Circlebox Blog

Form Design: Best Practices

Tom Hare — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:43:16 +0000

Gradients. Don’t you just love their multi-coloured wowness. And drop shadows – where would we be without them? And forms… yeeaaaaah! Wait, they’re a bit boring, aren’t they?

Whilst designers (sorry, I don’t want to paint everyone with the same brush!) have been doing their darndest to create fancy feature panels, bold backgrounds and tricky transitions; there’s the runt of the litter that seems to always be neglected. The after-thought.

We all hate filling out forms on web pages but they are a necessary evil – conveying information from one party to another for a specific purpose. Therefore, why shouldn’t this part of a web page be given the same treatment, the same amount of time and resources, as any other? Unfortunately, it does seem to be the case that forms are often chucked together (I’m guilty of it too!) with minimal thought but a form is often the best way of communicating with your audience so that makes them pretty important right?

In this article I’m going to share a few tips that may make your web forms easier for your visitors to use.

1. Top-aligned labels

One of the biggest factors contributing towards ‘web form frustration’ is that the user is actually forced to THINK about what they are doing rather than just absorbing information. Looking at something on a web page usually ellicits a response – ‘that looks pretty’, ‘this product looks interesting’, ‘I wonder what this does’ – and the user then CHOOSES an appropriate action – ‘I’m going to click/touch this’, ‘I’m not going to click/touch this’. This is generally a smooth experience that the user feels comfortable with and they continue to browse on their merry way.

With web forms, the user doesn’t have an option other than to fill in the fields laid out in front of them. Therefore, they have to look at something, absorb the information, process what the information is telling them and then figure out for themselves what to do. Obviously, over the years, forms have developed certain conventions which everyone is aware of but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t improvements and efficiencies to be made. One particular step at which these improvements can be made is during the ‘processing’ stage. The clearer and easier you make it for the user to determine what they need to do next, the better the form experience and the less ‘web form frustration’ is felt.

Here we can apply some basic human and typographical conventions. Look around you. Whether it’s a book, road sign, billboard or other assortment of text, it is always easier and quicker to read something ‘long and thin’ than something ‘short and fat’ – where more words are stacked on top of each other than written side-by-side. This is why newspapers have columns – humans are lazy and it is easier to read a little bit across and start a new line than it is to read a big long line before moving to the next one. This same logic can be applied to form elements.

A top-aligned label is easier for the user to process and recognise the associated input field. The focus of the eye naturally starts on the left and the user immediately groups the label and input together before reading and processing what the label actually says. Moving onto the next label and input group is also easier as the user just moves their gaze downwards rather than ‘returning’ from the previous line.

Compare that with a layout where the label is aligned to the left (or even right) of the input field and the user has the extra step of recognising where the associated input is, as they haven’t spotted it yet, as well as encountering the ‘returning’ issue when they move on.

Try filling out a form with top-aligned labels and one with left-aligned labels – the top-aligned form just seems to flow better.

Last.fm (top-aligned)
Evernote (left-aligned)

Top-aligned labels are also a lot better suited to handheld devices. With limited horizontal screen space, top-aligned labels are an absolute must when using forms on a mobile device as making your users scroll horizonatally is a cardinal sin.

One slight cost of having top-aligned labels is that the length of the web page will, inevitably, be longer than if using left-aligned labels. However, as we’ve discussed, the user will find ‘long and thin’ easier to process anyway so this is a sacrifice worth making.

2. Use the same form for the password reminder

The thing that maxes out ‘web page frustration’ is not having the information required to complete an input. One such case is forgetting your password. We’ve all done it and sometimes it’s a very laborious process trying to recover it.

Commonly, the password reminder process is triggered by clicking a link near to the password box. This is simple enough and works well. Often, however, this link will take you, the user, to a different page entirely where you have to process some more information before finally getting to the point where you get your password back. Sometimes a modal window is used, which is a better solution than sending the user off to another page, but it is still fairly intrusive. Why not switch a few things around, show a message and use the same form? The following example shows how the ‘forgot password?’ link fires a transition from the login form to the reminder form. It’s clear that this is a different form but it’s taken a tenth of the time it would (and looks a lot nicer!) than sending a user off to a different page.

