Web Form Design Book Announcement

by April 24, 2007

I'm happy to announce that I've started work on a new book focusing on Web form design for Rosenfeld Media.


The working title is Web Form Design Best Practices and you can stay up date on the book's proress and idea development by subscribing to the RSS feed from the book-in-progress site. The book is scheduled to be released in Winter 2008.

So why write a book about form design? If you are in online retail, your goal is to sell things. But standing in the way of your products and your customers is a checkout form. If you are developing social software or open peer productions systems, your goal is to grow your community. Standing in between you and community members is a form. If you've built a productivity based Web application, forms enable key interactions that let people create and manage content. So in commerce, customer aquisition, and online productivity -forms play a pivotal role. As a result, form design matters.

Of course no one likes filling forms. People simply want to get the product you are selling, to socialize, or to get their work done. From their perspective forms just get in the way.

Understanding the principles of form design gives you the ability to minimze pain for people and maximize business success. It's my hope Web Form Design Best Practices provides that understanding. Stay tuned for how...