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Design complex forms that eliminate friction without doing years of research
A zero fluff video course to teach interaction designers, content designers and service designers how to increase conversion and minimise errors – even for complicated, supersized form flows.
“Adam’s course is worth every penny. The lessons are backed by solid research and rationale. Since following Adam’s guidance, our conversion rate has increased significantly.”
Is this you?
- You’re a UI/UX designer, content designer or frontend developer who works on a lot of forms
- Your forms are long and full of complexity, but you’re not sure how to make them better
- Your stakeholders insist on asking users unnecessary questions and it’s impossible to get them to remove them
- You’re quite confident at designing basic forms but you’re not sure how to handle complex interactions and journeys
- Your colleagues design inaccessible patterns and it’s hard to get them to do otherwise
- You want to increase conversion and reduce error rate but you’re not clear about how to do that
If you said yes to any of the above, that’s why I made this course...
Why I created this course
I’m Adam, a designer and former frontend developer from London, UK.
My mission is to create digital products that are intuitive and effortless to use.
I’ve been doing this for 20 years for organisations like Tesco, BBC, Just Eat, and GOV.UK.
I’ve always been obsessed with forms. I became so obsessed that in 2018 I wrote Form Design Patterns for Smashing Magazine and ran live workshops with up to 80 people.
Now I don't claim to know it all.
But I have helped 100s of designers, content designers and frontend developers transform the way they design forms (and the surrounding product of course).
I redesigned a checkout journey for the world’s leading digital takeaway delivery service and increased orders by 5% (37,000 per week).
And I redesigned an appointment booking journey for a high-profile GOV.UK service and reduced completion time by 83% (from 6 minutes to 1 minute).
I’ve watched 100s of users fill out forms. I know where they struggle. And I can tell you the same design mistakes happen again and again.
But it’s taken a lot of effort to get to this point:
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I’ve spent a countless hours coding, designing, prototyping and researching to learn what works and what doesn’t
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I’ve tried (and failed) a million times to convince colleagues to practice good design, not just make things look nice
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I’ve read many articles and books on form design. But often the practical advice is missing, misleading or just wrong
If this sounds familiar, let me give you a quick module overview...
Module overview
There’s no fluff or filler. The core content is designed to get you from ‘form design zero’ to ‘form design hero’ in just over 2 hours.
Module 1
Nailing the basics
Avoid the most common form design mistakes and nail the basics to perfect the foundations of your forms.
3 lessons, 32 mins
Module 2
Kill your questions
Learn my simple step-by-step process to convince even the most stubborn stakeholders to remove unnecessary questions.
3 lessons, 8 mins
Module 3
Form validation
I’ll run you through every bad validation pattern there is (there are plenty). Then I’ll show you the single pattern I’ve used since 2008 with exactly zero issues to report from 100s of usability tests.
5 lessons, 27 mins
Module 4
Multi-step form flows
Learn how to audit, diagnose and redesign a real-life multi-step form flow full of design mistakes big and small. First-time and repeat-use flows are handled too.
5 lessons, 38 mins
Module 5
Practical form design tooling
No code, no Figma. Just a proven, lightning-fast process to design forms as a team and focusing on the details that matter most.
2 lessons, 9 mins
Module 6
Supersized forms
Learn patterns that help users fill out highly complex forms that can take hours, days or even weeks to complete. Backed by research.
2 lessons, 18 mins
“I was hesitant to sign up because the course didn’t seem long enough to justify the price. But I was wrong. The course is packed with tips.”
Trusted by designers worldwide
Form Design Mastery has been taken by individuals and teams working at companies, governments and educational institutions worldwide.
No need to take notes
The lessons cover over 50 form design rules which I’ve put into a 38-page cheat sheet you can use as reference.
A few tips from the course
And so much more. Seriously, this is fraction of the tips you’ll learn from the course.
Form Design Mastery community
When you sign up for the course, you’ll also get community access where you can get support from other form design obsessives.
What some of my students say
Adam’s course is full of real world practical takeaways that I used to improve multiple journeys. Adam’s lessons are useful, interactive and engaging. Highly recommended.
This course is so great because Adam uses specific examples and explains his design decisions. He gives you practical advice for designing forms in a clear and succinct way.
Adam’s Form Design Masterclass was great. I’d highly recommend it to frontend developers and interaction designers who are serious about making stuff that works properly for everyone.
I highly recommend this course because Adam’s approach is very pragmatic and practical. No fads, always gets to the essence of the problem. The patterns in this program will still work 10 years from now.
