Create or update a form

A practical process for creating or improving a Camden form.

A good form should have a well-defined structure and be easy for the user to complete.

Good forms or services reflect what a user wants to do. Before you make a new form or update an existing one, you'll need to understand your service’s requirements and the needs of your users.

Start with user needs

Conduct user research to map the user journeys and decide what information you'll need to collect and what outcome you want to guide the user towards.

Make sure you know the relative size of your different user groups and how your decisions will affect them.

You can learn about users and their needs by:

  • reviewing existing evidence (for example, analytics, search logs, call centre data, or previous research reports)
  • interviewing and observing actual or likely users
  • talking to people inside and outside your organisation who work with actual or likely users (for example, caseworkers, call centre agents and charity workers)

You should treat any opinions or suggestions that do not come from users as assumptions until proven by doing research.

View GOV.UK's guidance on user research methods

Think about the user journey

Consider the form:

  • from beginning to end – think about everything a user needs to do, including anything done by other organisations
  • across every channel – phone, post and face to face as well as digital

Identify all the information you need from users

Use your research insights to make a list of the information your form needs to collect from users. This becomes the basis for designing the form questions.

Consider which group of users you want to prioritise. You’ll need to know the relative size of your different user groups to do this.

Decide what questions you need

Keep your forms as simple as possible. Only ask what's needed to run your service.

Once you know what information to collect, validate this using a tool called a ‘question protocol’. This step helps you identify which form questions you need. It can be used to reduce the size of a form.

For each question, the protocol should be used to check that you know:

  • why you need the information to deliver your service
  • what you’ll do with it
  • which users need to give you the information
  • how you’ll check the information is accurate
  • how to keep the information up to date and secure

See the question protocol: how to make sure every form field is necessary.

Each form question has costs

Each question has a cost. Only ask for information that is needed for your service.

A financial cost is incurred each time we create a form, then process and store the data. A time cost and a cognitive cost is passed on to users for every extra question they have to complete.

Clearly explain why you’re asking for sensitive information

Public sector organisations have a duty to consider the need to avoid discrimination and advance equality of opportunity as part of what they do. This is part of what’s called the public sector equality duty.

If you must ask for sensitive information, for example someone’s ethnicity or sexual orientation, make sure you explain why it is needed.

You should do this whenever you ask for sensitive information, even if you do this several times in the form.

When asking users for equality information, make it clear:

  • that the questions are different from other questions in the service
  • why you’re asking the questions, and what you’ll do with the information
  • that the questions are optional

View the equality information design pattern on GOV.UK for details on how structure your form to support this.

Form question content design

When you know what information to collect, follow the guidance on writing good questions.

You should also follow our content guidelines.