A bit of planning and a good template can go a long way to ensuring you have forms that work.
Businesses forms that work need to:
- address the needs of the user
- be easy to understand and to use
- be easy to find
- reflect current practises
Planning is the key. Before diving in and typing on a clean blank page read these 5 tips.
- Start with how it will look – match it to your branding , colours, logo, fonts etc. Ideally you will have a template setup for this with standard styles for fonts, headings, tables. ( Please do not use Times New Roman which is the default in Word )
- Define all the information that needs to go on the form.
- Determine the order the information it needs to be presented ( eg: Date, First Name, Last Name)
- Will it be filled in online or printed out and written on?
- Ensure it is named and stored in a place where those who use it can find it easily then train all the users – Ideally it will be held on an intranet or inside a managed content system.
Then you get down to the nitty gritty of the layout and setup.
My favourite layout tool for Word is tables … more on that next time.
If you would like to win a branded Microsoft Word template created by Kiffin, enter this month’s Competition.
By Fiona Hall, Kiffin
