Insight Publishing has translated my latest book Web Form Design: Filling In the Blanks into Korean and the book is now available for sale in Korea. If you are interested, take a look at the book announcement from Insight and the product listing on their site. Or peek inside the book at the Korean book site: Aladdin.

Two sets of recently published Web form design guidelines:

The first set, Web form design guidelines: an eyetracking study from cxpartners, looked at ease of completion and user satisfaction for three registration forms with distinct layouts: Yahoo! Mail, Google Mail, Hotmail and eBay. Though there were several different variables between the forms and the team only "looked for trends in best practices when designing forms", they compiled a list of guidelines that closely aligns with previous research I've seen:

• Vertical, not horizontal: Users complete web forms from top to bottom. Therefore forms with a simple vertical layout are always better than multi-column layouts.
• There are some exception cases where the ?single column? rule can be broken. Users expect to see names (first and last name), dates (year, month and day) and time (hour and minute) written on a single line.
• Use coloured or shaded grouping headers ONLY if they are important. If they are not important, don?t bother to do so to avoid distracting users from filling in the form.
• Don?t use asterisks, make clear optional fields. People go on to a form expecting to fill in everything. If possible, only ask users for information that is absolutely required. If for marketing purpose or for some other reasons where optional fields are needed, we suggest to mark optional fields clearly instead of indicating the mandatory fields.
• Use single field for numbers or postcode. Use single field for numbers or postcodes, allow input in various forms. If not, use a good system validation and provide clear error messages if invalid input is entered
• More in the article...

The second set of guidelines was shared by Caroline Jarrett and summarizes the work of Dr Kathryn Summers of the University of Baltimore on forms for low literacy users.

• We found that the shortish labels worked above or to the left.
• We found that a single column worked best for low literacy users, except for fields that "logically" felt like a group: specifically city, state, zip.
• Name should be all one field if possible.
• We noticed that low literacy users generally abbreviated short form labels to just one word (they would read just one word), so email address became "address" and first name became "name."
• All text associated with the form should be 14 pt in size. The font size makes a big difference in readability generally for low literacy users (the text size in the website should really be 14 pt also, although I've seen 12 pt work.
• All elements of the form should be above the fold, especially for older users, even if that means lots of screens.
• More in this discussion thread...

User Interface Engineering recently published a series of podcasts on Web application design including an interview with me on frequently asked questions about Web form design.

• Listen on the UIE site
• Web Form Design with Luke Wroblewski 20MB mp3 audio file

User Interface Engineering has also released a CD with all the presentation slides and 14 audio recordings from this year's Web App Summit in Newport Beach, CA including my "Parti and the Design Sandwich" presentation and 15 others covering topics ranging from Ajax, RIAs, design deliverables, wireframes, accessibility, design patterns, and web standards.

On Tuesday, May 12th at 9am, I'll be giving a talk about Modern Web Form Design at the Creative Good Council Special Interest Group (SIG) on High Technology. In the talk, I'll walk through several Web form design best practices by looking at a before and after form design.

Official Description
The Web has been transformed by the recent proliferation of rich interactions and social applications. But the workhorses of the online world, Web forms, have been slow to evolve with these changes. As brokers of crucial online interactions like e-commerce checkout and registration, forms bridge the gap between people, their information, and your product or service. As a result, Web form design matters. But web forms aren't keeping up.

Building on topics in his top-selling book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, Luke Wroblewski will walk you through the latest applications of rich Web form interactions (made possible by dynamic technologies like Ajax) including: flexible inputs, dynamic help systems, inline validation, selection dependent inputs, and more. He'll also outline how gradual engagement approaches to form design can create compelling new user experiences for a wide variety of Web applications and services. Learn how these modern approaches to Web form design can enhance your Web apps.

Hope to "see" some of you there.

On Monday, May 4th I?ll be speaking at An Event Apart in Seattle, WA about Web Form Design in Action.

If you are interested in going, feel free to use the discount code: AEALUKE for $100 savings on the event cost.

Official Description
Building on topics in his top-selling book, Luke will illustrate how to apply design best practices to redesign crucial web forms. He?ll also outline how gradual engagement approaches to form design can create compelling new user experiences for a wide variety of web applications and services.

Hope to see some of you there!

I recently had the pleasure of talking with Craig Shoemaker, of the Polymorphic Podcast, about The Value of Web Forms and Design Constraints. In particular, how adding constraints helps shape the design process and why Web form design matters.

Check out the podcast on the Polymorphic site.
Download the audio as an mp3 (27.9 MB)

In the interview we discuss:

• Web pages may be crafted to do just about anything ? the trick is to build build appropriate constraints
• When you are trying to get a message across you begin by adding elements. Then its time to remove until the core essence shines through
• Whether you are looking to comment on an article, buy a product, sign up for a service, do some data entry, upload video or just about anything else on the web ? you do it through a web form.
• In the end the form is a barrier to what people really want to do ? interact somehow with the website.

