This content originally appeared on Adam Silver and was authored by Adam Silver
Last week I shared my first law of form design which is that:
Nobody wants to use your form.
Like I said last week, it’s crucial to know because it emphasises respecting the user over trying to make your form fun, engaging, novel or “on brand”.
And showing respect means doing everything we possibly can to get that form out of the way as quickly as possible.
One way to measure how well we’re doing that is by tracking completion time.
Which leads us to my second law of form design:
Completion Time = Question Time + Pause Time
Understanding this equation shifts the way we tackle the problem of designing a form so that users can get through it as quickly and as easily as possible.
So let’s break it down:
Question Time is how long it takes you to answer all of the questions.
This includes the time to read the label, understand the question and provide an answer – the bit that includes things like:
- choosing a radio button
- ticking a checkbox box
- typing an answer
- uploading a file
- picking a date
Sticking with the same theme from last week, here’s the for to create new ticket in JIRA:
There are a lot of issues here, one of which is the number of optional fields.
Most of the time you just want to capture something quickly to be refined at some point later.
But the optional fields make this process tedious because it raises questions in the user’s mind:
“What is this for? Is it okay to leave it blank?”
This takes time!
There are a few different ways to deal with optional fields but the current design is likely to result in lost tickets and less time doing actual work.
This is not what you want.
Let’s move onto Pause Time:
Pause Time is how long it takes you to:
- check your answers are correct
- understand the implications of submitting the form
For example, when you create a JIRA ticket, you might want to know:
- Where the ticket will go
- How you can find it later
- Who will get notified
Not knowing this causes hesitation, raises concern and slows you down.
Slow forms = bad UX
The most sensible move would be to ditch JIRA for something better.
But here’s a different scenario:
Let’s say you’re about to buy something online, you probably want to know:
- How long it’ll take to arrive
- How long you’ve got to return it
Not knowing this causes you to hesitate and slow down.
This causes abandonment.
Alternatively, if you know how long it’ll take to arrive and how long you have to return it, you are more likely to finish the job.
Now it’s all very well and good knowing the law but there are many details that go into making sure that completion time is kept to an absolute minimum.
If you’d like to know what all those details are:
This content originally appeared on Adam Silver and was authored by Adam Silver
Adam Silver | Sciencx (2025-07-28T00:00:00+00:00) My second law of form design. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/07/28/my-second-law-of-form-design/
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