Less Web Forms for Everyone 🧻

I haven't changed. I'm still the same nerd I have been over a year ago. The same nerd that loves web forms, no matter when it comes to designing or using them.

What has changed is my perspective. The UX Designer self that I have been shaping over the last decade has always just accepted the status quo. The idea that we need to design forms. This idea underlies the common notion that we need forms.

But do we really? I remember a 2018 software conference that I was visiting. "User data is the new oil", the first speaker proclaimed wisely. His words have left an impression on me.

But times are changing. Enough is enough.

The curse of Peruvian food delivery services

Peruvian food delivery services are giving me a hard time. I'm lazy. I don't want to leave the house. Everyone's been there. I just want to watch Netflix and have food delivered directly into my tummy.

The first service I try doesn't deliver in the Andean town I'm currently at. Fine.

The second service seems to offer a website (Yay! This means that I don't have to download an app). I carefully select a cuisine, followed by carefully selecting a restaurant until I carefully select a meal. And then I'm suddenly made aware that yes, I'll need the app to continue. Wow, why do you even have a website in the first place?

Then I install the bloody app, and it's asking me to verify my phone number. They only allow Peruvian, Ecuadorian or US phone numbers (Ever thought of European foreigners that might want to order your food?). Luckily, my Skype number is the latter. So I copy over my phone number from my notes app and click the shiny, orange button that happily announces "Continue" and nothing happens. Did I not apply enough pressure? I click and I click and I click. Nothing happens. I click once more. And..... Nothing happens. No user feedback. Just nothing.

I realize that my copied phone number contained blanks that seem to cause an issue. This apparently friendly button that so kindly wants me to "continue" wouldn't let me continue without any explanation. Actually, it didn't even have the technical capability of its only purpose, which is of course to let people through.

Just like Gandalf the Grey, it stood there and thought:

You shall not pass!

But unlike Gandalf, it didn't actually say these words, leaving users to guess what the problem is.

At this point, I'm already fed up and at least 20 minutes have passed since the initial growling of my tummy. Luckily, smart that I am, I could solve the riddle of the "Continue" button and once I deleted the blanks, it let me pass.

But! Oh, yeah, another but! I never receive the SMS. And, unfortunately, this riddle I leave unsolved. What I'm left with are 20 minutes of my life I'm never getting back.

The third delivery service... no, you know what... I'll just go outside and get the food in person.

Enough is enough

I remember a time when software was supposed to make our lives easier. Around that time, the term "user experience" seemed to be very popular. Nowadays, a good user experience, one where going digital is actually easier than going physical has become very rare.

Services ask us to download apps, they ask us to verify phone numbers, create accounts, allow notifications on our phones, share our physical locations and enter forms. They ask us to enter so much data that I wonder why? Why do you need all this data?

All I really want is my pizza. Remember my tummy? It needs to be fed.

So in order for me to get my pizza, do you really need to know my middle name? My birthday? Do you really need to know my birthday? Trust me, I'm old enough to order pizza. And while I'm at it, do you actually need to know my name?

After I gave up on this madness and just physically walked over to the restaurant to get my pizza in person, no one cared what my name was. I just handed them my money, they accepted it with pleasure and gave me my delicious pizza. Incognito. Anonymous.

They didn't care about my name. And they didn't mean any offence. They weren't unfriendly people, they were just practical. They believe in a well-established business formula. Exchange money for goods.

Why has life become so difficult? By now, I'm starting to believe that technology is making our lives worse. Getting food delivered has become unnecessarily complicated and by now it actually takes more time to fill in bloody forms and download apps and verify phone numbers than actually going over to the pizza place itself (or you know, making a phone call to order the pizza! Do people still do that?).

Enough is enough.

A new formless world

It's not just me. I'm a patient man. As someone who loves to fill in web forms I'm actually out of the ordinary. Usually, people despise filling in forms. So if even a patient guy whose open to the world of web forms becomes fed up, the entire world must be fed up by now. We don't need any more forms. What we need is less forms!

And I firmly believe that a good user experience in this day and age follows a new formula. "User data is the new oil" is obsolete.

The new business formula is called "less is more":

Less data. Less effort. Less web forms.

Any uprising Peruvian food delivery service out there, here's the idea. Skip the form. All you really require is the address of the user. Just like any other delivery service in the world, live tracking of the food delivery person's location and a messaging system between hungry person and delivery person takes care of the rest.

The age of data collection is over. We are waking up to a new world, and it's beautiful: less data, less effort, less web forms.

Because less is more.