Dynamic forms with conditional logic: What are their advantages over simple questionnaires?

It’s confirmed. Humans have shorter attention span than goldfish these days. According to a research an average human’s attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000, to 8 seconds in 2015. Meanwhile, goldfish are believed to have an attention span of 9 seconds.
Therefore, making questionnaire forms shorter, easier to understand and customized based on the respondent’s answers is key to get people to fill out questionnaires properly. And custom business logic with smart features available in Resco Inspections enables you to do just that, utilizing form rules to create not only simple but dynamic questionnaires as well.

What are the simple forms?

Simply put (no pun intended), simple questionnaire forms do not utilize custom business logic.

Users always see all the questions, following one another, regardless the answers they entered. This is most suitable in situations when the use case requires only short, basic questionnaires – for example a quick in-store customer survey.

In straightforward scenarios with only a handful of questions, there’s no need to implement complex logic. These can be handled simply by reasonably arranging the questions.

E.g. if you’re asking customers at a patisserie whether they like croissants and what’s their favorite filling. Having just two basic questions, you can do it simply by putting one question after the other.

What are the dynamic forms with conditional logic?

Dynamic questionnaire forms leverage custom business logic.

This type of questionnaires enables to easily display or hide questions (or entire question groups) based on how the user responded to previous questions on the form.

Using custom business logic helps to keep users focused and tailors forms to meet their needs. Ultimately it enables to build up questionnaire forms that can include even hundreds of questions without wounding up with a long, complicated mess.

Take an elevator maintenance inspection as an example. Technicians visit buildings with various elevator models, so upon selecting the elevator type, questions relevant for that particular model will be shown.

Furthermore, the maintenance consists of multiple detailed checks of various mechanisms and systems (such as brakes, doors, cabin equipment, control panel, etc.). You can set up that only one section will be visible at a time – e.g. technicians won’t be able to start inspecting the doors unless they’ve completed the brakes checkup.

And custom logic can be also applied to individual questions. Does the elevator’s control panel have any visible attrition? If the inspector answers “Yes”, he/she will be prompted to add a photo of any wear and tear. In case the answer’s “No”, the inspector can continue to next question uninterrupted.

Benefits of dynamic forms

To sum it up, custom business logic offers several benefits that help users to keep their focus on your questionnaire forms:

1. Streamlining questionnaires – the use of custom logic can make your questionnaire forms more digestible and less confusing for users by displaying only relevant questions and fields.
2. Keeping the forms short – due to people’s decreasing attention span, make your questionnaires appear as short as possible from the outset (can be accomplished by hiding questions until they are actually needed).
3. Creating a customized inspection experience – custom logic can also enable you to display customized messages based on a user’s interaction with the questionnaire form, making the entire inspection experience more personal and engaging.

An inspection solution with conditional form builder

Resco Inspections & Audits allows you to create custom forms with business logic for any scenario you need. By leveraging the smart features of conditional form builder – Resco Questionnaire Designer, you can create digital questionnaires that always provides workers with questions relevant for their use case.

If you don’t want to build forms from scratch, explore the template library with free questionnaires designed for various industries, including energy or manufacturing.
For more information, visit the Resco Inspections & Audits page and discover how to leverage the power of dynamic forms in your business.