Phoenixville PA
Teaching Clients to Design Efficient Forms
The Situation
Electronic Health Record solutions provide tools to enable clients to build their own custom data entry forms. However, most clients do not have the usability expertise to ensure their forms support efficient use in the clinical setting.
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I discovered this challenge while researching clinical documentation workflows and worked with the product owner to raise awareness of the situation.
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I solved the issue by:
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Authoring a style guide on best practices for form design with our form builder tool
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Training internal staff responsible for our form templates and worked with them to ensure the templates were consistent with the style guide
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Teaching seminars on form design for clients at our annual user conferences.
Top Aligned
Right Aligned
Left Aligned
Efficiency & Label Alignment
Top Aligned
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Fastest
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Caution: Increases the length of the form and the amount of scrolling
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Right Aligned
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Fast
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Caution: Keep the labels short
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Left Aligned
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Slowest and not recommended
Efficiency & Organization
Let's take the example of a basic account registration form.
Step 1: Brainstorm a list of the necessary input
Step 2: Check the order of the information. Does it makes sense?
Where do "Date of Birth" and "Gender" really belong? They're typically used to help identify the person.
Where do "Security Question" and "Security Answer" go? Typically with the Password which is also security related.
Efficiency & Organization
Continuing our example of a basic account registration form.
Step 3: Reorganize - putting things together that belong together
Step 4: Break it up with headings
A long list of input fields actually slows down the user! At first glance, they slow to read and figure out "what are all these questions?"
Efficiency & Rhythm
Here's an example of a nursing chest tube assessment - BEFORE the redesign.
Yes, the layout is a bit wacky. But there's something else going on here that's getting in the users' way.
Watch the video. Watch the rhythm of the data entry and notice how often the user must switch from typing to mouse-clicking and back. This is another factor that can reduce a form's efficiency.
Efficiency & Rhythm
Here's the same chest tube assessment - AFTER the redesign.
By changing which controls are used for each question, we simplified the layout enough to allow all 3 chest tubes to be documented in the same amount of space.
Watch the video. Watch the new rhythm of the data entry. Notice that we minimized the user's need to switch between their mouse and keyboard.