Functioning Form: Interface Design http://www.lukew.com/ff/ Functioning Form: Merging medium and message in interface design, the user experience design process, Web applications, and more. en-us Luke Wroblewski http://www.lukew.com/img5/aim_icon.gifFunctioning Form> http://www.lukew.com/ff/ 2008-05-09<![CDATA[Audio: Luke Wroblewski on Form Design]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?681Web Form Design book and its relevance for the visual thinking community.

Check out the podcast with video on the VizThink site.
Download the audio as an mp3 (21.6 MB)

In the interview we discuss:
  • Why web form design is important
  • If form design is everywhere, why are there so many bad forms?
  • What are some of the common mistakes web form designers make?
  • What are the Top 3 tips for improving web forms?
  • Why do good designers create bad forms?
  • What is the disappearing form?
  • How does web form design relate to visual thinking?

web form design
For more on Form Design...
Check out Luke's book about Web form usability, visual design, and interaction design considerations: Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks.


Tags: , , , , ]]>2008-05-09LukeW<![CDATA[Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?680web form design
My new book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks is now available for purchase in both paperback and digital editions.
order book!
Paperback and free PDF edition from Rosenfeld Media

Order the book from Amazon.com
(paperback only)

Description
Forms make or break the most crucial online interactions: checkout (commerce), registration (community), data input (participation and sharing), and any task requiring information entry. In Web Form Design, Luke Wroblewski draws on original research, his considerable experience at Yahoo! and eBay, and the perspectives of many of the field's leading designers to show you everything you need to know about designing effective and engaging Web forms. See Complete Description...

Testimonials
"Luke's book is by far the most practical, comprehensive, data-driven guide for solving form design challenges that plague every interface designer. It is an essential reference that will become a must-read for many years."
—Irene Au Director of User Experience, Google

"Luke Wroblewski has done the entire world a great favor by writing this book. Online forms are ubiquitous and ubiquitously annoying but they don't have to be. Wroblewski shows Web designers how to present forms that gather necessary information without unnecessarily badgering and annoying visitors. With deft explanations and clear examples, he presents a clear case for better Web forms and how to achieve them. This book will help you every day."
—Alan Cooper Chairman, Cooper; author, The Inmates are Running the Asylum

"If I could only send a copy of Web Form Design Best Practices to the designer of every web form that's frustrated me, I'd go bankrupt from the shipping charges alone. Please. Stop the pain. Read this book now."
—Eric Meyer author of CSS: The Definitive Guide

"Form design has historically been an afterthought, a partial chapter in past web design primers. Thankfully, we now have Luke's indispensable best practices in print. This book will now sit on my desk whenever I'm designing an application."
—Dan Cederholm Principal, SimpleBits; author of Bulletproof Web Design

More Testimonials...

Book ContentsThanks to everyone who helped make this book possible! Especially the teams at Rosenfeld Media and Etre, and all the designers who helped contribute ideas, perspectives, and review time.

Tags: , , , , , ]]>2008-05-04LukeW<![CDATA[Web Form Design: All 218 Images Online]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?679Web Form Design
All 218 images from my new book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks (including the front and back covers) are now available for download under a Creative Commons license:

Web Form Design: Filling In the Blanks (book illustrations)

The book itself is on its way to the warehouse and will go on sale tomorrow morning. That means your last chance to sign up for a notification email and discount on the book is today!


Tags: , , , ]]>2008-05-01LukeW<![CDATA[Audio: Filching Design]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?678Filching DesignAt SxSW 2008, I had the pleasure of speaking on the Filching Design: When the Shoe Fits panel with Lindsey Simon (Google), and Skip Baney (Apple). We discussed the motivations, benefits, and drawbacks of reusing code or design elements (interactions, layouts, colors, etc.) found online.

