Friday, August 15, 2008

A Good Form Example

Today I was trying to download a few games for my new phone. Most of the sites i came across were baffling in terms of the amount and density of information they contain. I couldn't figure out anything so I ran from one site to another. At last I came across eqo.com

The best part was that the site didn't mention the word register anywhere. It happened so seamlessly. So apart from the usual these are the highlights -

Layout-
  1. Similar fields are grouped together which makes the form look easy to fill. Each group does not have more than 4 items.
  2. * are all aligned neatly one below the other for quick uninterrupted scanning. So people instantly know which fields are mandatory.
  3. The form does not show the "create account" button till the user fills up a few mandatory fields.
Support-
  1. It mentions clearly (in orange) who should fill up the form. Other people need not bother. This shows that they value my time and effort.

  2. The support is amazing. For example in case I didn't know my phone model the form tells how to find that out.





  3. It even shows you the right image of the phone model I have selected for reinforcement. And no loading time, its instant.

  4. The field country is already pre-filled with India(its where I live) and as a consequence the phone number prefix is set to 91.

  5. When it is asks for the e-mail id and I enter my ID and press 'tab' for the next field it pre-fills the field with the same ID! cul! On top of that it even check on its own if the ID is available.


  6. Each field is justified clearly and nothing is taken for granted. For example even a simple thing like language has an instruction stating "(Choose which language you’d like to use EQO in)".
Widgets
  1. The button is not called "submit" but "Create Account" which actually tells me what will happen if i click on that button.
All these highlighted points make a form filling experience seem to be a painless process. It brings pleasant surprises to the user and create eagerness about the service for which he fills the form

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Its in Africa



Saw this interesting imagery in Google Earth. It is somewhere in South Africa. Its a lovely sight.