QUIK! TIP: Underlines make forms easier to read than boxes or combs.

When placing a field on a form, providing some type of line to show the user where the data is intended to go will make a form easier to understand. While it is rare that a form is designed without any lines, there are plenty of examples where the form author did not explicitly provide a space for the user to fill in the data. There are at least three different line styles used on forms: underlines, boxes and combs.

Underlines

Users prefer forms that are designed with single lines (underlines) to show where data should be typed or written in. A single line leaves more white space (empty space) on the page, which lends to a cleaner and easier-to-read design. In addition, when converting the PDF form to a Quik! Form for automation purposes, it is easier for the form builder to actually build the electronic form because the builder has more flexibility in how the electronic PDF field is sized and spaced (i.e. the field does NOT have to conform to a box or hide unwanted lines).

The only difficulty with underlines is when a form provides a large space for a user to type in notes and the space has multiple horizontal lines to allow the user to put in the information. While the horizontal lines are a nice feature for those users who still use a pen to fill in the form, electronically the form is typically built with one large field that wraps the text. In the electronic version the field is built to hide the horizontal lines, which means that the horizontal lines are not displayed when printed. (NOTE: Quik! can provide a method on these types of forms to allow the underlying lines to display if NO data is input in the electronic field, per customer requests.)

Boxes

QUIK! TIP: Avoid using boxes for individual fields, instead use boxes to group sections together.

Another common method for showing a user where to input data is to provide full boxes, which directly show the height and length of a given field. The two main problems with the use of boxes is that the box restricts the user’s ability to put in data, and the boxes can contribute to the form being difficult to read and understand. Successful uses of boxes has typically included more white space between questions and answers, which has the negative result of a longer document than necessary. From an automation perspective, the boxes exactly indicate where data should go, which causes form builders to be more exacting when placing electronic fields. Forms with box designs take longer to build and automate.

Combs

QUIK! TIP: Avoid using combs and boxes for individual characters.

Another method of displaying data to users is to use combs or individual-character boxes. A comb is where each character has its own unique box assigned to it (e.g. for Social Security Numbers). The design intent of a comb style is two-fold: 1) to force the user into a limited number of characters, and 2) for scanning the form and attempting to convert the hand-written text to a digital letter.

While the scanning technique can work and is clearly a benefit to the back-end processing of the completed form, in today’s modern age of form automation, scanning and converting text (OCR – Optical Character Recognition) is no longer necessary. In addition, most users do not like filling out form with exact space requirements – the form takes longer to fill in and is harder to read because of the volume of graphic content on the page. Furthermore, automating a form with this design requires form builders to build fields that hide the individual field boxes, which means that the form takes longer to build and subject to more build errors.