I often work with prescriptive stakeholders, and it's a constant battle to practice good form design. The course helped me improve my form design skills and feel more confident. I enthusiastically recommend Adam's course!
I took away many amazing lessons that have changed the way I make forms. If you make forms at work, you need to take this course. I loved the focus on accessibility and the many step-by-step walkthroughs for improving real-world forms.
Great course. Lots to take away and implement. Just as important is knowing I/we are doing lots right. There’s always room for improvement though. I'm about to do a hub and spoke form so module 6 has been really helpful. I would recommend the course as you never know it all.
I highly recommend this course. Adam’s knowledge of form design is insane, and he imparts this knowledge in well-thought-out lessons. The Q and A calls offer a space to share real-world challenges, and Adam collaborates with the group to provide insights and explore solutions.
Forget flashy Dribbble designs, Adam’s program is essential for anyone wanting to design great forms. Adam’s course is worth every penny. The lessons are backed by solid research and rationale. Since following Adam’s guidance, our conversion rate has increased significantly and our stakeholders are delighted.
Since taking the course I’ve received many comments from stakeholders about how much quicker I design forms and how consistent my designs have become. The course has become a resource that I come back to many times across projects, which is why I recommend it to every designer who works with forms or services.
I was aware of many problematic form patterns to avoid. But I didn’t know what patterns I should use instead. That’s no longer the case because Adam has equipped me with solutions to build great forms. I’d recommend the course to anyone who believes in building accessible, robust and useful products for the web.
This course helped me think through all important aspects of form design and confidently discussing and reasoning each design decision made. I love Adam’s style which is very practical and hands on. I can recommend asking questions because Adam quickly grasps the presented problem and gives very valuable feedback.
Before taking the challenge, I felt like I couldn’t confidently explain my design decisions. Now when someone questions my design, I’m able to confidently communicate every aspect of the approach in a simple way. The challenge has made my life so much easier and I’m really looking forward to seeing this community grow.
This course makes it easy to understand what makes a well designed form. I was struggling to explain best practices when recommending a design approach. This course solves this in an organized way. It also covers how to make forms accessible. Even though my coding skills are beginner, I will return to this part of the course to improve.
At my workplace, we had to use a lot of complex form structures on various screens. To improve the UX, I decided to take a course. Now, I always check the cheat sheet from the course before designing any form. Adam’s teaching style is incredibly easy to understand, and his perspective on UX has really influenced me. ‘Good UX = Boring UX.’ Thanks, Adam!
I highly recommend Adam’s form design mastery course. He brings real-life examples to the course and backs up design choices with real data. I work in a space where quantitative data is king, and since employing some simple changes around field labels and removing unnecessary form steps, we’ve seen an increase in qualified form completions on our sites.
I knew we needed guidance when it came to improving our SaaS platform and the many forms throughout the app were the first point of call. The course delivered everything I had hoped for, reaffirming our suspicions on what may be wrong as well as opening up new ideas for improvement. We've not implemented the changes yet but we now know where to start and what to do.
The Form Design Mastery course delivered by Adam was excellent. It prompted me to consider areas for improvement in our forms and highlighted what we are already doing well. The course also introduced valuable techniques for collaboratively creating forms with colleagues. Overall, it has inspired me to enhance our forms for our users and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to others.
Adam’s Form Design Mastery course is a must for anyone who is in the business of designing and building forms that convert and work accessibly. Even as a very experienced designer myself, the tips and discussions really helped give me a deeper level of understanding and techniques that I’ll be using going forward. The recorded lessons are well structured and the Q&A calls are brilliant!
Adam's insights on form design have really helped in my role as a product manager. The course is thorough and covers pretty much everything you need to know to create functional, user-friendly forms. He provides clear explanations for why with good evidence to back up the decisions. Even after the completing the course several months ago I find myself returning to it to further cement my knowledge.
Before taking the challenge I struggled to arrive at clear ideas on how best to design forms in varying situations, so I lacked confidence when presenting my ideas with stakeholders. Since taking the challenge I feel confident I’m making the right decisions. As well as that I feel I have access to a friendly community with experience in different types of form challenges that I can ask for help when faced with a challenge myself.
Being able to join Adam’s course was a bucket list moment for me as a designer. Following his advice, we’ve seen abandonment rate and exit rate decrease, whilst conversion rate has increased. I’m in awe of Adam’s knowledge and expertise when it comes to form design. The data and insight we’ve captured through this whole process, from attending Adam’s course to embedding it into our ways of working has helped us shape and develop our forms.