An audio broadcast of the panel is now available:
Filching Design: When the Shoe Fits (27.4 MB MP3)

Notes on the panel:
SxSW 2008: Filching Design

Tags: , , ]]>2008-04-25LukeW<![CDATA[Audio: Why Logos are Irrelevant]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?677Why Logos are IrrelevantI had the opportunity to join Brian Zmijewski's Why Logos are Irrelevant panel at SxSW 2008 along with Christina Wodtke (LinkedIn), and Jeremy Britton (Zurb Inc.). While the panel title might suggest we advocated the death of all logos, the heart of the conversation was about the shifting value of logos in a world of infinite shelf space, digital identity, and the rapid iteration online products and services are afforded by low barriers to entry.

An audio broadcast of the panel is now available:
Logos: Why They're Irrelevant and Can Actually Hurt Your Business (27.9 MB MP3)

Notes on the panel:
SxSW 2008: Why Logos are Irrelevant

Tags: , , , , ]]>2008-04-23LukeW<![CDATA[Event: Influencing Strategy by Design]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?676Influencing Strategy by DesignOn Saturday May 10th 2008, I’ll be teaching a full-day course, Influencing Strategy by Design, for mid to senior level designers on how to influence and improve strategic decision-making within their department or company.

This eight hour, hands-on course will be co-taught with Tom Chi as part of the Involution Master Academy (an educational program for experienced professionals in design and related fields) in Sunnyvale, CA. Attendance is very limited to ensure each participant gets extensive hands-on time with the instructors. Registration opens today so get in soon if you’re interested.

Topics Covered
  • Key Take Aways: At a high-level we advocate these for any designer or design team interested in expanding their strategic involvement or influence.
  • Organizational Dynamics: Lack of organizational influence is frequently blamed on either reporting structure, or a lack of organizational understanding about the role of design. While both of these factors may be in play, focusing only on them to increase influence is unlikely to yield results.
  • Metrics: Taking the initiative to measure and track explicit customer experience metrics provides designers with a significant amount of leverage during strategic planning and product design.
  • Design Skills: We’ve distilled four attributes central to design that provide unique value to strategic decision-making.
  • Executive Presentations: When working on strategic initiatives that impact business direction, more likely than not, designers will need input and buy-in from key stakeholders.
The Official Description
This full-day course will teach designers how to greatly expand their influence by synthesizing and articulating clear, actionable business and product strategies. Often, career opportunities for designers are artificially limited by org charts that fail to fully capitalize on the galvanizing role that design can have beyond product or marketing. This course empowers designers by giving them tools to impact strategy, by illuminating important decision-drivers like market or user research, web analytics, financials, and product reports.

Created for experienced designers who want greater influence over strategic decision-making within their department or company, this hands-on course will immerse you in principles for communicating and influencing strategy and teach you and practical skills and techniques through group activities with Luke and your fellow students. By the end you will have new insight into the untapped potential that your design skills have to transform your career. See complete course details.

Hope to see some of you there!

Tags: , , , , , ]]>2008-04-20LukeW<![CDATA[IA Summit: Content page design best practices]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?675Content Page Design Best Practices talks at IA Summit 2008, I presented a framework for thinking about how to optimize content pages for the dynamic ecosystem of the Web instead of the structured hierarchy of a Web site.

Content
Download the slides:
Content Page Design Best Practices (4MB PDF)

Notes from my talk:
Fulfilling the Promise of Content Pages -Geo Voices
Content Page Design Best Practices -kev/null
LukeW's Content Page Design Best Practices -Whitney Hess
Content Page Design Best Practices -Roger Zender


Official Description:
In today’s social, distributed, search-driven Web, customers are finding their way to Web content through an increasing number of distinct experiences. Yet when people arrive at most Web pages, the experience they get isn’t optimized for this context. Instead, the vast majority of content pages online remain more concerned with their own context than the context of their users: where did a user arrive from and where are they likely to go next? These pages remain designed as if they were primarily accessed from a Web site’s home page or a carefully thought-out selection from the site’s information architecture.

To address these issues and more, this talk outlines a set of best practices for Web content page design that focuses on appropriate presentations of content, context, and calls to action. Specifically: how can content be optimized to meet user expectations as they arrive from a diverse number of access points; what is the minimum amount of context required to frame content appropriately; how can the most relevant calls to action be presented to maximize user engagement? Applying these considerations enables information architects to deliver content experiences that take full advantage of emerging opportunities online and the existing assets within their Web sites.

