Digital Collegium 2025 - Freshen Up Your Forms_ A UX Case Study.pptx

It is remarkable how many of the interactions students, staff, and faculty have at our institutions involve online forms. Unfortunately, those forms often don't receive the attention they deserve when it comes to user experience. They end up asking questions that don't need to be asked and providing information that is no longer needed, leading to back-and-forth interactions that leave everyone frustrated. In this session, I will detail how Information Technology at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities emphasized improving user experience and consistency in our forms during a IT ticketing system transition.

The key points I will cover are:
- How the project began and who was included
- How we set ourselves up for success with a style guide
- How we built trust with the forms' business owners
- How we maintained the process after the initial project scope was complete

From this session, participants will learn:
- how a style guide is critical to success in improving their forms
- how to best include business owners/approvers in the form improvement process
- how to maintain the momentum after the initital project is complete

1. Freshen Up Your Forms: A UX Case Study David Rosen User Experience Analyst University of Minnesota

2. Forms?! That sounds kinda dull…

3. https://giphy.com/gifs/cbc-schittscreek-schitts-creek-BYnh6KLTUdiZSBtvdk

4. Project Background

5. The Before Times Contracted ticketing solution Access provisioning was distributed Many forms were in the system Some were still in PDF

6. The Before Times The Key Issue Forms in the system: C ouldn’t pull any information about the person automatically Couldn’t adjust dynamically during completion

7. Cognitive Load This image was created 9/4/25 using Microsoft Co-pilot. Prompt: “Create an image that represents cognitive load”

8. Why are they trying so hard ? These forms were to request access to technologies and systems around the University Users didn’t want to have their request rejected They figured extra time and energy spent now was better than doing it all over again

9. It wasn’t working There was a lot of back and forth communication to determine if someone could have access Despite users’ best efforts this was due to their submissions having: Insufficient information Incorrect or incomplete answers

10. One door closes… The contract with their current ticketing vendor was expiring An RFP was required The current vendor didn’t take the RFP process seriously The cost and complexity of the tool became more than was acceptable

11. A new beginning

12. Leadership had a vision Product Owner and Senior Director of User Support wanted to take a fresh look We’d been using ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) for 7 years and had matured Product owner knew we had UX frameworks to work from They learned from past experience Included business owners in the form digitization

13. Assemble the team https://www.supanova.com.au/25-years-power-rangers/

14. Our starting point We discovered forms by looking in the previous system and Provisioning and Access identifying PDFs that they receive We identified and informed the business owners The project team needed to learn the tool The vendor would answer questions as an implementation partner, but they wouldn’t do it for us.

15. The Style Guide

16. UX Approach I relied heavily on this book: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/forms-that-work/9780080948485/

17. UX Approach I focused on the following things in creating the new forms: Logical flow Consistent terminology Consistent use of form field types Clear and explanatory labels and instructions We also leveraged: Information that we already knew about the user from them signing-in

18. Preparing for the style guide We needed to complete our exploration of the functions available in the tool We needed to work through our 4 pilot forms

19. Detail is key The style guide covers nearly everything How we refer to the person filling out the form Tone of voice Rules about using different form fields and features Character limits Naming conventions of admin-side features

20. Example of a style guide section

21. Cognitive Load Clearly labeling fields and avoiding jargon Giving explicit instructions for text-based form fields Only showing users the information they need to see when they need to see it Parent/Child relationships in the tool allowed us to reduce what was on the screen

22. Example of better labels and help text

23. Building Trust with Business Owners

24. Setting up the meeting Our project manager set up meetings with the business owner of each form Here was the agenda Brief description on how the components hook together in TDX View what the access roles (for most users) form looks like in the sandbox environment Document changes the business owners would like to incorporate Brief overview of workflow of the form

25. Checking the questions There were 3 things we needed to know: Who needs this information? What do they use it for? Is it required or optional? Jarrett, Caroline, & Gaffney, Gerry (2009) Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability. p. 37

26. Example: Question Protocol

27. Follow-up to the meetings After meetings we would: Make changes to the form to match the question, language, and information changes the business owners needed Either set up another meeting or plan to send a link to the mocked-up form to review Repeat until the business owners signed off

28. Example: Canvas Application/Data Roles

29. Outcomes Remember the 85% incorrect completion rate for Canvas access requests? Here is what the business owner said when I asked them on 9/10/25 (more than 5 years after the transition) “ I have forgotten the bad old days of [previous vendor]. Submissions to the Canvas ARF are completed correctly for the most part… Thanks for reminding me that this process is much improved and not the pain point it once was.”

30. Maintaining Good Practices

31. New forms and changes A team was built to continue the creation and maintenance of forms The team references the style guide in their work UX still has a role Within the workflow, there is a stage called UX Review

32. Example of a UX Review

33. Future processes Artificial Intelligence (AI) Train it on the style guide Load in forms to give it a first pass

34. Q&A / Thank You