Best Practices - Forms With Lots Of Choices / Check boxes

[Steven Lees-Smith]

Hi there,

Looking at building up our Facilities forms for JSM and not sure what the approach is when there are lots of check boxes on the form.

Is it a matter of creating a custom field for each of the individual options that need to be selected on the form, or should we leverage drop down lists and have them as multi select.

For example, reporting an air conditioning issue.

Too hot, too cold, air flow too strong are the options the guys want and wanted three check boxes due to being able to select more than one.  i.e. someone could say it's too hot but also the fans are too strong.

What is the build / design approach for cases like this - I have heaps that have been presented by various groups and their forms.

Thanks.

[Ste Wright]

Hi @Steven Lees-Smith 

There's a few things I take into account when asked for very detailed forms...

• User Experience: Whilst it might benefit an engineer to have all this information, the customer needs to fill it in. If the form is too complex or detailed, you might find they either don't use it - or you end up with inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Usefulness: How useful is the data populated? You might want to ensure you only ask for key information. You should also consider...
  • Is a discussion with the customer needed post-ticket creation? If yes, some of the qualifying questions might be best asked in that discussion.
  • Are the field options useful enough - if I can select too hot and too cold, is that useful?
• Field Options: I'd look to not elongate the form unnecessarily - and would consider...
  • Using Sections to hide parts of the form which are irrelevant - only visualising them if a conditional field is set to ABC.
  • If checkboxes are the best option - or if an alternative, like a multi-select picklist, would be better suited so multiple options are in one line.
• Mobile: Are customers using a mobile to raise these requests? Ensure you test the form on there to see what the experience is like, compared to a desktop/laptop

Ste

[Steven Lees-Smith]

Thanks for the info, yeh conversations are going on now about revisiting some of the information that has been asked, mainly just  'are you sure' in relation to if they really need some of the info and if users are actually going to fill in so many fields.