Iain Boyd and Adam Robertson from GOV.UK Forms at the Government Digital Service join us to share best practice in designing online forms to capture information efficiently and ethically. Plus, discover the dark patterns on the web which set out to trick us into doing things we never set out to do.

Online forms. They’re either so intuitive you hardly notice you’ve filled them in. Or they take so long to complete that you just lose the will to live.

Or maybe you’re the one creating the form and trying to gather the information. People just don’t fill them in properly! How can you work with data that’s incomplete?

An organisation dealing with this issue on a massive scale is Government Digital Service, who are behind GOV.UK, the website for the UK Government.

More than 13m people use GOV.UK weekly, and more than 1bn transactions are completed a year – things like filing a tax return or renewing your passport. GDS are introducing their new Forms Builder to make Government forms more accessible.

Our two guests on this episode are both from GOV.UK Forms at Government Digital Service. They share best practice in designing online forms so that not only do more people fill them in – but you get accurate data too:

• Adam Robertson, Senior Product Manager
• Iain Boyd, Engagement Lead at GOV.UK at the UK Government Digital Service and Iain Boyd from GDS

And in complete contrast to this ethical, transparent approach, you’ll find out about dark patterns on the web, and why Amazon, Google, Meta and the makers of Fortnite are being fined millions of dollars for tricking users into doing things they simply never set out to do. And who’s clamping down on nudges and sludges, biased framing and confirmshaming once and for all?

Show notes

GOV.UK Forms builder tool: “Create an accessible online form in minutes without needing technical knowledge”

Government Digital Service service manual. Accessibility, measurement, research, good design practice…it’s all in here!

GDS blog: How we’re opening up access to GOV.UK forms

GDS blog: Making it easy to create and publish digital forms on GOV.UK

About dark patterns

Visit Harry Brignull’s website, Deceptive Patterns for a full description of the term and some pretty horrifying examples in the Hall of Shame!

The autofill dark pattern

UK regulators target dark patterns

National Law Review: FTC report shows increase in dark patterns

ICO and CMA clamp down on dark patterns in the UK

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