Design your form

Use this approach to design your form before you start building.

Consider if you need to make changes to your end-to-end service to improve customer experience. Implement this advice according to the size and complexity of your service, scaling the steps and project team accordingly.

Plan and scope

Gather your project team and establish a shared understanding of project goals and deliverables:

• Build a multidisciplinary team that may include:
  • service owner and decision maker
  • service design lead or project manager
  • subject matter experts
  • policy experts
  • front-line staff
  • UX designer
  • accessibility expert.
• Identify:
  • who the key stakeholders are
  • what the service design process will achieve
  • what challenges need addressing (e.g. funding, technical or operational challenges)
  • how you will measure and track service performance
  • timeframes and team capacity
  • roles and responsibilities of the project team and stakeholders.

Understand the service and the customer

Fill in the form if it already exists:

• Does the language make sense?
• Are there any confusing words?
• Is anything duplicated or missing?
• Are there any documents needed to complete the form?
• Does it follow a logical flow?
• Review existing data and research.
• Analyse and review existing forms and service information (e.g. desktop research).
• Review data from Google Analytics or existing feedback platforms to identify questions users struggle to complete.
• Review policies and legislation to understand how they impact the delivery of the service.
• Talk to users about their experiences with the service (e.g. user interviews).
• Talk to customer-facing staff about what they do, see and hear during service delivery.
• Talk to internal staff who maintain and manage backend systems.

Plan and conduct user research:

• Talk to users about their experiences with the service (e.g. user interviews).
• Talk to customer-facing staff about what they do, see and hear during service delivery.
• Talk to internal staff who maintain and manage backend systems.

Map the current state journey and discuss the way forward

As a group, run a workshop to map the process, pain points and opportunities:

• Map the current state journey and business processes:
  • Current state customer journey map—how do customers experience the end-to-end service?
  • Business process map—how is data processed and managed to deliver the service?
• Identify pain points with current processes and improvement opportunities across the end-to-end service.
• Consider the end state:
  • What can we do now? (e.g. minimum viable product).
  • What can we do in future? (e.g. blue-sky ideas).
• Develop a roadmap or service blueprint that outlines what the future release of the service will look like.

Identify what information you need from customers

Identify what questions you need to ask the user to complete the service:

• What is the question for?
• Who will use and access the information provided?
• Where will your data be stored?
• What format will be used?

Aim to simplify and/or remove questions where possible:

• Do you already have access to this data?
• Can the data be shared from elsewhere, rather than asking the customer for it?
• Is there an easier way for customers to provide this information?
• Is there a better way of asking customers for this information?

Document all questions and dependencies in a central location for governance purposes. It’s important to keep a complete record of the questions that will be used on your form. Use this record as a ‘living’ document and keep in a central location. Any changes made in the use of data should be reflected in it. The benefits of documenting the questions in this way make it easier to:

• share and clearly communicate what each piece of data is used for
• track who owns and manages data used in the service (particularly for complex services)
• help project teams to iterate or refresh the service in future.

Get your questions and content endorsed by subject matter experts.

Design and prototype

Create prototypes to test the flow and content of the form with users.

First iteration

• Discuss and agree on form sections and question groupings—structure your form content following whole-of-government forms patterns.
• Identify the key messages that users need before starting the form.
• Run a prototyping workshop like the example below).
• Document the design in a tool available to you, such as:
  • Microsoft Word, for example a For government form content brief
  • Microsoft Excel—use separate spreadsheets sheets to map each form section and any conditional logic.