![]() It’s well known that users don’t read instructions, and they are particularly less likely to read instructions at the top of a form. People don’t read instructions at the top of forms.What’s wrong with these approaches? There are a few problems: In both forms, only optional fields were marked: in the case of Citibank with the somewhat unclear abbreviation opt. (In some rare situations, they don’t do anything: they simply assume users will magically know what fields are required if they don’t, then they will just have to deal with the resulting error.) Citicards’ credit-card application (left) included small-font italic instructions All fields are required unless specified optional at the top of its form American Express’s form (right) had no instructions at all. They mark the optional fields, since they are usually fewer.They show instructions at the top of the form saying All fields are required or All fields are required unless otherwise indicated.So, they usually adopt one or both of the following strategies: ![]() Often designers feel that the having a marker for every single required field is repetitive, ugly, takes too much space, and, with longer forms, may even seem oppressive (the form requires so much from the user!). The Temptation to Not Mark the Required Fields And I’ll spend the rest of the article explaining why. A common question in many of our UX Conference classes is: should you mark the required fields in a form? If most fields in the form are required, should we still mark them? (That’s a lot of marks, after all.) The short answer is yes.
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