Whether modal or not, most overlays appear at the wrong time, interrupt users during critical tasks, use poor language, and contribute to user disorientation.
Digital products are competing for users’ limited attention. The modern economy increasingly revolves around the human attention span and how products capture that attention.
Pursuing a "minimum viable product" (MVP) as a design strategy may work for startups, but usually leads to poorly integrated user experience for established design team working in traditional product categories.
Dropdowns, hierarchical menus, sliders, or scroll bars involve steering a pointer or a cursor through a tunnel; optimal design for these GUI elements should consider the Steering Law.
In addition to a site-wide store-locator link, location-finder links in key areas anticipate users’ needs and make it easy to find a physical location within the context of their task.
Inclusive design is a philosophy that redefines what it means to be human-centered. To design inclusively, designers need to respect and represent many different perspectives.
Simplicity depends on the capacity of the information channel and what's simple for one device, can be primitive or intricate for another, since screens are information channels with a limited capacity. When you're designing for multiple devices, don't go by common cliches like "simple is good."
Striking trends from this years’ Intranet Design Annual include user-targeted search, core task support, launch fanfare, and integrated access to key tools.
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.
