Articles & Videos

  • Mask Interaction Delays with Progress Indicators

    In case of slow response times in a user interface, indicate that the wait time will soon be over by showing an animation. For longer delays use a percent-done indicator.

  • Similarity Principle in Visual Design

    Design elements that appear similar in some way — sharing the same color, shape, or size — are perceived as related, while elements that appear dissimilar are perceived as belonging to separate groups.

  • Three Myths About Calculating the ROI of UX

    Many teams overthink return-on-investment calculations for UX work. Treat these calculations as a way to estimate the strategic value of design.

  • Complex Apps 101

    3 tips for designing applications for experts or specialized user groups doing complex domain-specific tasks (often with nonlinear workflows).

  • UX Must Revolutionize Education

    Jakob Nielsen discusses how to use UX to improve education, including of UX professionals, but more important for life-long learners.

  • COVID-19 Has Changed Your Users

    People’s behaviors and preferences have shifted. Research will help you figure out how your users have changed and how your designs need to adapt.

  • Virtual Tours: High Interaction Cost, Moderate Usefulness

    Virtual tours are an occasionally useful secondary tool for checking on specific details, but most users find them to be high effort, slow, and of limited value.

  • Alternatives to Low-Contrast Text

    If the foreground color (the actual words) is too similar to the background color, legibility suffers, and users can't read your copy. Simple tweaks make websites much easier to read.

  • UX Practitioners Adjusting to Post-Pandemic World

    The field of user experience must adjust to the challenges (and associated opportunities) created by the pandemic and the way the world economy is changing.

  • Accordion Icons: Which Signifiers Work Best?

    The caret icon most clearly indicated to users that it would open an accordion in place, rather than linking directly to a new page.

  • 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

    Empathy maps help UX teams visualize user attitudes and behaviors, building a shared understanding of end users while highlighting gaps in existing user data.

  • Journey Mapping 101

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

  • How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

    Step-by-step instructions to review your product to find potential usability and experience problems. Download a free heuristic evaluation template.

  • 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.

  • Design Thinking 101

    Design thinking is a user-centered process that helps teams understand needs, generate ideas, test solutions, and drive innovation.

  • Usability (User) Testing 101

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

  • 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.

  • Usability 101: Introduction to Usability

    Usability makes designs easy, efficient, and satisfying to use. Improve it through early, repeated user testing with real users

  • User Journeys vs. User Flows

    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.

  • Affinity Diagramming for Collaboratively Sorting UX Findings and Design Ideas

    Use affinity diagramming to cluster and organize research findings or to sort design ideas in ideation workshops.

  • 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.

  • Using “How Might We” Questions to Ideate on the Right Problems

    Constructing how-might-we questions generates creative solutions while keeping teams focused on the right problems to solve.

  • Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

    iOS 26’s visual language obscures content instead of letting it take the spotlight. New (but not always better) design patterns replace established conventions.

  • User-Interface Elements: Glossary

    Use this glossary to quickly clarify definitions for key graphical user-interface elements and controls.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The Definition of User Experience (UX)

    "User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products.