Online government forms don't have to be boring

I'm one of those quirky people who finds forms intensely interesting.

I've had a great deal of past involvement with market reseach and online transaction sites which has emphasised to me how important effective and usable form design is in order to ensure that forms achieve the goals set.

In my current role I've guided my team into supporting a number of research projects and we're currently reviewing and redeveloping our website and intranet forms capacity - touching on every other area of the business.

So I was very interested to watch Jessica Ender's presentation at the Web Standards Group (WSG) in Canberra last week.

Jessica, who owns Formulate Information Design, a specialist form development consultancy in Canberra, gave a very professional and passionate talk focusing on the four layers of a form and the appropriate process to use when developing a form.

She brought it together with the four Cs of good form design, clear, concise, clever and contextual.

While much of this was not new to me, Jessica's talk placed it into a new context and I'll be revisiting our approach to the redevelopment of our forms based on her insights.

What type of methodology do you use for developing forms?

Are your online forms effective?