Informed Consent Generator

Browser-based generator for informed consent forms in HCI studies. The tool runs fully in the browser, keeps save/load support for consent settings, renders an in-browser HTML preview and produces a PDF locally with jsPDF without requiring a backend service.

What the tool does

The generator lets users:

• describe their institution, study type, language and study schedule
• document compensation, procedure steps and collected data
• explain anonymization, retention and publication choices
• generate a structured informed-consent document in HTML and PDF
• save current settings to disk and load them again later

Project structure

• index.html: static application shell and semantic layout
• _css/bootstrap-icons.css: icon set aligned with the modern toolkit apps
• _css/bootstrap.min.css and _css/daterangepicker.css: runtime vendor styles used by the form
• _css/style.css: toolkit-aligned styling and responsive layout
• _img: lightweight runtime image assets used by the page shell
• _js/jquery-3.3.1.min.js, _js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js, _js/bootstrap-input-spinner.js, _js/moment.min.js, _js/daterangepicker.min.js, and _js/FileSaver.min.js: minimal browser-side third-party runtime dependencies
• _js/consent-app.js: UI flow, form binding and preview/export actions
• _js/consent-state.js: defaults, normalization and validation
• _js/consent-content.js: text snippets, placeholder replacement and document model generation
• _js/consent-renderer-jsPDF.js: safe HTML preview rendering and browser-side jsPDF export
• _js/textsnippets-data.js: local embedded text-snippet source generated from textsnippets.xml
• _fonts/Roboto-Regular-normal.js and _fonts/Roboto-Medium-normal.js: embedded jsPDF font registrations for PDF output
• scripts/test_runtime.js: minimal jsdom-based runtime regression test

Local usage

No build step is required for the app itself. Open index.html directly in a browser to use the generator offline.

Optional checks

Install the small test dependency set once:

npm install

Run the runtime regression test:

npm test

Notes for contributors

• The production app is intentionally static and server-independent.
• Save/load remains JSON-based and compatible with the historic settings shape.
• HTML preview and PDF output are generated from the same document model.
• The active PDF path is jsPDF; legacy html2pdf code is no longer part of the shipped runtime.

Source code

The current source code is available on GitHub:

• https://github.com/valentin-schwind/consent-form-generator

Citation statement

If you use this tool in teaching, student supervision, or research workflows, please cite the HCI User Studies Toolkit publication below.

Citation

@inproceedings{10.1145/3544549.3585890,
	author = {Schwind, Valentin and Resch, Stefan and Sehrt, Jessica},
	title = {The HCI User Studies Toolkit: Supporting Study Designing and Planning for Undergraduates and Novice Researchers in Human-Computer Interaction},
	year = {2023},
	isbn = {9781450394222},
	publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
	address = {New York, NY, USA},
	url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585890},
	doi = {10.1145/3544549.3585890},
	booktitle = {Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
	articleno = {272},
	numpages = {7},
	keywords = {HCI Toolkit, Organization, Study Design Planning, User Studies},
	location = {Hamburg, Germany},
	series = {CHI EA '23}
}