Tags: , , , , , ]]>2008-04-15LukeW<![CDATA[IA Summit: Linkosophy]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?674closing plenary at the 2008 IA Summit detailed why the central concerns of information architecture may be best served by a community of practice.
  • In the past, computer systems were centralized, closed and directed by hierarchy. The Web allowed you to link amongst hierarchies and enabled an explosion of content.
  • Computers are conduits for communication. Content is something to talk about. Information is there for our need for conversation.
  • The Internet sped up conversations by allowing them to move more quickly. The Web is a culture acceleration device.
  • There are cognitive limits to what we can consume. Information & conversation need to be managed and shaped so people can find what they want.
  • This is the central concern of information architecture: how can we shape context and connections in information spaces.
  • Community of Practice: is a group with a shared concern or passion for something. They do it better as they interact regularly. A practice is a shared history of learning. It is conversational.
  • Tendency to think of communities of practice as silos. In user experience design there are no silos. User Experience has multiple facets and they are integrated.
  • We experience semantic context & connection as space. Information represented as bits not atoms. Shaping context & connection is an act of architecture.
  • Information architects shape structures of context & connection for info spaces.
  • How to make sense of the mess of content online so people can get to conversations they need? Library Science was a great place to start making sense of this challenge.
  • First order is physical, second order is metadata (signifiers of physical thing), third order (non-centralized, messy order of how individuals organize all their stuff)
  • Some people think the third order of organization will consume first & second. But just because people can move things around does that negate the need for architecture.
  • Just because inventory can be arranged by users does not mean there is no architecture going on. Only focusing on inventory is a red herring.
  • Have to know the kind of conversation you are designing for. Do you need structure or order –if so how much?
  • Possibility spaces – create frameworks in which people create meaning. We are there to create structure within which people can create their own meaning. Links, Categories, and Rules.
  • Rules: access permissions, algorithmic context/architectures
  • IA is not only about getting people to a piece of information
  • Information is a conduit for context and connection. It’s about useful context & connections in a new kind of space.
  • Each of us tends to identify with a practice – we want to be part of a group: homes for identities.
  • Thing: the designed stuff. Activity: the act of working on the thing (hands on action) Role: the “hat” for the person working on this activity. Practice: shared history of learning among people who affiliate strongly with a role
  • Title: a label one is called does not influence what practice you are a member of.


Tags: , , , , ]]>2008-04-14LukeW<![CDATA[IA Summit: Re-experiencing information]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?673Re-experiencing information: Dealing with user-submitted data talk.
  • What is the context for registration? People want instant gratification. It’s fairly easy to switch providers –low barriers to entry for online services. People will lie to protect their identity. Remembering account details is difficult.
  • In order to establish an effective design, need to embrace user needs & leverage their natural behavior
  • Different structures for user registration. Pre: needs unique identifier. Post: encourages return transactions. Immersive: promotes usage. Part of the way you use the product.
  • Connecting with the user: build trust so can get factual data within the system
  • Error & help text: fun, approachable angle to ease people into it
  • Only ask necessary questions
  • Only need unique identifier for communication: aol, gmail, etc.
  • Banking & Finance: needs identifier for increased security
  • Commerce: no meaningful ID needed for commercial transactions
  • If going to use a unique identifier, make it easy for people. Use email or a common ID method for registration if you do not need a unique identifier
  • Respect your user’s locale: get message to international users that a localized version of site content is available.
  • Use CAPTCHA wisely: Provide audio version for the visually impaired, allow user to request a different image, Use CAPTCHA to protect commodities like usernames
  • Online circle of life: register, user, forget account information
  • Build a relationship prior to or with registration
  • Be personable: use humor if appropriate
  • Explain the value of questions if they may be seen as out of context
  • Use an immersive registration process when possible
Account recovery mechanisms
  • Email: quickest, assumes people have control over email
  • Challenge/response model: prone to repeated errors because people lie, works best when information is up to date
  • Forensic: confirms account activity and details in order to reset password: verifies actions only known by the account owner, safest method, most difficult to implement
  • Email recovery: put the user in the control. Need to ask for email address from user. Confirm where it is sending
  • Challenge/recovery questions change over time.
  • Users want to retain privacy and may be worried about ID theft
  • Put the user in control of account recovery
  • Remind users that their account may contain old information
  • Use human support when possible


