New designs – now also with dark mode

Formcentric gives you a choice of multiple designs for your forms, which you can use as templates for your own designs. Two attractive designs have just been added: ‘gotham’ and ‘hamburg’ – one of which now includes eco-friendly dark mode.

New designs – now also with dark mode

Under ‘Designs’ in the Formcentric Editor, you will now find two new designs, which you can start using immediately to create appealing online forms. Of course, you can also adjust any of the elements in these designs – such as colours and fonts – to suit your needs or the company style guide. As with any design, you can of course also add your own logo. The new ‘hamburg’ design is also available as a dark mode variant, which you can start using immediately.

What is ‘dark mode’?

Dark mode – also called dark theme or night mode – displays light‑coloured text on a dark background. Nor is it limited just to website presentation but is now also available on many mobile devices like tablets and phones.

Dark mode has a number of advantages. In a dark setting, where lighting is low or absent, dark mode is often felt to be easier on the eyes, since it reduces the contrast between the screen and the surrounding environment. The dark background concentrates the attention on essential features while reducing ‘background noise’. This therefore makes reading or working with a screen significantly more comfortable.

Is dark mode a useful mode for forms?

Online forms that take longer to fill out than others are especially suitable for use with dark mode. These include feedback and customer support forms, as well as forms for login and registration. Dark mode can reduce eye strain here, especially if users are filling out these forms at night or in a dark environment. When filling out forms, dark mode helps to provide a more pleasant experience while ensuring key details are easier to identify. This increases user‑friendliness. Dark mode also saves energy – which extends the battery life of mobile devices.

What other advantages are offered by dark mode?

Alongside improving user‑friendliness, forms using dark mode also have other benefits.

Digital accessibility

For users with certain kinds of vision impairment or limitations, dark mode may be a necessary adjustment in order to make these forms accessible to this group of people. If you use dark mode for your online forms, you should always ensure that contrast levels are adequate and that fonts are easy to read.

Visual appeal and user guidance

Many people perceive dark designs as more modern and less distracting, which is why dark mode is now increasingly selected as the default mode. With forms, a dark background colour also helps to highlight visual hierarchies and elements on the screen, and therefore works to improve the usability of navigation systems.

Sustainability

On OLED or AMOLED displays, dark mode can actually save energy, as black or dark areas on these displays use less electricity than bright ones. Figures from Google show that dark mode can cut energy use by around 40 percent for the YouTube app and around 60 percent for Google Maps*. Other studies from US researchers have shown that dark mode can cut battery usage by 9 percent when screen brightness is set within the range 30 to 50 percent. This saving rises to as much as 47 percent for screens at maximum brightness**. Over long periods of use or long working days, dark mode therefore has a positive effect on the battery life of mobile devices. And lower electricity consumption is also more environmentally friendly.

Longer screen lifetimes

Some studies have shown that using dark mode can extend the lifetime of OLED and AMOLED displays, since fewer pixels need to be active than during brighter display modes. This can extend the lifetime of these kinds of screens.

While the actual power consumption and effects on eye health will also depend on other factors such as the device type and individual patterns of user behaviour, it is definitely beneficial to offer forms in dark mode to your customers and partner businesses. The new designs from Formcentric now give you the opportunity to do just that.

Go hereto try them out.

* https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/gadgets/display-im-dark-mode-was-der-dunkelmodus-wirklich-bringt-a-1248550.html

** https://blog.avast.com/de/dunkelmodus-wie-viel-akku-spart-der-dark-mode-wirklich