Nobody likes forms. But universities live and die by them.
So I’m on a committee to address an overhaul of our online application for admissions. After much research and a little bit of common sense, I’ve composed a list of priorities that, I feel, need to be injected into this initiative.
BTW, I’ve been seriously hunting for other university admissions applications worthy of emulation. And I can’t findy any. Do we ALL suck at this?
On to my list. It even has an introduction:
Designing effective web forms isn’t easy. For many resons. Making things simple, is hard. It takes work. We need to use intelligent writing and design to make the process intuitive and painless.
Keys to crafting our new Admissions Application:
It begins with writing / naming
Employ simple, direct instructions and labels. Avoid internal / academic jargon. As a general rule, this copy shouldn’t get crafted in IT.Easy questions first..
Starting easy helps build up momentum. The user invests themselves in the process. Get movement going, nd users are more willing to follow through the whole form.Separate Related Content
Chunk things up. Don’t overwhelm prospective students with giant stretches of input fields. Keep it simple. Make the form a long series of little easy steps. Easy wins. Not 2 or 3 big leaps.Indicate Progress
Show the user where they are in the process. Step 3 of 7, etc..Provide sufficient information about information requested.
Probably the number one reason why forms are started but not completed.Error Messages must be clear, concise.
Help/Tips must be clearly available at times.Explain Explain Explain
Tell users why certain information is needed. Tell users how to find uncommon information.
Am I missing anything in this list? Do you know of an online admissions app worth talking positively about?
See Also:
Forms vs Applications by Jacob Nielson – In particular the section about “Application Benefits”
Those Lovable Unusable Campus Apps – “Software solutions too unfriendly, unstable, and incompatible to last a minute in the universe of competitive business”.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Ability to save and come back to the form without submitting … this was “critical” in my own application process for graduate school. Being able to complete certain parts of the application … save… and come back later. Wonderful. All of my recommendations were handled through the online form as well – which was great. (https://graduateapplications.vanderbilt.edu/ – it’s not pretty – but it worked pretty well!)
September 17th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Oh, but I want an app that works well, AND is pretty. A joy to use. Maybe include a nature soundtrack to soothe the user as they offer up information.
September 18th, 2008 at 4:49 am
FireEngineRed has a really great online application product you might want to check out….I was pretty pleased with the final product I built when I was at Norwich. It was a logic-based form, so users only saw the content that was relevant to them instead of everything (a lot of schools will require different info from difference constituencies), you could make it so the form was pre-populated based on forms the student had already filled out, you could save and come back to it, each page was pretty short so it wasn’t overwhelming and content was grouped appropriately.
Also, you really need to look at this in context of what a prospective student is seeing – most applications ask for pretty much the same information so its unlikely that students won’t know where to get it from unless yours is the very first application they see/fill out….even then, students these days are pretty well coached by their teachers/guidance counselors before they even start this process.
Good luck!
September 18th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Ours was built in-house and is pretty decent. It has the save without submitting feature that Lacy mentions. Feel free to check it out at https://www.butler.edu/boa (direct link).
September 18th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I’ll second what Lacy said : the ability to save and come back later to complete.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:08 am
@bradjward
that is an awful application. both ugly and annoying.
September 18th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Ours is so bad we ditched in favor of the common app. Yeah, that’s how bad it was. I haven’t seen many good ones out there, but Royall’s (the search company) fast app is pretty decent. http://www.royallu.org.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
This isn’t a college application, but I think it’s the best example of form design I’ve seen in years.
VoteForChange.com gets you registered to vote in two minutes flat. The big things to take away from this are big font sizes, big input elements and friendly, relaxed language.
Oh, and the form values are saved to dynamically generate the PDF that you mail in. Obviously it would be optimal for the university to receive form submissions electronically instead of through snail mail, but in the case of voting and possible fraud, it makes sense to make the PDF.
September 19th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Why reinvent the wheel? The common application does this so well?
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
@joehaxor – I didn’t say it was pretty, did I? Do you want functionality or something that ‘looks nice’? Our in-house workers who built this stuff don’t know a lick of design. But it’s cheaper than paying a company like Royall a small fortune to duplicate.