10.3 Guidelines for Form and Input Design

As mentioned earlier, forms are important component in system input. In a manual system, a form is a preprinted or duplicated paper that requires people to fill in responses in a standardized way. A form serve as a source documents for data entry personnel. Today, most input is designed by developing a prototype. There are few guidelines need to follow when designing a good form as for input design.

Figure 10-3: A sample input form design

10.3 Guidelines for Form and Input Design

10.3.1 Meeting the Purposes Designed

As noted above, form serve as a source in recording, processing, storing, and retrieving of information for business transaction. A form provides information to the business. When designing form, we should consider the purposes of the form and the form should meet the purposes designed. We have to make the form designed are meeting the purposed it designed.

10.3.2 Making Forms Easy to Fill in

It's important to design a form where it is easy to fill in so that it can reduce errors, speed completion and can facilitate the data entry. It's important to minimize the time spend in filling the form. Designing a form with a proper flow can minimize the time and effort expended by users in form of completion. Forms should flow from left to right, and top to bottom. There are three main sections of a form:

	Heading
	Body
	Signature and verification

Every form design at least has these three components. Heading introduced the users the purpose of the form, while the body indicate the information needed in the form. This is the place where users have to interact with the system. Signature and verification will mention people involved in the form.

10.3 Guidelines for Form and Input Design

10.3.3 Keeping the Screen Simple

The most important thing in screen design is to keep the screen design simple. The screen design should consist particular action being taken. There are three main screen sections; heading, body and comments and instruction sections. Heading section describes to users where he/she in the package. By reading the heading, users know what type of operations offered by the screen. Body section is the major section in a screen. This section tells user what types of information is needed in the operation. Normally, information gathered in the body section will be used, processed and stored in a database. Third section; "comments and instructions" display a short menu of commands; so that it can help users in completed the operation needed in the middle section.

10.3.4 Creating an Attractive Screen

Form is a place where the information system gathers an input from users. So, the form should be attractive in order to attract users. Form appearance is also important to attract people to deal with the forms. An organized form will attract people to use the form. If people feel comfortable with the forms, the input given are accurate and less errors.

If users find the screen is attractive, they feel happy to use the screen, so, it will make them more productive, need less assistance and make fewer errors. When designing a screen, we need to consider two types of user; novice user and expert user. Novice users is a person who have less experience and knowledge in using computer and expert user in a person who have much experience in using computer. So, novice users need more assistance more than expert users. Besides that, screen design should be easy for them as a novice user to understand and use; but sometimes, it makes the expert user feels bored. That's why in certain cases. There is a need to design two types of screen; they can switch each other to choose which one they prefer.

10.3 Guidelines for Form and Input Design

Besides this, there are many other ways how to attract user. Using different types of font is good to enhance differentiation between categories. The use of graphics, animations is sometimes useful in screen; for example when designing a screen for children's system.

10.3.5 Keeping the Screen Presentation Consistent

Next guideline in designing a good screen and web forms are to keep the screen display consistent. If users transform the paper-based form to web-based form, make sure the screen is following what shown on paper. Keeping the data entry fields in the same place for every screen helps to maintain the screen consistency. The information should be located in the same area for every time the screen is accessed. The captions used in any screen should be consistent. For example, if the first screen, the caption "Name" is refers to name of people. So, the same caption (Name) should be used in any areas referring to name of people.

10.3.6 Facilitating User Movement among Screen

Next guideline in designing a good screen and web form is to make it easy to move from one screen to another screen. Normally, in web-based screen, its facilitate the movement by scrolling down the screen or using a hyperlink to another new screen. Scrolling technique is a way where user uses the cursor to move to other information available in the screen. But, the most attracting technique used for user movement among screen is direct manipulation using graphical user interface. An example of this technique are the use of icons to illustrate the instruction; Back and Home button or House icon is referring to Go Back to the first screen is an example of on-screen icon.