Form Design: Chunking for Efficiency

 
In a recent evaluation with a moderately large sample of 30, the following form was tested.


We observed three different orders of execution in the data.  The rather jumbled nature of the form layout contributed to this problem.  A bigger issue was the lack of grouping of related fields, taking significant additional cognitive processing.

HTML has fieldset and legend tags to solve this problem.  In this case, re-ordering and changing the layout of the fields was required.  Here's an example of a fieldset:

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We project a more regular pattern, shown at left, in the revised design. More importantly, we expect that the percentage of users skipping a field will decrease dramatically.  Thirty percent of users missed a field and lost time upwards of a minute in some cases.

There is ROI on layout and visual design, in case there was any doubt.


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Posted at 21:25, Published in: Prototyping Testing