Last week, I attended a design crit.

One designer shared a multi-step form - here’s what one of the pages looked like:

Here’s the last step:

Another designer raised a concern that all the change links under “Applicant details” go to the same page.

She said:

She’s right.

Users expect to arrive on a page that matches the link they just clicked.

If it doesn’t match, it can be disorientating.

Don’t get me wrong: the user will probably be able to muddle through if there’s just a few fields, but it becomes a bigger issue if you have a lot of fields.

One designer proposed having just one change link:

But this is a problem because:

1. The change link may be very far away from the thing the user wants to change.
2. The user has to move back up the page to spot and get to the change link. (Not an issue when each row has its own link)
3. If one of the rows isn’t editable, the change link makes it look like it will be.

Now maybe you don’t think these issues are a big deal.

Or maybe you think these issues are the lesser of two evils.

But it would be much better to just split the fields into separate pages.

That’s why a key rule of form design is:

Start with one thing per page.

In case you haven’t seen this rule before, putting one thing on a page helps users:

• Find their way through an unfamiliar or complex process
• Focus on the specific question and its answer
• Use a mobile device to fill out the form

And so much more!

The rule says start with one thing per page and merge pages together if research shows that you need to. So you start from this position and then see when it doesn’t work.

But in the last 10 years I’ve watched 100s of usability tests. Do you know how many times research has shown that one thing per page doesn’t work during that time?

Once.

Do you know how many times I’ve seen issues caused by putting multiple things on a page?

Countless.

I spoke to forms expert, Caroline Jarrett, who came up with the rule in the first place and she said:

She’s not wrong.

But I told her that she was wrong to name the rule start with one thing per page because 99% of the time you want to end with one thing per page too.

She didn’t disagree.

And so I’ve decided to rename the rule to:

End with one thing per page.

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule but they occur approximately once every 10 years.

If you’d like to learn how to design forms that start and end with one thing per page, you might like my course, Form Design Mastery:

​https://formdesignmastery.com​

Cheers,
Adam