Articles
Browse by Topic and Author
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How to Display Taxes, Fees, and Shipping Charges on Ecommerce Sites
Unexpected service fees and special-delivery costs should be disclosed early in the shopping process to avoid losing customers.
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The Paradox of Intelligent Assistants: Poor Usability, High Adoption
Frequent users of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant report attempting low-complexity tasks such as simple fact retrievals, weather forecast, navigation, playing music, setting timers.
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What is a Mental Model?
What users *think* they know about your system will determine how they interact with the design. Understand users' mental models to design something that'll work well in practice.
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Why is UX so Difficult?
UX practitioners who feel inept at their job usually face far greater challenges than improving their design, craft or research prowess. Rather, addressing development schedules, Agile, Scrum, Lean, and team member’s roles can create the greatest challenges.
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Apps Within Apps: UX Lessons from WeChat Mini Programs
Our user studies in China found that embedded-app designers must consider the context of use, the core functionality of the parent platform, and how the programs will be used.
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Signal–to–Noise Ratio
Relevant information is “signal,” while irrelevant information is “noise”. A high signal–to–noise ratio is a key outcome for any UX professional’s work, in terms of both content and page design.
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Decorative Images: Delightful or Dreadful?
Images are content, and different types of images serve different purposes. Decorative images have a role in establishing tone and emotional appeal, but they must not interfere with a user’s ability to accomplish a task.
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Open vs. Closed Card Sorting
There are two types of card sorting, which measure different aspects of users' mental models for information architecture.
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Mobile Login Methods Help Chinese Users Avoid Password Roadblocks
In China, QR-code scanning and verification codes are popular mobile-login alternatives that circumvent the problem of remembering and typing passwords.
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Quantitative UX Research in Practice
Across 429 UX professionals, 71% of teams report performing some kind of quant UX research at least sometimes, and almost everyone reported struggling with challenges to get quant research done.
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10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are broad rules of thumb and not specific usability guidelines.
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When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods
Modern day UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. To know when to use which method, each of 20 methods is mapped across 3 dimensions and over time within a typical product-development process.
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Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
What is usability? How, when, and where to improve it? Why should you care? Overview answers basic questions + how to run fast user tests.
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Flat UI Elements Attract Less Attention and Cause Uncertainty
Flat interfaces often use weak signifiers. In an eyetracking experiment comparing different kinds of clickability clues, UIs with weak signifiers required more user effort than strong ones.
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F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content (original study)
Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
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Design Thinking 101
What is design thinking and why should you care? History and background plus a quick overview and visualization of 6 phases of the design thinking process. Approaching problem solving with a hands-on, user-centric mindset leads to innovation, and innovation can lead to differentiation and a competitive advantage.
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10 Best Intranets of 2017
The winners of our 16th Intranet Design Annual came from diverse industries and relied on a combination of internal resources and external intranet help.
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The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.
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UX Research Cheat Sheet
User research can be done at any point in the design cycle. This list of methods and activities can help you decide which to use when.
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When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps
Journey maps combine two powerful instruments—storytelling and visualization—in order to help teams understand and address customer needs.
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Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users
Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.
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Design a Brilliant SharePoint Intranet
SharePoint requires install plus in-depth UX design and development. Forge strong relationship with SharePoint UX designers and developers for successful intranets. And take advice from winning teams who have made SharePoint an effective enterprise tool.
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The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques
Modal ads, ads that reorganize content, and autoplaying video ads were among the most disliked. Ads that are annoying on desktop become intolerable on mobile.
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UX Mapping Methods Compared: A Cheat Sheet
Empathy maps, customer journey maps, experience maps, and service blueprints depict different processes and have different goals, yet they all build common ground within an organization.
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Website Forms Usability: Top 10 Recommendations
Follow these well-established — but frequently ignored — UX design guidelines to ensure users can successfully complete your website forms.
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Mega Menus Work Well for Site Navigation
A mega menu (a big, 2-dimensional drop-down panel) groups navigation options to eliminate scrolling and use typography, icons, and tooltips to explain users' choices.
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How Users Read on the Web
Users don't read Web pages, they scan. Highlighting and concise writing improved measured usability 47-58%. Marketese imposed a cognitive burden on users and was disliked.
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Placeholders in Form Fields Are Harmful
Labels or sample text inside a form field makes it difficult for people to remember what information belongs in that field once they start data entry.
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Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design
The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.
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Hamburger Menus and Hidden Navigation Hurt UX Metrics
Discoverability is cut almost in half by hiding a website’s main navigation. Also, task time is longer and perceived task difficulty increases.
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What is a Mental Model?
What users *think* they know about your system will determine how they interact with the design. Understand users' mental models to design something that'll work well in practice.
-
Why is UX so Difficult?
UX practitioners who feel inept at their job usually face far greater challenges than improving their design, craft or research prowess. Rather, addressing development schedules, Agile, Scrum, Lean, and team member’s roles can create the greatest challenges.
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Decorative Images: Delightful or Dreadful?
Images are content, and different types of images serve different purposes. Decorative images have a role in establishing tone and emotional appeal, but they must not interfere with a user’s ability to accomplish a task.
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Open vs. Closed Card Sorting
There are two types of card sorting, which measure different aspects of users' mental models for information architecture.
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Design Systems and Their Benefits
Go beyond a brand or UX style guides to create engaging, consistent user interfaces. At the same time, fit design activities within in short development cycles, spending the least possible development time and money.
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Peak–End Rule: Use to Your Advantage
Users largely judge their experience with your product or service on two data points: the peak and the end.
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Clarifying the UX Role for Your Team
Tips to help clarify the role of UX and how to navigate the relationship dynamics between UX and the rest of the team within an Agile development process.
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How to Setup a Desktop Usability Test
There are a lot of elements involved in usability studies with a desktop computer. In this video, we'll walk you through an example test setup, including the necessary equipment, and discuss how to prepare for a test.
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Beating Creative Blocks in UX Design Through Reframing
A method for getting unstuck from a design challenge. By reframing the problem, you can find inspiration in unexpected places.
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How to Do User Research Within Constraints
There will always be constraints that we have to work in, whether it's not having enough time or not having dedicated researchers on our UX projects. This video offers tips on how to do user research without feeling stuck.
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