Design

Designing good questions

Give feedback about this page

From:
Design community

Designing good questions makes it easy for users to provide the right information and understand why they need to provide it.

If they need it, you can add help text and error messages to nudge them in the right direction.

Before you start, make sure you know why you바카라 사이트™re asking every question.

You can see in the 바카라 사이트 Design System.

Ask questions that users understand

Closed questions are easier to answer than open questions. Especially in government services, where users are often afraid of being caught out.

An example of a closed question might be 바카라 사이트˜Do you live at more than one address?바카라 사이트™An open version of this question would be 바카라 사이트˜Tell us about your living arrangements바카라 사이트™.

A series of simple questions can be easier to answer than one complex question. Especially if parts of it aren바카라 사이트™t relevant to all users.

Let users answer with 바카라 사이트˜I바카라 사이트™m not sure바카라 사이트™ or 바카라 사이트˜I don바카라 사이트™t know바카라 사이트™ if these are valid answers.

Change the questions until you find what works

If people are struggling to understand a form, think about re-framing the question or changing the form structure as well as the language.

For example, try reversing the question so the user is invited to say 바카라 사이트˜no바카라 사이트™ rather than 바카라 사이트˜yes바카라 사이트™ (or the other way round). Sometimes users make assumptions about what the 바카라 사이트˜right바카라 사이트™ answer is.

Or try more descriptive labels for radio buttons or checkboxes.

For example, an early version of the register to vote service asked users whether they also lived at a second address. User research showed that some people found it difficult to answer 바카라 사이트˜yes바카라 사이트™ or 바카라 사이트˜no바카라 사이트™ to this question because they weren바카라 사이트™t sure what 바카라 사이트˜counted바카라 사이트™ as a second address.

It became much easier to answer when the team replaced the 바카라 사이트™Yes바카라 사이트™ option with two radio buttons - one labelled 바카라 사이트˜Yes, I spend time living at two homes바카라 사이트™ and the other 바카라 사이트˜Yes, I바카라 사이트™m a student with home and term-time addresses바카라 사이트™.

If some radio button or checkbox labels are phrased differently from the others, it may make the page more readable if you separate the options that are different with an 바카라 사이트˜or바카라 사이트™.

Add help text where necessary

Sometimes it바카라 사이트™s useful to provide help text to explain things like:

  • legal jargon
  • where to find obscure information
  • what format the information should be given in
  • what you바카라 사이트™ll do with a user바카라 사이트™s personal information
  • the consequences of making one choice over another

Only do this if you see in research that your users need it.

How to add help text

You can do this by:

  • adding hint text inline, immediately next to the part of the page it relates to
  • using the 바카라 사이트˜details바카라 사이트™ component to reveal expanding help text - this is useful if the text is only relevant to a subset of users

See examples of and in the 바카라 사이트 Design System.

You might occasionally need to add more detailed text to help users make particularly complex or difficult decisions.

But bear in mind they바카라 사이트™re unlikely to read anything longer than 3 lines, so try to keep any text brief and action-focused.

Don바카라 사이트™t use help text to explain the interface. If you have to do that, you바카라 사이트™ve made your service too complicated.

Help users give you the right information

Do what you can to help users avoid failing validation and getting an error message. Set up your validation so it바카라 사이트™s as tolerant as possible of users entering information in different ways.

So, for example, if you바카라 사이트™re asking for the user바카라 사이트™s National Insurance number the input field should accept either 바카라 사이트˜QQ123456C바카라 사이트™ or 바카라 사이트˜QQ 12 34 56 C바카라 사이트™ - stripping out the spaces before it passes the number through to the back end.

You바카라 사이트™ll probably need to create multiple error messages per field, so they바카라 사이트™re as specific to the problem as possible. Focus on telling the user how to fix the problem rather than describing what바카라 사이트™s gone wrong.

The Design System shows .

You might find the following guides useful:

From:
Design community
Last updated
almost 7 years ago
Last update:

Guidance first published