A door covered in extra locks and latches, representing an overloaded intake form
Make This ClearerCAN THIS BE LESS ANNOYING?

The form was the problem

Before/after teardown of a form that asks the organisation's questions, not the user's.

THE USEFUL BIT · 5 MIN READ

A form with thirty fields, six sections and a reference number field at the top is usually not protecting anyone. It is answering the organisation's questions — which department this routes to, which system it feeds, which audit it satisfies — before it answers the person's.

Before: every lock on the door

Every past complaint, edge case and internal handover added one more field or one more step. None of them was wrong to ask, individually. Together they built a door nobody could open without help.

After: one door, one handle

Ask only what changes what happens next. Everything the organisation needs but the user doesn't — routing codes, internal categories — gets filled in after submission, not by the person filling out the form.

A form should ask what the user already knows the answer to. Anything else is the organisation's homework, handed to the wrong person.

BORROW THIS
The "whose question" audit

For every field: does the user know the answer without checking, and does it change what happens next? If not, cut it or move it downstream.

NEWSLETTER
One Less Thing

Each edition removes one repeated annoyance.

Coming soon. One weekly relief when it launches.

WhatBit
WhatBit · Australia
PrivacyTermsCookies