Sunday, October 02, 2005

Monika Duvinage is created dozens of forms for an Infopath-like application...and hearing about those, I realize: hey, forms are just another way to interrogate the visitor, to ask questions, to collect ideas.  Forms are part of the virtual conversation. No wonder that we now have seminars on form design.  Used to be an esoteric subsection of graphic design.  But now forms mean interactivity. On web applications, much of what we do is fill in forms and hit Submit.  The field names are really implied questions: what is your street address?  What is your favorite color? We know the drill so well we hardly think about the exchange involved: the site is asking a series of standard questions, in a familiar pattern, and we are glad to answer, because we want to make the purchase, or get the white paper, or take advantage of the service.  Of course, we do not paying with a little smidgeon of our privacy.  And for the site, the information gained can be valuable, if seized on by alert marketing folks. Shopping is a (weird) relationship, and electronic forms are the tool we use to engage in this stripped-down, bare-bones interaction--this virtual conversation. Best, Jonathan 11:54:54 AM    comment []