We are now developing big Drupal 7 project where users have profiles with lots of fields.
They also have a node tied to them (“My story”) which is created during registration.

Initially, these were “edit my profile” and “edit my story” links which were leading to a huge forms where user was scared by amount of elements.

And that is the result of UI improvements:

and after clicking “Edit” near “Hobby” item…

So, basically, user has separate small form for photo upload, separate form for about field, and separate form for small details.

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