Interview: "Forms that Work" Co-Author Caroline Jarrett

One in a series of interviews with people who make a difference in the usability field

One of the more enjoyable aspects of the usability field is having a chance to speak with and learn from people. After all, our ultimate goal is to make things easier for people, right? But it seems that in this electronic age speaking with and learning from people happens sometimes a bit less than it should.

So, I’ve decided to interview people who I believe have made a difference for those of us in the usability field. Many are usability practitioners, some not. But in my opinion all have gone above and beyond and have helped advance the usability field.

Today’s interview is with Caroline Jarrett, co-author of one of my top 12 really useful usability books:

“Forms That Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability.”

I think you’ll find she has an interesting background and perspective on usability. Enjoy!

1. What’s your background? Where did you go to school, what subjects interested you?

I went to Oxford to study Mathematics. At that time, Oxford didn’t do any computer science degrees. In my final year, they introduced a computer science masters and as a final year undergrad, we could elect to do some of their courses as part of our undergrad degree.

I remember going to lectures on Computational Complexity where we had a few undergrads like me, the Masters’ students, and also a whole lot of postgrad students and professors because that subject had never been taught before at Oxford. That was pretty exciting and unusual for a maths undergrad.

2. How did you get into the usability field?

I started my career as a software engineer but rapidly moved into project management as I seemed to have an aptitude for organisation (some might say, bossing people around). I was a project manager for about 13 years but gradually I realised that I wasn’t all that interested in computers as such, I was much more interested in what they were for.

Around that time I was delivering Optical Character Recognition systems to the Inland Revenue (our tax authority) for dealing with tax forms. Some of the systems didn’t work too well and it was all because of the way the forms were filled in. I got thinking about how to make systems easy to use, and how to make forms easy to use. Another consultant, Paul Wilson, who was also working with the Revenue introduced me to usability and I was hooked.

3. What is it about usability that you most enjoy?

Being with the people. I love being with the users in tests, as they always inspire me to want to improve whatever we’re testing. And I love being with usability colleagues, anyone from experienced practitioners through to complete newbies. We all seem to enjoy learning from each other and trying to improve what we do.

4. Why did you and Gerry Gaffney decide to write the book: “Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability?”

We were both members of a private online community for usability people. I used to post quite a lot about forms. Two things happened at the same time: Jakob Nielsen wrote to me and suggested that I might write a book about forms, and Gerry also wrote to me because he’d been looking for a book on forms.

I was inspired by Jakob’s email to write back to Gerry and say: “OK, and what should be in the book, and would you like to work with me on it?” The deal was that I’d be the forms expert and he’d keep reminding me that the book readers just wanted to know the useful stuff, not every arcane detail.

5. What is the single best practice a form builder should use each time they create a web form?

Usability testing, of course. There’s no guaranteed pattern or recipe for design that will solve all your problems. You have to put your form in front of real users and see what they do with it.

The chapter on testing in our book is the shortest, but it’s also the most important. We called it “Testing (the best bit).”

6. What is the single biggest “gotcha” or problem that form designers must be aware of?

Forgetting to think about the question-and-answer process. Designers often become fixated on visual problems like where to put the labels compared to the fields or what to do about required field indicators, but in fact users are much more concerned about questions that they can’t answer or which aren’t appropriate for that organisation to ask at that point in the process. Much, much, much more concerned.

I’ve never seen a user bail out of a form because they didn’t like the choice of required field indicator. Ever. Or even comment on it at all.

7. What are your plans for the future, what’s happening next in your career?

You want the fantasy, or the reality? My fantasy is that our forms book becomes as popular as Harry Potter and that Gerry and I can both retire on the proceeds.

The reality is that I really enjoy what I do, and I’d love it to carry on. About a third of my work is expert advice on web or paper forms projects, often just for a day or even half a day because I’m working with teams that are already into usability and want a bit of an extra outside eye on what they’re doing. That’s really interesting work for me – I’m a consultant, hire me!

The other two-thirds is projects with continuing clients who want me to take the lead, or to work with them for a while. That work is also fascinating but in a different way. I’m very fortunate that I’ve got a couple of those long-term clients who keep me busy and I hope will continue to do so.

Thank you Caroline!

I’d like to thank Caroline Jarrett for taking the time to answer these questions and provide us with a bit more information about her thoughts and perspective.

As to web forms, considering the critical nature of online transactions, and the fact that you can’t have a transaction without a form, I would assume every web manager would be racing for the bookshelf to read this book now. Forms are tricky, just a seemingly minor change in questions or form architecture can have profound impact on completion rates.

I hope you find this interview helpful and interesting. If you would like me to interview others in the usability field that you believe have made a difference please do add a comment below, and I’ll be glad to reach out to them to conduct an interview.