Before the course I struggled with the detail and the confidence of my convictions around form elements and building forms. I felt inadequate and on a limb when trying to explain design decisions to teams. But since taking the course, I’m much more confident in my own decisions. To anybody who’s on the fence about taking the challenge, just do it. You’ll learn so much from Adam.Thanks so much Adam, you’ve got so much knowledge over so many years. It’s fantastic. Highly recommended.
Having taken countless design courses, the one course I always recommend to my colleagues is Adam’s form design masterclass. Plain language ✓ Accessiblity ✓ Breaks down the why and how, not just the what ✓. Adam is superb at explaining things in ways anyone can pick up and understand. Being able to interact with Adam and get a deep dive into his research and rationale was wonderful. This course is absolutely worth the investment. His work has helped me build out a career in design and for that I’m eternally grateful.
I was recommended Adam’s course by two colleagues. It helped me step back and take a look at a form and see what the bad practices are and what to avoid. And to get a good understanding on the whole of what good form design looks like and how we can make them better, more accessible and more user friendly. The community allows you to discuss problems and raise questions with other designers which is so valuable. It's an absolutely brilliant course, I'd highly recommend it to anyone that's considering it and I hope you enjoy it.
There are so many decisions to make when designing forms. I don’t specialise in form design so it’s hard to know the best practices for every type of component for every kind of form. But this course feels like a cheat code to understand what makes a good form in many different scenarios. I've learnt so much in such a short space of time. I can't wait to incorporate everything I've learned into my client's work. Feeling empowered and inspired! Thank you so much Adam. I cannot recommend this course enough for any digital designer.
All of us have been on websites and had the unpleasant experience of filling out poorly designed forms. But what makes a good form? Is it layout? Is it typography? Is it text? Is it any of these or all of these? Attending Adam Silver’s Masterclass on Form Design opened my eyes to the myriad factors involved in good form design. The best thing about the course is that Adam is able to back up all of his form rules with real life data. Good form design moves from the realm of art to science. You will not look at forms the same after Adam’s course.
I have been following Adam's work for a long time and was very pleased to see he is running this course on form design mastery. I wanted to attend the course as I struggled on deciding the best stratergies for form design. Often repeating research with every new project. With Adam's course I am now able to refer to well researched and user tested forms designs and his rules of form design form a core of my form work. If you work desiging or building forms at all this course is for you. The next ten years of my career will be based on what I have learnt in this course.
I’ve been always asking myself if the forms I’m designing are good enough...is this the best I can do? So, reading numerous articles, and attending webinars and courses still didn’t help me to find the missing piece. Thanks to Adam’s Form Design Mastery course now I’ve found a new perspective and a fresh point of view I have been searching for! I’d highly recommend this training because Adam has lots of experience that is based on research, well-thought-out interactions, accessibility, ‘how-to’ guidelines for development, and a welcoming atmosphere for brainstorming. Thank you, Adam!
Adam’s Form Design Mastery course provides clear guidelines and rules to reduce complexity, promote clarity and make things straightforward for users. The tools and techniques he teaches help ensure the right questions are asked, at the right time, in the right way. I also found the community to be welcoming, engaging, supportive and full of talented folk. Adam gave expert advice and focused coaching throughout. The course has helped me identify many improvements to our products. I’m confident that this will enable us to give users a more consistent, usable and accessible form experience.
Adam has distilled all his expertise in designing forms in this course. I'm not exaggerating, I consult his course cheat sheet docs at least once a day while designing. He's helped me grasp that in form design, it's unnecessary to reinvent the wheel in the small details, if you are looking for good usability, following the basics work. I've also learned to identify which navigation pattern to use depending on the context to fill in a form easily. Plus, he has helped me on Q&A calls to solve some job-specific doubts. Which has helped me a lot. Considering that a huge part of online content involves forms, the course content is extremely valuable.
Let’s face it, at the enterprise level a lot of Product Design is actually Form Design. It’s not exactly glamorous work, but it’s extremely important to get right. What this course does great at is giving clear “DO’s” and “DO NOT’s” when it comes to designing forms. Adam is refreshingly clear in his approach. Adam’s background designing for extremely large and diverse user groups makes it easy to trust his expertise and adopt his approaches. Since completing the course we’ve begun updating our design system and design documentation. We now have a much clearer framework to follow and less ambiguity around the choices we make and why we make them.
