The Problem
While working to develop a new Assessment of Prior Learning (APL) for Military Veterans, I needed to get a lot of information from them at the outset. This information varied greatly from service member to service member. Since this form would be used university wide, I needed to partner with numerous department heads (our SMEs for this work) to develop a concise list of things they need to know about an incoming student’s prior experience. The result was a form with over 100 items. While I was told by some that a long form would not bother service members as “they were used to long, technical forms”, initial user testing indicated that our actual users found the form dull and tedious. Apparently, being subjected to years of paperwork does not necessarily mean that you like it!
The Solution
The solution that I came up with was to use Storyline to create the form. In addition to being more appealing visually than a long form, the branching options in Articulate made it very easy to create a form that skipped irrelevant questions. I tightened up the UX even more, by using variables and then set up the branching based on conditional selection rather than strictly branching by decision buttons (more on this in the example).
Tools
- HTML/CSS – The first attempt to make this form was done using a general web form.
- UX Testing – The standard web form was tested with veterans on campus. Observations were recorded and a survey was included in the initial test.
- Storyline Articulate – Storyline was for used the final form.
Examples
While the final form is published in the larger APL course on the university’s LMS, I have provided this short video to give you a sense of the user experience. I also go into some detail on branching by variables as opposed to decision buttons.
Summary
I learned a great deal from this project that applies in a wide variety of situations.
- Articulate is more than just an elaborate PowerPoint – By using branching and variables, I was able to create a much more user friendly form.
- Get Things in Front of End Users – One of the cardinal sins of design is assuming what your users want. While the first form had all of the same content, listening to users and redesigning the form led to more favorable feedback and higher completion rates. By pressing for early testing with users, a much better solution was reached relatively quickly.