Designing effective forms is a tough but critical UX challenge. You’ve got to collect all the necessary information in a way that’s intuitive to the user and works on a variety of form factors. There’s a lot of work that’s been done on how to get form design right (I linked to a few comprehensive recent overviews at the bottom of the post), but one tactic that always catches my eye is injecting humor or interested into the experience.
Not only do these flourishes add interest to a rote task, they can enhance a sense of relatedness support. Adding interesting examples and some personality into a form–especially registration forms–begin a relationship with the user early in onboarding. And adding them to checkout or purchase flows can provide a sense of reassurance and excitement about what’s being bought.
Here are two examples I’ve come across recently that I liked:
Donors Choose
This is a site that lets you designate a charitable donation toward a teacher and classroom for a specific educational request. I’m not sure yet if I’ll get a birthday gift from them, but phrasing the question that way caught my attention.
Cotton Bureau
I believe this checkout screen was from when I ordered my Rogue NASA t-shirt. The information they want is completely typical, but I got a kick out of the cotton-centric example text. The international flavor of Señor Cotton was also appreciated.
These small details can help improve the form experience while also establishing that psychological connection between user and product.
To learn more about improving user experience in your forms, check out: