Making Prettier Forms: Converting Checkboxes into Images

A couple weekends ago I went to the Big Design Conference in Dallas (recap coming soon), and I always come back inspired to help the user’s experience with the applications I write. One of the things mentioned (several times) was making forms simpler. Basically, you don’t have to make the end-user feel like they’re filling out a form. There are ways to make it seem less intimidating. One way is to swap out the typically hard-to-click checkbox or radio button with an image. It gives the user a larger click area and it looks nice…at least in my opinion.