Generating document based forms

At some point we may want to look at generating document based forms (also called 'offline forms') automatically. This would reduce the need for form creators to maintain two copies of the same form, and save them time.

Advice on creating forms in Word from Caroline Jarrett

Source: a conversation in the cross-government Slack in May 2022. This advice was on how to create forms in Word, but much of this is useful to consider when auto-generating forms.

Tips for using Word for prototyping

• Stick strictly to four input types:

  1. Radio buttons - represent these with ( ) to show the radio button
  2. Check boxes - use [ ] to show the check box
  3. Short text area - use underline _____________ to show the length of the area
  4. Longer text box - just leave a blank area under the prompt OR (for advanced Word users only, and it may be more trouble than it's worth) try putting a border on the paragraph

• As with all forms, start prototyping with one thing per page.

• If the form ends up getting delivered in Word, it's better to change over to having multiple things per page to fill up the pages - but let the user research drive you to the order of the things.

Tips for delivering a form using Word

• The form will end up looking rather like an email form. For anything else, the user has to have quite a high level of mastery of Word to do the necessary amendments and that's fairly unlikely.

• Change radio button inputs to just the options, with the instruction to 'delete all that do not apply'
• Change checkboxes to just the options, also with the instruction to 'delete all that do not apply'
• Change short text areas to just have the prompt and nothing else
• Change longer text areas to just have the prompt and nothing else other than a visual gap before the next prompt.
• Resist any temptation to use Word's "form" capabilities. These are unreliable and difficult to use.
• Make the form available as a .ODT and as a Word form. Extremely simple email-style forms can word in .ODT, but .ODT doesn't work on iPhones so you need both formats.

Other tips

• You will notice that I haven't allowed for any sort of branching, skips, or other complicated logic. That's because you will have to handle them entirely by doing content design like this: "If your answer was xxx then skip to question n". Always put the IF part before the THEN part.
• Test, test, test.