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 maps help UX teams visualize user attitudes and behaviors, building a shared understanding of end users while highlighting gaps in existing user data.
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.
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.
User journeys and user flows both describe processes users go through in order to accomplish their goals, but they differ in scope, purpose, and format.
iOS 26’s visual language obscures content instead of letting it take the spotlight. New (but not always better) design patterns replace established conventions.
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.
In a card-sorting study, users organize topics into groups. Use this research method to create an information architecture that suits your users' expectations.
Common conclusions about Yahoo, Wall St. Journal, Disney, The WELL, and Amazon.com are wrong: generalizing Web trends from popular examples featured in the press is dangerous; spectacular case studies are often outliers.
The telephone is a better metaphor than television for thinking about the Web and its potential: the Web is a 1-to-1, narrowcast, low bandwidth medium that is user-driven and where everybody can publish content.
Designing for the Web is different from traditional user interface design. Fundamentally, the designer gives up a lot of control to the user - get used to it: WYSIWYG is dead
How much better is it to be a *big* website? Large sites can use their own hyperlinks to drive even more traffic, but small sites generate more value through focused content and microtransactions. (Updated 2005.)
Examples from tech support calls show the immense difficulties novice users have in using the Internet: be prepared if you field apps intended for broad usage.
Reading from screens is 25% slower than from paper and we know that Web users skim rather than read. Web text should be short, emphasize scannability, and be structured into multiple hyperlinked pages (each focused on a subtopic).
All usability studies show that fast response times are essential for Web usability: let's believe the data for once! Advice for speeding up sites despite the fact that bandwidth is going down, not up.
Comparing the nature of the Web as a medium when accessed through television sets and when accessed through computers, concluding that the level of user engagement is a main differentiator
Studies of how users read on the Web found that they do not actually read: instead, they scan the text. A study of five different writing styles found that a sample Web site scored 58% higher in measured usability when it was written concisely, 47% higher when the text was scannable, and 27% higher when it was written in an objective style instead of the promotional style used in the control condition and many current Web pages. Combining these three changes into a single site that was concise, scannable, and objective at the same time resulted in 124% higher measured usability.