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.

On Wednesday, April 22, 2009 I'll be giving a keynote presentation on Designing for Today?s Web and breakout session on Modern Web Form Design at the 2009 10th Annual Webmaster Forum at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. This theme of this year's Webmaster Forum is Growing Your Web and features a plethora of practical breakout sessions, the annual Cool Website Awards, and the proverbial free lunch.

Keynote Presentation
What does the growth of search, social applications, rich interactions, and participatory culture really mean for the design of Web applications? What behaviors do team building online experiences need to address that they didn't before? Luke Wroblewski addresses these questions and more with an overview of important online trends and their impact on the design of Web services and products.

In this talk, Luke will dissect several important trends on the Web and their impact on the design of Web-based services and products. In particular: the trend from locomotion to manipulation and conversation (how to deal with crowded shelf space and purely digital services); the trend from sites to content experiences (how do we design when search, content aggregators, and display surfaces rule the Web); the trend from page-level interactions to micro-interactions (how can we explain available actions and their state); the move from only webmasters making content to everyone making content (what does this do to creative control). Addressing these trends is at the core of designing for today?s Web.

Breakout Session
The Web has been transformed by the recent proliferation of rich interactions and social applications. But the workhorses of the online world, Web forms, have been slow to evolve with these changes. As brokers of crucial online interactions like e-commerce checkout and registration, forms bridge the gap between people, their information, and your product or service. As a result, Web form design matters. But web forms aren't keeping up.

Building on topics in his top-selling book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, Luke Wroblewski will walk you through the latest applications of rich Web form interactions (made possible by dynamic technologies like Ajax) including: flexible inputs, dynamic help systems, inline validation, selection dependent inputs, and more. He'll also outline how gradual engagement approaches to form design can create compelling new user experiences for a wide variety of Web applications and services. Learn how these modern approaches to Web form design can enhance your Web apps.

Hope to see some of you there.

On Sunday April 19th I'll be presenting a full-day workshop at the UIE Web App Summit in Newport Beach, CA on Web Application Form Design. On Monday, April 20th, I'll be giving a 90 minute presentation as well.
If you?re interested in attending, feel free to use my conference discount code LUKE when you register, and you'll get $50 off a day. Register for all 4 days, and you'll get a free iPod nano too!

Web Application Form Design (workshop)
In the world of Web applications, forms bridge the gap between people and your product or service. From registration forms that welcome new customers to checkout forms that finalize e-commerce transactions, web forms frequently broker crucial online interactions.

We?re bringing back Luke Wroblewski, author of the top-selling book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, to deliver an updated version of last year?s top-rated full-day workshop on form design. Luke will walk you through design considerations and best practices of form design culled from international site-tracking, usability testing, eye-tracking studies, and over twelve years of designing web applications.

You?ll see how the interaction and visual design of web forms can make the difference between acquiring a customer, enabling participation, completing a transaction, or not. Luke will explore best practices for all types of form interaction, from plain old HTML through the highly interactive capabilities of Ajax components.

Through presentations, discussions, and hands-on exercises, you?ll learn how label alignment, primary & secondary actions, help systems, inline validation, smart defaults, selection dependent inputs, and more can support or impair different aspects of user behavior. You?ll gain a solid understanding of the best practices for your application?s specific contexts, so you can move from your form?s business goals, user needs, and context to actionable solutions.

After this seminar, you'll never look at Web forms the same way again. This seminar is perfect for anyone who wants their applications? forms to deliver a succinct and crisp user experience.

Hope to see some of you there!

In my Web Form Design talk at Microsoft's MIX09 conference in Las Vegas I showcased ten Web form design best practices illustrated through a redesign of a typical form's primary path to completion, label alignment, primary & secondary actions, organization, error messaging, inline validation, and more. Full video of my talk and slides:



Official Description
Come hear key considerations and best practices for Web form design based on international usability testing, eye-tracking studies, and over ten years of designing Web applications. Learn how the interaction and visual design of Web forms can make the difference between acquiring a customer and completing a transaction or not.

The Designing Our Way Through Web Forms panel at South by Southwest Interactive 2009 featured Christopher Schmitt, Eric Ellis, and Kimberly Blessing discussing specific ways to successfully create compelling forms for your users.

Audio:
Download Designing Our Way Through Web Forms (58MB, 01:02:27)

Slides:

• Web Form Elements -Christopher Schmitt
• Form design - challenges and solutions -Eric Ellis

Notes from the Panel:

• Notes from the SXSWi Web form design panel -Jeffrey Barke
• designing our way through web forms -almost daniel.