In early 2023, I started a new job as a product designer at an organization where the experiences we are building are largely forms. My imposter syndrome came on strong! I'm so glad I jumped on Form Design Mastery challenge. Adam does an excellent job building a foundation with the basics and then introducing more complex concepts. I was able to instantly use knowledge and techniques from the course in my daily work. On top of that, Adam has a humble and kind approach to questions and welcomes input from others. Form Design Mastery is more than a one-time challenge. I've returned to the content frequently for refreshers and to ask questions of the community.
Before taking this course, my biggest struggle was being the single voice amongst 20+ teammates and stakeholders who constantly questioned everything I proposed. While I had some confidence already, the tools and techniques I’ve learnt have given me enough confidence to stand my ground. As a result, our forms have been drastically simplified in every way so much so that other areas of the business have reached out to my team for help. If you’re on the fence about taking this course just know that the only outcomes for yourself, your organisation and your users are positive. Thanks Adam, the challenge flew by but I’m still getting value from the community to this day.
I can’t recommend this course highly enough. The material is delivered in bitesize chunks, yet offers a comprehensive wealth of knowledge – a perfect combination. Adam demonstrates, and explains the thinking behind, several patterns that I’ve been able to use immediately with a client. These have been worth the cost of the course alone. It’s so helpful to examine patterns built on years of experience that have been tested across a wider and larger user base than any of my clients would reasonably be able to accommodate. The devil is always in the detail, but the patterns and thinking outlined in the course have given me a solid foundation to work from. Thanks so much!
Everyone working on digital experiences should take Adam’s Form Design Challenge (and read his book!). We need more proponents of the kind of 'boring' (but wickedly effective) design Adam advocates for. My main reason I took the Challenge was to argue more effectively for this and I can confidently say I certainly added to the arguments in my toolbox. Adam’s examples are clear, hard-hitting and full of helpful advice, including code snippets explained at a level every product designer should be able to understand. And even though I was very much a convert already, the Challenge definitely helped address some of my less-than-stellar practice and regain a commitment to simple and inclusive design at every level of detail.
I’m a dev with little design experience, so it was hard to confidently justify my design choices to stakeholders and involving them in the design process was messy and frustrating. But just after finishing the course, I delivered a government form in which stakeholders wanted to include 7 complicated form fields. Using techniques I learned from the course, I managed to negotiate that down to just 2 (with one of those being optional). This course is not just for people who make forms in civil service. The awesome thing is that Adam shows how these techniques and principles also apply to commercial services. On top of that, the course gives you access to a community of clever designers and frontend developers from all sorts of industries.
Before taking this course, we struggled a lot with inconsistency in our forms. Since so many people in our company are responsible for creating forms, they ended up looking very different from one another, leading to a lack of uniformity. This inconsistency made things feel quite confusing and inefficient, not only for us who were creating the forms but also for the users who had to fill them out. However, after taking your course, we've started to develop a set of guidelines on how to create forms and keep them relevant. We've already seen some positive changes – our forms are becoming more consistent, and the process of creating them is much clearer. I would encourage anyone on the fence about taking this course to go for it; it's been incredibly helpful in bringing structure and clarity to our work! Again, thank you for the valuable insights.
This course has completely transformed the way I approach form design. My favorite parts were the process to remove unnecessary questions and the eye-opening details on validation and the placement of error messages. The clarity of the information made it easy to follow, even when tackling more complex forms. The videos are nicely edited, cutting out all fluff, so every minute is packed with valuable insights. I also really appreciate the access to the discussion group, where Adam and other designers are quick to respond to questions and share feedback. Since completing Form Design Mastery, I’ve become more aware of just how poorly designed many forms on the web are, and I can’t help but think how much better the web experience would be if more people took this course. If you care about accessible and effective form design, this is THE course to take.
As a content designer, I know how important form design is, but often I’ve had to take what few wins I can get, while still shipping forms that are bloated, poorly designed, and hard to use. The challenge reinforced a lot of what I already knew and taught me a whole lot more besides. Even better, it gave me the tools to push forward the best decisions for our users. I’ve already used Adam’s process to remove unnecessary questions and slim down a form that’s used by my company’s high-value accounts. And even though I‘m not an engineer, the code examples gave me the vocabulary I needed to convince developers to make changes - for instance, I was able to explain that a new approach to Date of Birth inputs was actually easier for us to validate. Building great forms is the real work of UX design, and no one can teach you more about how to do it than Adam. I can‘t recommend the challenge highly enough.
