There's a popular technique in interaction design known as Progressive Disclosure. You can see this in wizard-style interfaces that show you a single question at a time. The theory is that it's better to show one single thing at a time than to show a big wall of stuff that makes you run away.
Take a look at sparked.com's sign-up form. They disclose just one beautifully designed page at a time. It takes you on a journey, ensuring it only gives you the minimum amount of information needed to proceed, while keeping the 'scaring away' to a minimum.
It's a useful technique when people aren't familiar with your system. Something like this would be fairly annoying for a high-frequency and repetitive task. So it's perfect for sign-up forms. Admittedly, in the above example, they've bunched quite a lot on to the final page. But thankfully you can log in through various social media sites to make it quite easy. Plus, all that stuff on the last page is rote information so it's very easy to complete.
This technique really reminds me of the way that narrative arcs often work. You have a bit of exposition, you get to know the characters and sometimes you start to like, identify with or hate the people in it. There's then a bit of confrontation or jeopardy, then possibly a climax and a resolution (if you're lucky). You're not told the entire story in one single shot, you're told it over a period of time. It's all about keeping the
cognitive load to a minimum.
Filling in a form might be the most boring story you've ever encountered but I certainly remembered and enjoyed the Sparked sign up form.
