NSW Births Registration Form

Despite the fact that people get form-filling fatigue very quickly, organisations demand that their forms do more and more. This is the case with the NSW Birth Registration Form. When someone registers the birth of their child they are also obliged to provide a range of responses on the form that seem to have little to do with their child’s birth directly (rather they are for the benefit of the Australian Bureau of Statistics). In addition, parents can also use the form to purchase a Birth Certificate. The end result of this is a much longer and more complicated form-filling process. When we design a form we conduct an extensive analysis of content to determine whether it is necessary and what format it should take. If possible it is best to create forms that have a singular purpose. Unfortunately, in this case we were unable to do so. We undertook this project for NSW Attorney General’s Dept. on behalf of the CRI.

Interestingly, when we tested the old Births Registration form many people failed to provide their signatures. On the old form there had been an attempt to highlight this area by boxing it. In our new design we removed all cases of ‘boxing’ – the result being that everyone filled this section in. Boxed information seems to do the opposite of its intention – locking people out of sections rather than highlighting them.