Forms Design
The Dos and Don’ts of Better Data Capture
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All too often, poorly designed forms do not provide respondents with enough room to write complete information. Make sure the printed fields are large enough.
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Forms may also be convoluted in flow and format, confusing the person completing the form and creating incorrect responses. Make sure the fields follow a logical progression from left to right and top to bottom.
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Plan a form that is attractive and well spaced to avoid overlapping responses. Keep field definitions succinct, collecting only the data that is useful and necessary.
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Select the most reliable recognition technologies wherever possible. In a warehouse application, for example, it may be easier to have an open field where a user can place a bar code sticker rather than writing out an order number. For example, if you want somebody to rate a seminar presentation, use a one-to-five (mark recognition) response scale rather than an open text field.
Emily Deere is a product manager for Cardiff Software (www.cardiffsw.com), which offers the Teleform line of data and image capture products.Disadvantages:
Scanner price.
Color scanners traditionally have been more expensive than bitonal scanners, though the color scanners introduced at this year’s AIIM indicate that the color price premium may be eroding.
“Lossy” compression.
The document imaging market is accustomed to lossless image compression. Most methods used to store color documents are lossy. The question for a system designer is “how should I archive color documents today?”
File size.
Even with good color compression and lower scan resolutions, color image files are bigger than their bitonal alternatives. A switch to color will increase storage requirements, network traffic and associated costs.
Advantages:
User productivity.
Color data is critical for the user to determine the nature of the image data.
Multiple renditions.
Multiple renditions allow different types of images to be used for different purposes. Special renditions, say a blue background form with black writing, combine small file sizes with essentially all the information of the original.
Automatic recognition processes.
Gray and color data have the potential to yield superior results in OCR, ICR, barcode and mark recognition processing.
Steve Francis is vice president and general manager of Pixel Translations (www.pixeltranslations.com)
Design Pointers and Best Practices
Color dropout improves image file storage by reducing file size. Forms processing is the most obvious application for color dropout because the user can control the documents being scanned.
Dropout lets you capture the “filled-in” information, not the redundant, space-consuming background of the form. Here are a few tips to make color dropout applications successful:
Many inks appear to be one color but in fact are a blend of many different colors of ink. These off-colors will be detected by the scanner. Therefore, make sure your printer uses a “pure” color ink when printing your forms.
Test your documents for color dropout compatibility before you order thousands of such forms from a printer.
Use lighter colors when designing forms. This improves color dropout and allows you to set higher sensitivity levels for the scanner. Higher sensitivity levels, in turn, improve thresholding, especially when scanning light text.
Many scanners use green lamps for normal (non-dropout) scanning. This green light tends to drop light shades of green out of an image. This is rarely a problem, but it’s something to be aware of.
Todd Radtke, CDIA, is director of engineering applications at Bell & Howell Imaging Components (www.bellhowell.imagingcomponents.com), a manufacturer of high-end document scanners.
