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Nice and Usable UserForm. Suggestions!

R

ravikiran

Member
Hi Gurus,

I have a curious request. I have been an aggressive VBA Developer for the past few years. I observed that the forms I design change for almost every project. I usually take two factors into considerations while designing - End User Age and Type of computer they use (mainly resolution of the display). Some times I tend to imitate forms in a standard software, but VBA gives a very limited options to stretch our designing skills.

So I am curious to understand how does an Excel Form look like when it is designed by an Excel Guru. This is both from a look and feel as well as Usability perspectives.
  • Size of a Form?
  • Do you use a Maximized form?
  • Background colour?
  • Font and Font Size?
  • Button Colour? (I observed many developers using colors for their buttons)
  • Spacing between fields (especially in a data entry form)
Your suggestions will be very helpful in streamlining my design skills.
Thank you,
Ravi.
Forum Admin: I am not sure if this is the right place to ask about a design related suggestion. Pardon me if it isn't.
 
Hi Ravi!
All excellent questions. :) I'll try to tackle them for you.
  • Size of a Form? This depends on what the form is for. Most of my forms deal with information on the worksheet, such as when the user needs to select cells, or I'm pointing out an error they made. These forms need to be small so that the user can see what's going on. For my large forms, such as like a Main Dashboard when they are just navigating to other options, I tend to design for about 1/4 the size of a 1024x768 size monitor resolution, just in case.
  • Do you use a Maximized form? No, not usually. It tends to "freak out" my users. :p
  • Background colour? Light background colors. Usually lighter gray or blue. Sometimes I'll try to use color pallete of specific company if it works (but again, keep it light (but not white)
  • Font and Font Size? Arial Font, usually font 12. Headers and button labels may go up to 18 or 24.
  • Button Colour? (I observed many developers using colors for their buttons) Green - Accept/Good/Proceed, Red for Exit/Cancel/Abort/Delete, Gray for navigation. Overall, with any type of document/form/buttons, I try to limit myself to 3 basic colors. Too many and it just becomes overwhelming.
  • Spacing between fields (especially in a data entry form) With the form zoomed at 100, about 2 or 3 of the little dots on the UserForm between each line.
 
Thank you Luke. Your inputs are helpful. It seems like this has been an untouched territory for such a huge Excel Community :(

I would be glad if any fellow developers can share screenshots of their best userforms (complex/simple).

cheers,
Ravi.
 
Hi Ravikiran ,

You might find this useful :

http://spreadsheetpage.com/index.php/tip/C29/

1. The size of a form will clearly depend on the amount of information that you need to give the user , and the amount of data the user has to enter ; depending on this , you may need multiple pages ; if you can split the data entry into well-defined categories , do so ; for example if you are entering information about a person , the categories can be :

Personal information such as First Name , Middle Name , Last Name , Date of Birth , Father's Name , Mother's Name , Names of Siblings ( if required ) , Religion ( if required ) , Nationality ...

One of these will also be Marital Status ; rather than have this and its dependent information on the same form , the conditional data entry form can be made a separate one.

Even if you do not wish to separate the data entry into separate forms , have frames around controls which are in the same category.

2. It is better to have several small and properly sized forms , than one large form ; the maximized option should be used only if it is warranted by the size of the form.

3. One point about colour is that proper usage of colour can also convey information ; at the same time , do not have too many colours all over the form ; 2 light colours are enough ; with additional different colours for screentips / help , warnings / confirmations , errors.

4. A similar caveat applies to Fonts ; do not have too many fonts and font sizes ; all labels can be of one size , and all headings of another ; probably the data entered in textboxes can be a third.

5. Space the controls within a frame reasonably close , and give a bigger separation between frames , just as when we are writing , a space character suffices to separate words , but a line is used to separate paragraphs.

The main aspect of form design is that you learn as you go along by feedback from your users ; once you have given users data entry forms , the major issues will all be taken care of by short-term feedback ; but you need to go back to your users a couple of months or even 6 months later to find out whether there are minor irritants or improvements which users may not really take the trouble to raise ; how many of us go to the doctor for small aches and pains ? We'd rather live with them !

Narayan
 
Thanks Narayan. This has been quite useful. I'll follow your suggestion here forth and see if I get feedback from implemented projects.

I am sure these suggestions converted into a Blog post will be a huge welcome. Please!

cheers,
Ravi.
 
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