Click Here if you Hate Forms
The premise of all forms is the same. Captioned, blank fields and maybe a few check boxes peppered in for variety. The UI is simple and it works.
But forms suck. They are boring, cumbersome and often really long.
So why do we keep using them? Whether you are on Facebook, or applying for a bank account, you’ll have to fill out a form at some point. It is cause for concern that we are still heavily dependent on a process that hasn’t changed for decades.
A form at its most fundamental level is a medium for communication. So why don’t we look at our other means of communication to fix forms? Email, chat, and speech are all conversational. You message me, I reply, you reply back and on it goes.
Forms do not work like this.
They ask for all your information in one go. Intuitively, this does not make sense. If I wanted to get your name, age, and address I would ask you for one, note it down and then ask for the next. All we need to do is leverage this process to make forms better.
TypeForm, for example, shows users only one field at a time. I am sure most agree that it offers a far better UX than a regular form:
The product we are working on, TARS, replaces forms with chat altogether. The switch increases user engagement, especially on phones, where small screen sizes compound the usability issues associated with forms :
The shift away from forms is inevitable, and that is a good thing. Users will get a more engaging experience. Companies, as a result, will get more users.
Decades into the future we will look back and wonder how we ever used them. Conversational UI will change the way we conduct business online, one form at a time.
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