Tags: , , , , , ]]>2008-04-14LukeW<![CDATA[IA Summit: E-service]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?672E-service: What we can learn from the customer-service gurus presentation at IA Summit 2008 walked through examples of bad customer service in action and presented strategies for avoiding similar pitfalls.
  • Service is 100% about user experience. User experience is not 100% about service.
  • Companies with an 83% satisfaction are in trouble. Need 90% satisfaction for long-term customer loyalty.
  • Service management is a process not a program. Goes on for a long time with no finish line.
  • Unhappy customers are dangerous. If you have a good experience you will tell three friends. If you are an unhappy customer, you will tell 17 people.
  • Service happens at the moment of experience. Moments of truth are when and where people have customer service.
  • Service is an intangible event that helps us achieve something.
  • 10 reasons services are tougher to manage than products:
  • Produced at the moment of delivery
  • Cannot be recalled if sucks
  • Experience cannot be sold or passed on
  • Product cannot be demonstrated. You cannot send a sample.
  • Cannot be centrally produced, inspected, or warehoused.
  • Quality assurance needs to happen before production
  • Help, Enhance, Fix –three ways to provide service
  • If we do not demand good service, we will never receive it.
  • Don’t just prevent bad things from happening. Educate people that it is not prevention, but also making wonderful things happen.


Tags: , , , ]]>2008-04-14LukeW<![CDATA[IA Summit: Inspiration from the edge]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?671Inspiration from the edge: New patterns for interface design presentation at IA Summit 2008 provided suggestions for new sources for inspiration for interface designs.
  • Check out Stephen's slides from his presentation
  • Default Thinking: look at competitor sites in a vertical for inspiration. But your customers visit sites outside of your industry, and bring those expectations to your site.
  • Default Thinking: these are the tools I have to work with (Windows controls, etc.). There are other places for inspiration like consumer electronics, games, TVs, other digital interfaces.
  • Today’s hardware changes make almost anything possible.
  • Software changes: silverlight, android, adobe air. Lots of desktop and Web intersection.
  • Natural behaviors are better than learned behaviors. Scrollbars requires us to move down to move something up. Except when learned behavior enables us to perform better.
Inspiration Examples
  • Use model of Club Penguin to organize enterprise application. Look beyond the surface- look at structure of game.
  • How to accommodate all levels of users & deep customization? Floating windows can bring up controls as users need them
  • Think outside the UI box. Don’t need to be constrained by it
  • How to accommodate multiple workspaces? iPhone button in tiered workspaces
  • Design with less space. Songza: stepped radial menu on song list.
  • Picnik: tabs replaced by contextual menu items. No need to remain visible at all times. Think about moments – do you need all the features all the time?
  • In the new FireFox browser, back button it bigger than forward as it gets more use.
  • Think in conversations. How do we communicate context?
  • Make it visual – communicate context, information
  • Jing: screen capture utility
  • Cookthink: integrated tag cloud browsing
  • Schematic: panning across different parts of site


