Articles & Videos

  • Card Sorting: Uncover Users' Mental Models for Better Information Architecture

    In a card-sorting study, users organize topics into groups. Use this research method to create an information architecture that suits your users' expectations.

  • Response Outlining with Generative-AI Chatbots

    Users add specificity to their prompts by outlining the structure of the desired response.

  • Power Law of Learning: How to Launch New Designs Successfully

    Time on task decreases with the number of times the task has been performed in the past. As a result, a new version of an app translates into a temporary productivity loss for its users.

  • Product-Led Growth & UX

    The product-led growth model enables users to try a product or service before paying. This video offers three tips for UX professionals to support a product-led user experience: Connect changes to metrics, interview/survey users, and compare behavior and feedback.

  • Mental Models

    What users believe they know about a user interface impacts how they use it. Mismatched mental models are common, especially with designs that try something new.

  • Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions in User Research

    Open-ended questions result in deeper insights. Closed questions provide clarification and detail, but no unexpected insights.

  • UX Resumes for Students and Graduates: Guidelines and Tips

    Sometimes UX students and graduates struggle to create their resumes. Learn which content to prioritize and how to convey it to persuade UX hiring managers and successfully start your UX career.

  • UX Prototyping: 5 Factors for Selecting the Right Tool

    Choosing the right prototyping tool can be difficult among the many options available. There are 5 key factors to consider when selecting the best fit for your project or team: project type and goals, cost, tool capabilities, learnability and ease of use, and stakeholder buy-in.

  • Intranet Usability Guidelines: New Findings From 57 Intranets

    Updated intranet guidelines feature enhanced content practices by teams, refined search design to meet elevated expectations, task-oriented navigation, and standardized design elements for visual consistency.

  • Tree Testing Part 2: Interpreting the Results

    Analyze tree-testing results including success, first click, and directness to improve information architecture and navigation labels.

  • 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 for UX and not specific usability guidelines.

  • Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking

    Visualizing user attitudes and behaviors in an empathy map helps UX teams align on a deep understanding of end users. The mapping process also reveals any holes in existing user data.

  • 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.

  • Service Blueprints: Definition

    Service blueprints visualize organizational processes in order to optimize how a business delivers a user experience.

  • Journey Mapping 101

    A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal.

  • The Four Dimensions of Tone of Voice

    A website’s tone of voice communicates how an organization feels about its message. The tone of any piece of content can be analyzed along 4 dimensions: humor, formality, respectfulness, and enthusiasm.

  • Between-Subjects vs. Within-Subjects Study Design

    In user research, between-groups designs reduce learning effects; repeated-measures designs require fewer participants and minimize the random noise.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Usability Testing 101

    UX researchers use this popular observational methodology to uncover problems and opportunities in designs.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The 6 Levels of UX Maturity

    Our UX-maturity model has 6 stages that cover processes, design, research, leadership support, and longevity of UX. Use our quiz to get an idea of your organization’s UX maturity.

  • 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.

  • Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes

    Application usability is enhanced when the UI guides and supports users through the workflow.

  • User Interviews: How, When, and Why to Conduct Them

    User interviews have become a popular technique for getting user feedback, mainly because they are fast and easy. Use them to learn about users’ perceptions of your design, not about its usability.

  • F-Shaped Pattern of Reading on the Web: Misunderstood, But Still Relevant (Even on Mobile)

    Eyetracking research shows that people scan webpages and phone screens in various patterns, one of them being the shape of the letter F. Eleven years after discovering this pattern, we revisit what it means today.

  • Checkboxes vs. Radio Buttons

    User interface guidelines for when to use a checkbox control and when to use a radio button control. Twelve usability issues for checkboxes and radio buttons.

  • User-Experience Quiz: 2020 UX Year in Review

    Test your usability knowledge by taking our quiz. All questions and answers are based on articles published last year.

  • Power Law of Learning: How to Launch New Designs Successfully

    Time on task decreases with the number of times the task has been performed in the past. As a result, a new version of an app translates into a temporary productivity loss for its users.

  • Product-Led Growth & UX

    The product-led growth model enables users to try a product or service before paying. This video offers three tips for UX professionals to support a product-led user experience: Connect changes to metrics, interview/survey users, and compare behavior and feedback.

  • UX Resumes for Students and Graduates: Guidelines and Tips

    Sometimes UX students and graduates struggle to create their resumes. Learn which content to prioritize and how to convey it to persuade UX hiring managers and successfully start your UX career.

  • UX Prototyping: 5 Factors for Selecting the Right Tool

    Choosing the right prototyping tool can be difficult among the many options available. There are 5 key factors to consider when selecting the best fit for your project or team: project type and goals, cost, tool capabilities, learnability and ease of use, and stakeholder buy-in.

  • STEEPLE: Building Contextual Knowledge

    STEEPLE is an acronym to help teams identify specific categories of external, contextual factors that may impact the success of your product or service. Being conscious of these factors can ensure your team reduces risks in future design strategies or investments.

  • Accordions: 5 Scenarios to Avoid Them

    Avoid using accordions when: 1. Users need access to most content; 2. There's little visible content on the page; 3. Content is complex with multiple levels; 4. Content can't be effectively chunked; 5. An uninterrupted reading flow is prioritized.

  • Common Errors in Quantitative Research

    False positives and negatives are common errors in quantitative studies that can lead to harmful business decisions. To avoid these mistakes recruit large enough sample sizes, representative participants, and control for confounding variables.

  • AI on Intranets: 5 Valuable Features

    NN/g’s 2023 Intranet Design Annual winners used AI for chatbots, tool recommendations, career guides, virtual assistants, and personalized communications to boost productivity.

  • Accessibility Widgets Are Not Enough for Screen-Reader Users

    Website accessibility widgets add little value in making your site accessible to users with partial or no vision.

  • UX Portfolio Updates: A New Year's Resolution

    Is your UX portfolio woefully outdated? Use this simple technique every new year to capture your important achievements and make the task more manageable.

  • Card Sorting: Uncover Users' Mental Models for Better Information Architecture

    In a card-sorting study, users organize topics into groups. Use this research method to create an information architecture that suits your users' expectations.

  • Response Outlining with Generative-AI Chatbots

    Users add specificity to their prompts by outlining the structure of the desired response.

  • Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions in User Research

    Open-ended questions result in deeper insights. Closed questions provide clarification and detail, but no unexpected insights.

  • Mental Models

    What users believe they know about a user interface impacts how they use it. Mismatched mental models are common, especially with designs that try something new.

  • Intranet Usability Guidelines: New Findings From 57 Intranets

    Updated intranet guidelines feature enhanced content practices by teams, refined search design to meet elevated expectations, task-oriented navigation, and standardized design elements for visual consistency.

  • Tree Testing Part 2: Interpreting the Results

    Analyze tree-testing results including success, first click, and directness to improve information architecture and navigation labels.

  • Indicators, Validations, and Notifications: Pick the Correct Communication Option

    Status feedback is crucial to the success of any system. Knowing when to use 3 common communication methods is key to supporting users.

  • Memory Recognition and Recall in User Interfaces

    Recalling items from scratch is harder than recognizing the correct option in a list of choices because the extra context helps users retrieve information from memory.

  • Field Studies

    Field research is conducted in the user’s natural setting. Learn the unexpected by leaving the office and observing people in their normal environments.

  • Sycophancy in Generative-AI Chatbots

    Large language models like ChatGPT can lie to elicit approval from users. This phenomenon, called sycophancy, can be detected in state-of-the-art models.