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UX/UI Solution for Having an edit on one component be reflected on all components? (Google Forms Study)

User Experience Asked by turtlefish12 on November 23, 2021

I’m currently building a form editor and I’ve been looking at different editors (Typeform, Google Forms) as inspiration and competitive analysis. There is a specific pain point I’m looking to address.

Here is a google form to show my use case:

enter image description here

Let’s say a user creates a series of questions, each having the same text description. Then, the user figures out that he wants the description to be changed for some of the questions (#2-5 in my Google Forms example but not #1). What’s a convenient solution to this problem?

Some workarounds I’ve seen are making a new question and then just duplicating it & copy/pasting the new description in the questions, but these have been seen as tedious to my users and me, so I’m happy to hear your thoughts on this.

EDIT: I’ve also thought about Figma, where we have a master component, and any edits to the master will be reflected on all instances of that component.

2 Answers

In reality, a user should not be creating duplicate questions. What is the point in asking somebody the same question multiple times?

Also, what is the point in asking somebody the same question multiple times?

If the user wants to copy the description as a template because most of it will be reused each time, then I would recommend good old "copy 'n' paste".


However, lets assume you have a good reason to want to do it...

My suggestion would be that you allow the user to select multiple items for editing. This could be a simple checkbox on each item. Then, when the user checks one or more items, you "enable" an "Edit Selected Items" button somewhere (maybe in that static menu you have on the right).

Once that button is clicked the user will get a version of you edit form that allows them to change a field as normal, but the changes will be applied to all selected items.

Some key things to note when designing this "edit multiple" form:

  1. Make it clear that the user is editing multiple items. Maybe provide a count, or even list the items they are editing.
  2. Only allow the user to edit fields that make sense. For example, allow description, but perhaps don't allow title (as this should be unique).
  3. Don't force the user to complete all fields. Each form field should have a default of "no change", which would ensure that field remains unchanged. This is important because the user might want to change the descriptions, but not change the question types, for example.

Answered by musefan on November 23, 2021

A common pattern for this sort of thing is "bulk edit"; essentially the ability to multi-select items (usually with a checkbox) and then having an Edit button that allows changing them all at once.

So maybe you could do something similar by letting users check each question they want to change and making the edits in a single screen.

Not a form example, but Shopify has a bulk edit functionality on their product list.

Screenshot of Shopify product editor allowing multiple items to be selected and a menu for bulk editing actions

Answered by hexadecimate on November 23, 2021

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