Checkout this awesome password reminder example…

The wonderful Codrops have also produced a good example of this technique.

3. ‘Review and check’ email address inputs

One of the things I find most baffling about web forms is that the user is asked to repeat information they have already entered. There are two very common examples of this – email address and password fields. Firstly, the email address input. How many of you just copy and paste what you typed in the first box into the second box? Come on, hands up. Everyone does it including the person who built the form so what is the purpose of typing the same information twice? The answer is to ensure that the email address entered was indeed correct as this is obviously the best (and often only) way of communicating with the user. This is perfectly understandable and a hugely important check to make but why does the user have to repeat what they’ve already written? Why not ask them to review what they wrote previously and confirm it is correct?

This review can very easily be carried out with the use of a checkbox. The user checks the box next to the email address input to confirm they have written their email address correctly. Review and check.

Now, the user could, in theory, just check the box without reviewing what they wrote in the email address field and this could lead to mistakes. But with the duplicate field method, if the user is just copying and pasting anyway then these mistakes will still happen. It’s often argued that you should imagine your mother is using your web page (why is it always mums who are crap at using computers?!) and she should be able to understand and use it but why should all users be treated as the lowest common demoninator? The email field is probably the most important one on the form and the user knows it – it’s been hammered into them through years of repeatedly having to copy it to a second box! – so they WILL take care. The likely result of using the ‘review and check’ method is that there will be the same amount of mistakes made but the experience for the majority of users will be a lot smoother and less painful.

This leads us on nicely to the other repeat offender – the password field.

4. ‘Show password’ button

The password field is a slightly different but equally frustrating case. The user cannot copy and paste their entry from the first box to the second so the ‘auto-pilot’ mistakes won’t happen but, unlike the email address field, the user cannot actually see what they’ve typed. Therefore, if a failure happens there is no choice open to the user but to completely start over and fill out BOTH boxes again. So by typing one character incorrectly, the user has to fill out, essentially, the same input field FOUR times! Madness.

Now, obviously, the password field has certain security considerations surrounding it so, whilst it isn’t quite as simple as having a checkbox for the user to tick, a similar solution can be implemented to streamline the user experience.

Through the use of a nifty jQuery plugin*, we can insert a hidden duplicate input field with an accompanying button or checkbox which, when clicked, will ‘swap’ the password input for a regular input showing the password text (it hides one and shows the other depending on the state of the button). This means that the user can check their password and make sure it is correct before they submit the form.

There are a couple of obvious pitfalls with this method however meaning some refining is needed. Showing your password on screen isn’t advisable but how often do you type in important passwords with someone looking over your shoulder? This is a minor issue but a much larger one is using this method on a sign-up form. If the user types in their password, doesn’t check it and then submits the form, there is no reason why the information wouldn’t be correct but if it is incorrect then there is no recourse for the user and this would obviously lead to problems. Potentially, you could force the user to click the check button at least once but then this method becomes as equally intrusive and confusing for the user as the duplicate input method.

Another solution is to add a checkbox to accompany the form which acts as a confirmation much like the ‘review and check’ email address method discussed above.

NB. jQuery plugins

5. Have the newsletter sign-up checkbox unticked by default

For me, this is an act of common courtesy. If a user WANTS to hear about your company’s latest and greatest product then they will tick that little box themselves. Or they might visit your Twitter or Facebook page. Spamming with weekly, monthly or in some cases daily(!) emails telling people information they don’t really want to know does not endear you to them – it downright pisses them off. People don’t like to feel as though they have been tricked but that is exactly what pre-ticked newsletter sign-ups do. Why do you want to send an email – which will cost your company money! – to someone who most probably doesn’t want to hear what you have got to say?

Advertise your newsletter on the sign-up screen. Make it loud and proud and maybe say what is regularly included – that way you are genuinely inticing users into hearing your message and they will appreciate it rather than feeling duped.

It’s amazing how a small gesture like this is appreciated and casts you in a more human light to a user. That is infinitely more successful in promoting your product than a spam newsletter can be.

6. Make use of HTML5 input properties today!

To round up, I’m going to get a little more technical on y’all.

