Improve the Question, or the Instruction?

    - We usually encounter numbers of forms to fill in in their lives, whether online or as a hard copy. It is common that we always meet some problems when we fill in certain fields. That may sometimes due to our lack of understanding, but often bad explanation/instruction may be the cause, too. Let's see how the problems would be and how we may solve them from some examples.

Fill in the Flight "Number"

    - A case has been discussed about during the lecture a few weeks ago. That is filling the flight number filed on United Airline's website. Later, a member in our project group met a similar question, while filling in the teammates feedback session.

Are we really distributing some $?

    The instruction part, as well as the question description ask us to "distribute 1000$". The dollar sign makes a problem here. While the group member tried to filled in a number with the dollar sign, she received an error prompt. She soon figured out that she should only put in the numbers. Nothing special happened anymore.

    It just takes her few seconds to figure out and correct the answers. But like the flight number case, can the experience be improved? My suggestion would be change the "1000$" to 1000 points, which would be pretty straight forward.

What is original entry?

    Another example happened while I tried to fill in a form. As a really official PDF form to fill in, you will see detailed description of a certain filed when you move your mouse over the filed. This is generally a good feature, yet, some descriptions appear to be useless. The description in the following image does not answer my specific question. What does the phrase "original entry" means? The first entry ever in my life, or the first one for my current status in Canada? It may confuse people with several visa experience like me.

    But there are good design in the form, too. I definitely did not want to include the info I filled in, when I decided to take this as an example. Here comes the "Clear Form" button! It quickly erases everything for me, ease me from the pain of deleting everything by myself.

One button, all clear!

    - As I experience more and more form/field filling and instruction design pairs, I hope it improves my understanding about them. So, I will keep sharing what I have learnt and hope we will improve all together.

Reference:
    https://teammatesv4.appspot.com
    http://www.cic.gc.ca
    CSC318 Lecture Slides