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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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • Why You Need a Home Link

      Websites which provide a "home" link on every page make it easy for new visitors and users who are lost to get oriented.

    • Contextual Inquiry: Leave Your Office to Find Design Ideas

      Field studies observe how people interact with interfaces in their own environment. Real-world contexts reveal behaviors for which you might not be aware.

    • Ideation Techniques for a One-Person UX Team

      Even a lone UX wolf can ideate design options, and structured ideation techniques help you explore the design space.

    • The Word "Validate" Undermines UX Effectiveness

      Our words define UX research goals for users, stakeholders, and teams. Turning UX research into improved design is already challenging. Why make it more so by setting unsuitable expectations with the words we use to describe research?

    • Creating Personas Is Like Sorting Rocks

      Analyzing data to identify meaningful segments of users is the most difficult part of persona creation. In this video we'll discuss how to look for similarities in various attributes using something much more straightforward than people: rocks!

    • Usability in the Physical World vs. on the Web

      In the real world, you can get away with causing customers a small amount of difficulty, but on a website, visitors will leave at the smallest obstacle.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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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