Better Google Forms
One of the best features of online forms is conditional logic, which allows presenting questions relevant to the last answer. Despite Google forms have this feature, not many people are aware of it.
The magic of conditional logic
Over the last few years, I created many online forms. Working for a local council I realized how important forms are and how improvements in online form technology can make filling in a form easier (designing and building it as well).
The good thing is, if you want to make use of an online form (for example, for research purposes), you don’t need a buy an online form builder. These are good but often expensive and complicated and come with additional features that you don’t need if you want to just create a simple form. This you can do with Google Forms.
I wasn’t using Google Forms until last month when I had to create a simple form to collect feedback about the prototype I’ve built. I didn’t want to use a sophisticated form builder which I usually use, I wanted to make it fast and be sure everyone can access it.
I have no business in promoting Google Forms but I’ve noticed it’s something many people use but could do it better if they only knew about certain features like conditional logic.
Available but hidden
I had an opportunity to fill in many Google Forms, but none of them was using conditional logic just “If you responded yes to a previous question…” formula which I’m allergic to. It was a big mystery for me as conditional logic is one of the basic features of online forms.
On paper you’re not able to hide questions that are not relevant to your answer, you need to lay out everything and hope that person filling it in will read the instruction and answer only these questions they should.
This is a “paper” type conditioning where you need to read the instruction. In simple forms it’s not so irritating, it becomes very annoying when things are getting more complicated and you have a form with 20 questions but according to your answers you need to answer only 7 questions, but you need to look at every line to know if it’s a question for you.
Towards the smoother experience
Filling in a form is not an activity we like, therefore it should take as little time as possible.
Using google form you can use the “jump to” feature and a person who selected “no” will jump to the next question not seeing the one asking a follow-up question for the person who answered “yes”.
If you’d like to check how conditional logic works, you can have a look at this simple form I created for presentation.
Conditional logic (or branching )is a very important but hidden feature that I believe many people would be happy to use if only they knew it exists and how to use it.
Google Forms are a relatively good tool (as for a “free” one) but they are not too good with presenting what this form builder is capable of, especially for people who build forms just sporadically (as most of Google Forms users).
I don't want to create a detailed tutorial as there are many already available. I wanted to highlight it and direct you to resources that can help you to design better forms.
If you’d like to learn more about Google Forms have a look at this tutorial showing step by step how to make your form easier to fill.
I am not the author of that tutorial, and I don’t have any affiliation with this website, but I recommend the tutorial as it covers all the steps required to work things out.
Please try conditional logic and apply to the forms you have or you’re planning to build. If you have problems, let me know I’m happy to help. Although remember I’m not representing Google here, I’m just a person who likes to use tools that do the job.
If you’d like to read more about designing online forms, read my series devoted to that topic.
Thanks for reading the 40th post from My 52 problems series.
If you have a question or comment, feel free to add it here or post on twitter.
