The structured collection of input from the actor, balancing guidance with the freedom to express complex or messy information. Each field is an act of data entry, each constrained field a bounded choice. The whole commits the actor to the system’s shape up front: a question of formality. For the form mechanism see corresponding component.
Forms and conversation
Forms can be embedded in a messaging interface for a more conversational interaction; a conversation may in turn resolve into a form once a dialogue stabilises around well-structured data collection. The two are endpoints of one continuum — how much of the structure the actor supplies, and how much the system does.
Distributed across the exchange, the form’s fields are asked and answered turn by turn, each control rendered inline in a message — the form instance of the inline interface.
Forms and AI
A form makes the actor translate their situation into the system’s fields. When the system can parse raw input — an image, a PDF, pasted text, a voice dump — against the form’s schema, that labour inverts: the actor’s job shifts from entry to verification, reviewing pre-filled answers rather than supplying them. That shift, and the trust loop it requires, belong to data entry.
Resources & references
- Luke Wroblewski / Unstructured Input in AI Apps
- The Question Protocol: How to Make Sure Every Form Field Is Necessary
Related patterns
Hosts
- Autocomplete — form fields are where the completion surface most commonly lives
- Autofill — form fields are the surface where autofill most commonly appears
- Data entry — each field is a site of the entry move; the form is one of its surfaces.
- Good defaults — fields arrive pre-filled with likely values, removing entry entirely.
- Validation — the form is the surface that hosts fieldwise messages and wires them to submission
Enacts
- Formality — how much structure the system demands of the actor, and when.
Complements
- Conversation — may resolve into a form when a dialogue stabilises around structured data collection.
- Localization — locale-aware parsing and format tolerance for input.
- Status feedback — validation and system status during and after entry.
- Saving — autosave and manual save strategies for in-progress and committed input.
- Settings — settings are essentially configuration forms requiring similar patterns (validation, feedback, submission)
Tangentially related
- Disabled state — alternatives to disabling form elements.
Alternatives
- Wizard — the single-page structure that wizards fragment across steps
Related
- Inline interface — fields distributed across an exchange; the form↔conversation move.
- Checklist — the checklist interaction resembles a form with verification items
Enabled by
- Bounded choice — committing a value from a set the actor didn't author; the move behind a form's selects, radios, and checkboxes.
- Progressive disclosure — a form revealing depth only as it becomes relevant.
- Sections — splitting a long form into adaptive, separately disclosed parts.
- Step by step — a form split into one-question-per-page steps (the question-pages pattern)