How video and images can help people complete forms

A one-week experiment in the content design team

Using online advice to complete a form can be challenging.

People who come to our website for help have to read our advice in one place, then apply it to a form that sits somewhere else — possibly in a printed format. We also get feedback that people find forms long, complex and scary.

Exploring the problem in a ‘firebreak’

In July, our content team paused our usual work for a week, split into mini-project teams and worked at pace to explore a content problem — this is known as a ‘firebreak’.

You can read my colleague Emily’s blog on making it easier to find relevant cost-of-living advice.

My team explored how we can improve our online advice to help users complete forms more easily.

Understanding the problem

We started the week with a discovery day where we reviewed a range of forms advice across our website. Throughout these pages we saw comments from confused and overwhelmed users asking for support with filling in their form.

“I had an acquaintance fill in my first form as I get overwhelmed and confused I don’t have this option this time I don’t know what to do.”

We used these insights to develop user needs for our project and we wrote some ‘how might we?’ statements to capture what we’d need to consider to meet these needs. For example, how might we:

• improve users’ confidence to complete their form
• create a smooth user journey between reading our advice and completing a form
• give the right amount of detail

Coming up with ideas

We held an ideation session to come up with content solutions and decided to take 2 ideas forward:

1. A video at the beginning of the page to give general advice and reassurance about the form
2. Images of sections of the actual form to sit aside relevant online content

We tested these solutions on a page about an employment tribunal claim form because it was a fairly straightforward page.

Using video to help people complete forms

We chose to explore a video content solution because:

• it could be an alternative to reading lots of flat content
• audio and video can give a more human tone to our advice

We thought this could be particularly helpful for users who were feeling stressed and anxious about starting their form.

Developing a prototype

We shared our idea with an expert adviser and discussed the barriers people face when filling out forms.

Based on this discussion and our discovery, we wrote a 2-minute script for the video which we’d include as a transcript on the page. We also created a storyboard of visuals on a slide deck.

A team member used their laptop to film themselves reading the script. We edited this with text and images from our storyboard slide deck using Canva.

Using audio and visual content together

Research has shown that users find it harder to absorb information when they’re stressed and anxious, so we displayed images and text in the video to emphasise key information in the script.

To avoid increasing cognitive load for users, we presented images and text at the exact time they were mentioned by the narrator.

Humanising the content

We decided an adviser should narrate the video and that the video should start and end with the adviser talking to the camera. We hoped this would give a more human feel to our advice and help users feel less alone when approaching a form.

Using images to help people complete forms

We also decided to put screenshots of each question from the form above the relevant advice on our webpage.

We did this to create a smoother journey between reading our advice and using the form. The screenshots provided a visual anchor to clearly show users what part of the form our content relates to.

We split the form into shorter sections to make it feel more manageable to complete. This also meant there wouldn’t be any overwhelmingly long alt text.

We made the page prototype in the development section of our website. This helped us ensure the images looked clear on mobile.

Next steps

We want to test our approach with users, particularly the video. For example, we’d look at:

• whether users felt more reassured after watching the video
• what mix of live footage and graphics works best
• whether users need more in-depth advice rather than tips

Our project ties in with other work in the content team around the use of video in advice content. In fact, there are already plans to test a number of video prototypes with users so we’ll soon have answers to some of our questions!