Training

There are four main ways in which I can support your organisation and staff team to create forms and surveys that work:

  • Interactive workshops
  • Training courses
  • Train the trainer
  • Consultancy

In an interactive workshop, your team works with me to improve their forms or surveys

Workshops are my favourite format: intense interactive sessions, looking with your team at a particular form or survey and developing an action plan for improvements. The format goes like this: 

  • We meet ahead of the workshop to discuss exactly what form, survey or mix of topics you want to work on, and to supply me with the materials or examples.
  • I prepare the workshop according to what we choose.  I usually prepare a selection of slides, and always include interactive exercises and time for discussion. 
  • You can invite as many people as you like to the session. The smaller the group, the better the discussion and the more interactive I can make it. I usually recommend that we keep it to 90 minutes – perhaps with an extra half-hour available for people who want to ask extra questions. 
  • I offer a follow-up service for any extra questions and generally some links that I think will be helpful.  
  • My fee is £1000 plus VAT if applicable, payable one week in advance of the preparation meeting. I offer a full refund after the event if you don’t think it was good value for money.   

…insightful, helpful and informative…the teams (and the company as a whole) will reap the benefits of this for months (if not years) to come.

Liza Pemstein, Research Operations Manager, Clever

I also offer face-to-face training courses

Training courses are usually face to face, and my aim is to equip your staff with a framework with which to improve their own forms and surveys. I usually offer them in association with a conference or another training provider and from time to time offer them with a public sign-up. I’m happy to discuss running any of the following courses on an in-house basis:

  • Surveys that work: whether delivering this as a one-hour webinar or a full-day intensive course, I always work with participants’ own survey examples to ensure the learning can be applied immediately. In April 2023 I was invited to offer a tailored surveys course at WebExpo: Four ways to make a better survey 
  • Content design in practice: the most recent outing for this writing and editing training was as a half-day public course, delivered virtually. You can find out more and view some of the training materials here: Content design in practice
  • Forms that work: I’m more likely to suggest a forms workshop to clients because creating better forms tends to require much more specific input. There are plenty of examples in my publications list. But do get in touch if you want to discuss tailoring forms training for your organisation. You can view the slides from a recent short online workshop on creating accessible forms here: Ladies that UK Seatle: creating truly accessible forms

Thanks for the great course. I wish every service owner that thinks a form can solve their problem had to do this course first. I plan on sharing as much as I can with colleagues.

Participant at Crocstar’s Content Design for Forms training course

I can support members of your team to train their colleagues (“train the trainer”)

If you prefer to develop your in-house training capacity,  I can work with your staff to create relevant and effective materials, and support them through testing and delivering customised courses. Among the clients I’ve worked with in this way are the User Research team at HMRC, the User Experience (UX) department at the University of Edinburgh,  and content design and design systems consultant Amy Hupe.  Please contact me to discuss this, and for testimonials.

Hire me as a consultant

You can also hire me as a consultant to review your form or survey. I’ll help you to make sure that your form or survey is easy to fill in, properly tested and delivers useful results.