article on form design by Caroline Jarrett (June 2016):
How to look at the content in a form
It makes the very good point that you don't start with the form, but in my experience that is where 100% of my form owners start. I guess it is hard and unnatural to start from someone elses point of view. Which is exactly what Caroline suggests.
Caroline also helpfully points out a good range of domains you should be thinking about with form design namely: interaction design, service design, and content design. All three are part of the mix for successful form creation.
I particularly like the three layers model that Jarett and Gaffney suggest:
Appearance:
- Easy to use
- Easy to read
Conversation:
- Easy to understand
- Easy to answer
Relationship:
- Easy to get it done
- Easy to move on
She advocates writing a story about the form user which covers your assumptions. Then filling out the form as honestly as you can if you were that persona. Again this is super hard and unnatural for a lot of businesses who have never put themselves in their customers shoes, but if they don't it will be hard to get success across all the layers of the form.
I like that Step 1 is:
Don't look at it [the form] yet
Step 2: Choose a persona - write down your assumptions
Step 3: Fill in the form as that persona, as honestly as you can
Step 4: Look at it and assess across the three layers - appearance, conversation and relationship
Step 5: Brings us to user research.
How do users interact in practice?
What words do users actually use?
What are the real users like?
What are their needs?
Caroline also has an excellent model for what plain language is based largely on the excellent definition provided by Ginny Redish:
"Language is plain if we can... find what we need, understand what we find, and act."
Caroline has also included a large number of useful tips like:
"Test your forms with people - Ask them to explain to you what the questions mean to them, and what answers they would like to give."