At first I was hesitant to sign up because the course didn’t seem long enough to justify the price. But I was wrong. In every lesson I kept learning new ways for doing better. Information I hadn’t heard of before and which I felt was thoughtfully structured. The course is packed with tips that provides specific and actionable advice on making interfaces usable and accessible for everyone. Adam covers most of the patterns and practices you can find in forms and guides you through the different aspects that determine their impact on UX. I can confidently say that I’ve already improved the UX of several projects by applying what I’ve learnt. Last but not least, if there was something not covered in the recorded material, Adam and others in the community have been quick to give feedback on the particular problems I’ve shared. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn about designing usable and accessible forms to the highest standard.
Having worked in GOV.UK for several years, I was familiar with some of the GDS patterns and good practices Adam presented in the course. That said, I found the course an excellent refresher and picked up some wonderful resources and learnings from Adam’s vast UX experience. For example, the process to remove questions is an excellent way to ensure you only get the info you need, allowing your user to move smoothly through your product or service. Further to that, I found advice on tracking errors valuable. These are just a couple of examples that were helpful to me. Another big takeaway was removing any fancy UX and keeping things as simple as possible. This mindset will make the experience better for users, and your business will most likely benefit from that. There is something here for everyone, public or private sector and practitioners of all levels. Adam also has live calls where he is personally available to chat through any design challenges you want to bring. Another great resource!
Get access today
Due to the time-intensive nature, the coaching package has limited spots available.
Level up your entire team
Some organisations enrol their entire UX team.
It’s a great way to develop and cultivate skills together. And not only is it motivating but it gives the team a shared understanding of the principles and language used to improve UX across the board.
If you’d like to enrol 4 or more people, I offer discounts of up to 25%. Plus I’m currently offering a free 60 minute Zoom call for the group.
For more details send an email to [email protected].
You’ll also get these bonuses
Bonus 1
How to ask users for a date (video breakdown)
Many products need to ask users for a date of some sort. But dates are notoriously hard to design.
You’ll learn:
- The 5 different date patterns and when to use each one
- How to design (and code) a close-to-perfect accessible date picker that has also been designed to work flawlessly for screen reader users and keyboard users.
Bonus 2
How to stop users from submitting a form more than once (video breakdown)
Without intervention users may accidentally submit a form more than once.
But this can cause serious issues. For example, if an order is placed twice, users will be charged twice. Not good.
You’ll learn:
- Why disabling the submit button is a flawed approach
- The right way to stop users from submitting a form more than once
Bonus 3
Form Design Mastery vault (49 videos)
The Form Design Mastery vault is a perfect companion to help you design forms.
Each video answers questions like:
- Is inline editing better than going to a separate page?
- How would you design an optional file upload form?
- Is it sometimes better to use buttons instead of radio buttons?
And there are videos that cover real-life mini design crits siuch as:
- the UK’s most popular car insurance quote service
- a GOV.UK case working system
- a complex mortgage calculator
Bonus 4
How to ask users for a phone number with forms specialist Caroline Jarrett (60 minute video recording)
Caroline runs through the best way to ask for a phone number (which is 10x harder than it sounds).
You’ll learn:
- How the WCAG guidelines and best design systems fall short
- How to design a phone number input in a user centric way that works for everyone
FAQs
What if the course doesn’t solve my particular UX challenge?
Great, I want to know so that I can incorporate it into the course. If you want to be sure before you sign up, send me an email.
Is the material only applicable to sites like GOV.UK?
No. 99% of the patterns in this course work just as well in the private sector as the public sector.
Do I need to know how to code?
Knowing some HTML would be useful, but it’s not essential. I’ve had UXers and content designers who don’t can’t code go through the course without a problem.
The reason I teach some code is because UX is impacted by the code we use to build interfaces. But you can gloss over the code or pass it on to your developers.
Is the course only applicable to websites? What about apps?
The course is mainly for people who make products that work in a browser. But most of what I share is applicable to apps too.
What’s the refund policy?
I don’t offer a money-back guarantee. Form Design Mastery is a great course and I’ve described it accurately on this page.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Scroll up to see some of the feedback I’ve gotten from former students.
And remember once you take the course, you can post questions to the community or directly to me. Either way, I’m happy to help.
If you have any other questions, send me an email.
“The one course I always recommend to my colleagues is Adam’s form design masterclass. Being able to interact with Adam and get a deep dive into his research and rationale was wonderful. This course is absolutely worth the investment.”