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Perhaps it's just me but I absolutely detest this pattern. It turns a simple page where you fill into your details then hit submit into a "simple" 36 step proce

by jbb67 9y ago

Perhaps it's just me but I absolutely detest this pattern. It turns a simple page where you fill into your details then hit submit into a "simple" 36 step process where at each stage you think "Argh ANOTHER page, just get on with it". Half the time if it takes more that 2 pages to submit something I'll just give up and find a competent website instead

UnoriginalGuy 9y ago
Communicating where the user is along the steps can help alleviate this situation somewhat. Instead of a seemingly never ending series of steps, you can see there is e.g. 6 steps and you're on step 2.
gizmo 9y ago
In your case the problem is that you don't want to fill out all the information in the first place, not whether the form has one page or four pages. Getting asked for too much information when signing up for something is annoying. A multi-stage form should indicate how many pages there are, to prevent the "ARGH it keeps going" effect you mentioned. Surveys are some of the worst offenders here.
teh_klev 9y ago
> Half the time if it takes more that 2 pages to submit something I'll just give up and find a competent website instead Then I guess you don't buy car/home insurance online then (or any other financial products)? That's probably the worst case example most folks would encounter. Most UK insurers run to about four of five pages (non-mobile) of data collection. Even if they do already know who you are, many things may have changed (driving convictions, health status, profession, etc; you might even have changed your vehicle), but they also like to confirm your existing details (address, age, sex). There's often no way around this. That said, any half decent design that absolutely needs to capture this amount of data over several pages will have some kind of progress indicator, hopefully something like "Step 3 of 5", to indicate to the user how much further they have to go to completion.
mnw21cam 9y ago
Yay, I have to wait for the web page to load six times, instead of just once.

by jbb67 9y ago

UnoriginalGuy 9y ago

Communicating where the user is along the steps can help alleviate this situation somewhat. Instead of a seemingly never ending series of steps, you can see there is e.g. 6 steps and you're on step 2.

gizmo 9y ago

In your case the problem is that you don't want to fill out all the information in the first place, not whether the form has one page or four pages. Getting asked for too much information when signing up for something is annoying. A multi-stage form should indicate how many pages there are, to prevent the "ARGH it keeps going" effect you mentioned. Surveys are some of the worst offenders here.

teh_klev 9y ago

> Half the time if it takes more that 2 pages to submit something I'll just give up and find a competent website instead Then I guess you don't buy car/home insurance online then (or any other financial products)? That's probably the worst case example most folks would encounter. Most UK insurers run to about four of five pages (non-mobile) of data collection. Even if they do already know who you are, many things may have changed (driving convictions, health status, profession, etc; you might even have changed your vehicle), but they also like to confirm your existing details (address, age, sex). There's often no way around this. That said, any half decent design that absolutely needs to capture this amount of data over several pages will have some kind of progress indicator, hopefully something like "Step 3 of 5", to indicate to the user how much further they have to go to completion.

mnw21cam 9y ago

Yay, I have to wait for the web page to load six times, instead of just once.