Overview

Quik! is the industry leading expert on automating the process of filling out paperwork. With thousands of forms in our library, Quik! (since 2001) has developed expert knowledge in form design for the purposes of making it easy for a user to populate the form while making it possible and efficient for data to be processed electronically to and from the form. This document reviews the best practices in designing form content for the purposes of automating the process to collect, process, save and submit data via electronic forms that are designed to look like paper forms. Various design attributes and techniques are suggested to make form design more consistent and easier to work with at all levels.

For further information about Quik! Forms Automation solutions, send an email requesting information to forms@quikforms.com. 

Key Areas

The Quik! Form Design Best Practices guide covers the following key areas of form design:

• Automation (Quik! Forms Automation, where automation occurs, buttons, security, etc)
• Font (size, type, embedding, etc)
• Field sizing (length, height, proportioned for expected data)
• Field lines (combs, boxes, underlines, no lines, etc)
• White space (too much, not enough, etc)
• Graphics (file type, size, etc)
• Background (images, colors, layout, etc)
• Instructional aides (headings, instructions, checkboxes, symbols, etc)
• Identification (literature number, revision date, barcodes, Quik! Form ID, etc.
• Physical file attributes (number of pages, embedded objects, links, etc)
• Text-only pages (contracts, legal, disclaimers, brochure pages, etc)

Assumptions

The following assumptions are made in this reference guide:

1. Form design is the responsibility of the company authoring the forms.
2. This reference guide does not guarantee that a form will be effective or efficient, but only serves as a guideline for better form design
3. Form design should always consider who the intended user(s) of the document will be and how the document will be used (print, email, web, submit, process, etc)
4. When Quik! automates a form, the underlying form content is not modified by Quik!
5. Quik! Forms are always delivered to users with 128-bit security to protect the author’s content