Three stereotypes explain much resistance to improving the usability of complex applications for domain-specific tasks: that people like the old ways, that they are experts in the existing UI, and that training will make up for bad design. All are misleading.
With repeated practice, users develop imprecise memory of objects and content in a UI, but still need additional visual and textual signals to help them find a specific item.
Depending on how much your team can spend, your team might want to use tablets, document cameras, smartphones, or your computers’ webcams to share sketches.
Sometimes you should intentionally overrecruit test participants for one-on-one user-research studies. Backup participants must be recruited according to the same screening criteria and paid at least as much as regular participants.
Demanding that users create a new account before they are able to access a website or mobile app is only justified in rare cases. Usually, people go away, rather than scale a wall placed between them and your offerings.
At the Virtual UX Conference, Jakob Nielsen was asked whether it's best for a UX professional's career to seek a management role or to pursue deeper and stronger levels of expertise.
A content inventory and audit are two important activities to complete before developing a strategy to improve your digital content. Conduct them together to set your content up for success.
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.