HTML5. Many people shy away when that initialisation is muttered, usually for one of two reasons; either they are scared of having to learn the ‘new’ markup or they know browser support isn’t universal just yet so they don’t bother.

But many HTML5 features CAN be used today quite safely and one area in which this is most relevant is with form elements. Several new input types and input attributes have been introduced into the HTML5 spec. They include the datepicker input, colour picker input, required attribute and a few others and in many modern browsers these will work out-of-the-box. Unfortunately, their styling is native so it could be very detrimental to your UI should the browser chuck in a validation message or two. And on browsers that don’t support them it provides a really bad and potentially unusable experience for the user.

However, some inputs and attributes can be used in the knowledge that they will be safely implemented across all browsers.

Email, URL and number input types

One trick tip regarding forms is that, if a browser doesn’t support the input type you have specified then it will revert to a standard text box input. For inputs such as a colour picker, this is not an acceptable solution but for fields like email address and URL, this is a perfectly acceptable example of graceful degradation.

For mobile users, where the keyboard layout can be particularly important in helping the user, these inputs are of particular importance and should be used generously.

Placeholder and autofocus input attributes

Two HTML5 attributes of a particularly subtle nature are placeholder and autofocus. Placeholder puts your specified text into the input box until the user focuses on the input, at which point the text disappears to leave the user free to fill in the input. For years, we’ve been hacking this solution into our forms and now it’s in the spec by default – magic! You can even use CSS to style the text in some browsers by using the custom attribute selectors ::-webkit-input-placeholder and :-moz-placeholder{color: red;} (yes, the colons are correct).

The autofocus attribute simply places the cursor into the input field on page load enabling the user to start typing straight away – typically this would be the first input in your form. For obvious usability reasons, autofocus is not supported by mobile browsers.

So there you have it, six tips to improving your website forms. These techniques can be used in nearly all situations, in all browsers with no regard as to whether CSS and/or JS is turned on so why not give them a go!

5 reasons cloud computing is here to stay

Callum Chapman — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:01:41 +0000

Cloud computing has been growing in popularity for the last few years as companies realize it’s more efficient than a traditional IT infrastructure. The cloud facilitates data security, mobile accessibility and business continuity. But what’s next for cloud computing and what should you look for in a cloud company in 2012?

Faster Disaster Recovery

In the past companies have had to use off-site data back-up to recover from disasters. With a cloud system, companies will be back up and running in a matter of hours after a disaster strikes, as all their data is already stored and accessed off-site.

More Cloud Based Applications

As bandwidth becomes less expensive and cloud computing more widespread, a greater range of cloud applications will become available. As the market grows, more and more specialised software will become accessible via the cloud, helping reduce software costs for cloud-based companies.

Better Storage Optimization

Since cloud services are often billed by the amount of data storage required, better data compression techniques mean cheaper cloud services. More efficient data size reduction techniques promise to help squeeze your company’s data into the smallest space possible.

Cloud-based analytics

Many companies rely on analytics to build occasional reports, but only use it part of the year. Cloud companies could start offering analytics data on a report-by-report basis, instead of charging a month by month fee. Companies who leave their analytics idle for long stretches could realize huge savings by paying on a use by use basis.

Shrinking On-Site IT departments

On-site IT departments will shrink as IT support becomes more centralized inside the cloud. Fewer locally run applications means fewer IT personnel are needed to support their use. On-site IT support staff will be limited to hardware and network infrastructure support.

Whatever your companies IT requirements, there is a cloud-based solution to make your IT infrastructure cheaper and more efficient to run. 2012 looks like it will be the strongest year for cloud computing yet.

Lightspeed iHelicopter Review

Callum Chapman — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 06:47:17 +0000

The Lightspeed iHelicopter would make the perfect gift for any of your nerdy friends, male or female. It is controlled via your mobile device such as your iPhone, iPad or Android phone, so make sure they have a compatible device to control the helicopter as no other remote is supplied (although I’m sure this won’t be a problem in such as tech-savvy world!). All you have to do is plug in a sensor adapter to your phones headphone jack and download the app for your mobile, and away you go!

