I have just taken up the challenge of turning a 38 page word application form into a series of web forms. Yikes!
Part of me thinks this is insane, part of me wants to show much better I can do it. And I have long been twittering (in the old sense of the world) on about this for ages – our organisations ‘touch points’ are abysmal. This form is filled out by hundreds of people a year. If I had to fill it in I would either cry or not bother.
It’s got all the classics:
- You get to section G and it asks you to amend an answer in section D if you did X here
- Sections which are not used or actioned by us but are used for ‘potential reporting purposes’
- Between five and eight signatories to authorise the submission
- Sections where you are meant to manually add up five years worth of figures
This would be unthinkable without using our Achieve Forms package, and even then it’s going to take months but hopefully we can make this a lot better – and because we will not be using our ‘technology partner’ we can use a rapid prototyping method rather than the torture of a requirements document. Achieve is veryg ood for that luckliy – nothing has to be built in stone and your draft becomes the finished product very easily. Thank heavens for small mercys…
