The context in which the respondents prepare for filling out the form and then actually do fill out the form can make all the difference.
Background information: In documentation and training, the issues that Caroline raises are handled by instructional design. > the placement of the labels is far, far less important than what the questions are asking > I have many times seen people give up on forms because they don't understand the question or don't know how to answer it or the answer that they want to give doesn't fit within the allowed answers on the form. The methodology of instructional design is (a) to establish learning objectives: what must the person understand in order to be able to do the task (b) to provide support for the learning: ensure that the person has a way to get the help they need so that they achieve the understanding required to do the task, or else ensure that the person gets feedback directing them to support that can directly help them with the task. Application to the problem: This is going to sound really cumbersome, but here goes ... To apply instructional design methodology to forms, you would want to get a really good understanding of the processes that the provided information will go through. Then you want to make sure that the people filling out the form can understand the answers that they can give, and what the results will be when the process starts to work based on their answers. Sometimes the process itself is part of the problem. It could be that the process has to run through some steps before you can know what effect the answers will have on the result. In this case, the owners of the process should be informed that (if it is possible under the regulatory regime that defines the process) there may be a need to return to the respondent for further information or clarification or correction of previous responses once the process has gotten far enough to provide guidance on the implications of various inputs. What I recently did with one government agency is fill in the form with errors, submit it, and then call a number to discuss what I should have entered. I was lucky to know how to get the right number to call. If you can provide your respondents with contacts that they can use to actually get help with their issues, that will help tremendously to make the form submission and processing experience more robust and reliable both for the respondent and for those tasked with processing the submitted information. One way to package this sort of help is as an up-front tutorial in which you explain to the respondents what information they need to collect and how they can figure out whether what they're about to state is accurate and relevant to the issues they are trying to address. Best wishes, Bruce Esrig Madison, NJ On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Caroline Jarrett < [email protected]> wrote: > Is there any evidence, or illuminating experience, > > about the benefits of locating form labels > > to the left of the input fields or above them > > using a smaller font? > > The forms are very long, say, 100 fields and more. > > Will be paginated, sort of a wizard, with next/prev buttons. > > The audience is rather illiterate, > > ages ranging from 18 all the way through > > the sixties and seventies. > > These are forms for applying for gov subsidies > > and the like, the fields contain mostly personal > > data of the family members and the like. > > > > I would like to be able to tell myself which layout > > is more usable: two columns or one column. > > Hi Juan > > As mentioned in previous posts, Luke W does discuss this issue in his book. > I've also got a discussion of the problem in my book: "Forms that work: > Designing web forms for usability" (available from any bookshop - details > on > www.formsthatwork.com) > > But here goes on giving you a direct (free) answer. > > If you read the popular advice on where to put labels on forms, you will > see > that it mostly relates to very short form labels that are asking very easy > questions. Luke's and my books are two places where we actually talk about > more complexity, such as longer labels. > > You can read a summary of my advice in this column: "Label placement on > forms" > http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3507.asp > > For your forms, you also mention that the audience is somewhat illiterate > and also includes many older people. For people who do not read easily - > which certainly includes your audience - 'smaller font' is definitely a > really bad idea. Putting long labels in smaller font just makes the labels > harder to read, which is exactly the worst idea for those audiences. > > For people who do not read easily, left-aligned text in a good, large, > legible font is really important. > > It's not quite so clear whether putting the labels to the left of the boxes > or above the boxes is the better solution for this particular type of > audience. Dr Kathryn Summers of the University of Baltimore is definitely > *the* expert in designing forms for people with low literacy. I'll write to > her and ask her what she thinks. > > Meanwhile, here's what I know from my extensive experience of testing > government forms with a wide range of people, including older people: > *provided* each label is clearly and unambiguously associated with the > appropriate field, then the placement of the labels is far, far less > important than what the questions are asking, and somewhat less important > than the overall length of the form. > > I have many times seen people give up on forms because they don't > understand > the question or don't know how to answer it or the answer that they want to > give doesn't fit within the allowed answers on the form. > > I have also seen people fail to start the form, or give up on it, because > it > just seems overwhelming. > > So far, I've never seen anyone bail on a form merely because the labels > were > in the wrong place. > > If I were you, I'd choose either method and then spend a lot of time > testing > with the real users and iterating the form design based on what you find. > > Summary of advice: > > 1. Make sure you: > - use a large, legible font > - place the label so that it is clearly and unambiguously associated with > the correct field > > 2. It is definitely preferable to place the label above or to the left of > the correct field > > 3. Test, fix, and test again. Several times. > > Best > Caroline Jarrett > www.formsthatwork.com > "Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability". > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... 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