This iPhone helicopter will give your lucky friend hours of fun, with some superb features which I have managed to try out for myself. I must first tell you that at first, this thing is hard to get to used to, they’re not lying when they say “Lightspeed”, it really is fast, especially when you hit that turbo button!

The helicopter itself looks great, and is very sturdy and strong. I’ve crashed it into several walls, ceilings, cupboards, my girlfriends hand and even flew it right into my bicycles spoked wheel, and it hasn’t a mark. Even if you do manage to break something, the helicopter ships with some spare parts, which is pretty damn handy as I’m sure most won’t do this.

No batteries are required as a USB charger is supplied to charge both your helicopter and your sensor that plugs into your iPhone, it takes just 30 minutes to fully charge the helicopter, allowing for approximately 9 minutes of flight time even with the awesome LED lights flashing away.

For just $60 USD or £30 GBP this is one of the best Christmas presents this year for the geek in your life! Paramount Zone also have plenty of other Christmas Present Ideas if this doesn’t suit your needs 100%!

Top Design Shows on TV

Callum Chapman — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 06:45:48 +0000

Thankfully for fans of niche television programming, TV options have become more expansive and diverse over the last few years. This is largely thanks to the types of services that you can find at http://www.satellitetvfamily.com, which can often include specialty channels and packages that include relatively unique programming. For example, if you are interested in design, whether as a graphic designer, interior designer, etc., you will find that there are actually multiple television shows designed to educate and entertain people with your particular set of interests. Here are three examples of design-related shows that have become popular in recent years, and which are well worth checking into.

Top Design

Top Design is a Bravo network show that follows in the mold of television shows like “Top Chef” and other talent-based reality shows. It pits twelve interior designers against each other (while living with each other) for a set period of time and a number of challenges designed to test their skills and creativity. Members are eliminated throughout the duration of the season, based entirely on their finished products, and in the end we are left with a single “top designer.” This can be a great show for people who simply enjoy different aspects of design, as it displays a number of different ideas and talents.

Design For Life

Philippe Starck, a world renowned product designer, started this show as his own version of a design-based competition reality show. Design For Life, which airs on BBC, features twelve students of design brought to Starck’s design school in Paris to compete against each other in design tasks in an effort to best each other and impress Starck. Needless to say, the show provides a unique and fantastic opportunity for these students, as well as a good deal of intrigue for viewers who would be interested in seeing a top designer at work teaching and critiquing the work of others.

Project Runway

This show, which is hosted by world famous model Heidi Klum and airs on the Lifetime network, is more geared toward fashion design, as implied in its title. This is another competition-based show that pits different aspiring fashion designers against one another to see who can create the best product within set materials and themes (and with time limits). Contestants are eliminated in every episode, by a panel of judges that generally includes a few big names in celebrity fashion or design, leading to 3 finalists and, ultimately, a winner.

“We Are Not Time Travellers” Retro Posters

Callum Chapman — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 07:48:01 +0000

I stumbled upon this wonderful set of poster designs by Alex Varanese today, and I just had to share them in case you haven’t seen them before! The idea behind the series of posters was in response to a question: “What would you do if you could travel back in time?”. The designers response was recreate all the modern technology we have now in 2011, but restyle it so it fit in with technology style back in the 70′s. I hope you enjoy looking at these as much as I did!

If you have a great idea in mind for your very own poster series, this is a great example to follow. Imagine having your work on some awesome large canvas prints!

Awesome Snowboard Design Inspiration

David Abling — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 06:40:30 +0000

As a former avid snowboarder, I used to love tearing up the mountains all over the West Coast when I lived in Seattle. I’d take my K2 Fat Bob and travel all the way from Whistler, British Columbia down to the beautiful mountains in California and Utah just for the thrill of grinding powder. Now that I live in the south, fat chance that I get to snowboard at all, let alone see great powder to board on. If you’ve never been snowboarding or skiing before, I definitely recommend it, get learning how to ski now, you won’t regret it. There’s no better way to get away from the computer screen!

As a web designer, I always had a fascination for snowboard designs, but never really took the time to do one myself. Thankfully, this post is full of amazing snowboard designs, created as mock drafts for competitions or actual designs used by companies.

Get inspired by these awesome designs and enjoy!