Tags: , , , , , ]]>2008-04-14LukeW<![CDATA[IA Summit: The business of experience]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?670walked through several techniques for building business relationships & success utilizing user experience design methods.
  • The User Experience profession has reached the point where the barriers to having more influence are about working with business not users
  • Pivot Tools: use user experience techniques/approaches in business setting.
Identify your audience
  • Business personas: ways to think of people in business organization
  • Network diagram: define influence network of relationships
  • Advocate: on my side
  • Superior: the boss
  • Peer: other people that can help with or need to buy in
  • Frontline: people that implementation affects.
  • Critics: pick apart ideas
  • Validators: balance critics and provide support. Could be analysts, media, or other companies.
  • Gatekeepers: need to sign off on something. Finance/lawyers
  • What are relationships of these people? How do they interact?
Understand motivators
  • Reward: what matters to stakeholders (up and to the right)
  • Power –have influence in organization
  • Vendorship: transactional relationship of selling deliverables
  • Risk: what might happen
  • Motivation map –who fits where against risk/reward/power –etc?
  • Helps understand business
Understand Activities
  • What are business stakeholders involved in and responsible for?
  • Lead, Manage, Execute
  • Consider activities people have –understand what they are trying to achieve and why
  • Tools & principles are better than a set cookbook
  • Understand, Solve, Evaluate toolkit – what in each of these can make a contribution to Leading, Managing, or Executing?
  • Empathize with business leaders – what is it like to hit numbers, hit deadlines
  • Hindsight from past experience can help predict future activities
  • Through empathy can think about future scenarios –what would best for people?
Commit to action
  • Need to go out into world, talk to people, and get them to do things.
  • Build trust: credibility with projects. Care about if people succeed or not.
  • Ask open ended questions to get to real motivations
  • “Will you questions” get people to make commitments.


Tags: , , , ]]>2008-04-14LukeW<![CDATA[IA Summit: A Management Fable]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?669A management fable: The little UX that went a long way presentation at IA Summit 2008 outlined a series of lessons learned about the role of user experience champions in the product development process.
  • Success without ownership: someone else owns product definition. As a User Experience practitioner, you may not be the only voice calling for better definition of a product, but you will frequently be the first. Stand up and say something.
  • Frequently someone else own requirements. Tech teams don’t always push back on bad requirements and may tend to act more like a “service team” than UX professionals. This is likely because they are often rewarded for specific tasks vs. the overall solution.
  • Frequently someone else owns implementation: geared towards getting things implemented, not towards maximizing user experience
  • Acceptance is not Buy-in: if you’re forcing the user into the process, you can expect to solve the same problem again and again
  • Everyone loves the user until it gets painful. People may love your work, but when there is pain, consensus building needs to start again.
  • Even common tools are not commonly understood: UX professionals take UX tools more seriously than others
  • In the real world, driving user experience requires tactics up and down the conceptual ladder. A mandate from management can never be assumed. Don’t wait for it.
Tips for managing in the real world
  • If they are missing, put the user into the requirements
  • Adjust the requirements to help make the user unavoidable
  • Offer solutions for every problem you raise
  • Credibility issues: don’t just say things are wrong –offer solutions.
  • Be ready to work harder than people in all the other departments. Take ownership of the minutia nobody else wants.
  • Enjoy the little successes, but don’t them at face value. Short terms gains don’t stick.
  • Don’t assume a successful project will have a positive effect on the next.


Tags: , , , , ]]>2008-04-14LukeW<![CDATA[Filching Design in Austin]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?668Filching Design panel at South by Southwest 2008 (where we discussed reusing Web designs found online), Lindsey Simon got a message from a friend who noticed the following sign on a restaurant in Austin:

Filching Design

Photo by swirlspice

Tags]]>2008-04-04LukeW<![CDATA[666 Articles]]>http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?667Sign Up Forms Must Die post was a fitting milestone: six hundred and sixty six articles since I started this site in late 2003.

666

That's a lot of writing and, consequently, a lot of reading. So I wanted to take this moment to thank all the Functioning Form readers over the years for providing great feedback, ideas, and encouragement. According to my Web analytics package, you're now over 8,500 strong. Thanks for being here. And of course, big thanks to all the sources of my ideas for Functioning Form articles over the years: co-workers, conference presenters, fellow designers, bloggers, and more. If you're interested in what's been discussed in the past 666 articles, check out the archive.

Feed URL Update
As of this post, I'm going to begin retiring my old feed URL and try to transition everyone to the new Feedburner RSS feed. So if you are subscribed to (and you only would be if you've been a reader for over two and a half years): http://www.lukew.com/ff/rss.asp

Feel free to jump on the new feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/FunctioningForm Thanks!

Tags]]>2008-04-02LukeW