The Power of Wrapping Google Forms

I hate sending people Google Forms. In a way, it feels kind of lazy – the same way that using a Google Site for your business might be. If you want people to put time into answering your questions (for example, with a survey) showing someone a Google Form is a way of saying "I didn't put any effort into this project, but expect you to care enough to fill out my form."

So for a while, I've taken to wrapping Google Forms using another web app. Google Forms lets you programmatically submit forms using POST requests to the formResponse endpoint, which you can literally embed into a normal HTML form. By doing this, you add a layer of authenticity to a given project, and also get to have fun making the site more functional (for example, autofilling some form data via a URL endpoint).

I actually ended up doing this exact thing yesterday for a dorm project. Our bathrooms are notoriously dirty, and I wanted to get some data on which bathrooms had the most issues. Rather than use a Google Form, I made a dead simple site that's much easier to interact with, and autofills the restroom using a dynamic URL in the QR codes on the posters. People seemed happy to use it because the project looks (at least at some level) like work was put into it, and it has a real domain.

Basically, if it appears like you care about a project, it's easier for people to take your goals seriously.