Backdrop really ought to have, or be able to have, placeholders for admin form inputs. More and more designers hide form labels and rely on placeholders to provide information in a clean manner.
Perhaps the easiest place to visual this working is on the User registration/login and password forms. Here's an example:
Whilst it's feasible to add placeholders per input field and form through your theme template.php file, surely we should be taking full advantage of HTML5's features and have this in core for all admin forms?

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Thank you for your answer. What I want to do is display usernames or user images in a menu, similar to many community websites. The basic menu that Backdrop currently provides is a "...
How can I display the username or user profile picture in the menu?
Just go to the menu where you want to add your link. Add your link and in the path search for "user". It's done. No need to use a token. Or perhaps this ? menu_attributes
How can I display the username or user profile picture in the menu?
Please can you provide more information about the use case for this and also a screenshot or mockup of what you are trying to achieve. There is a request here (https://github.com/backdrop-...
How can I display the username or user profile picture in the menu?