Articles & Videos

  • Designers Are Not Users

    Professional designers are very different from mainstream users who will use your product in unexpected ways.

  • Are Chinese Websites Too Complex?

    Testing finds that Chinese and Western users experience the same difficulties with complex sites, but Chinese tend to complain less about complexity and prefer fairly high information density.

  • Cards: UI-Component Definition

    A “card” is a UI design pattern that groups related information in a flexible-size container visually resembling a playing card.

  • B2B vs. B2C Websites

    Learn about the key differences between B2B and B2C websites, and the two crucial types of users that business-to-business websites must consider.

  • Top 10 Enduring Web-Design Mistakes

    A large-scale usability study revealed the most common and damaging web-design mistakes of today. They aren't surprising or new - they're enduring issues that continue to hurt website usability.

  • The Power Law of Learning: Consistency vs. Innovation in User Interfaces

    Across many tasks, learning curves show an initial learning period, followed by a plateau of optimal efficiency.

  • Observer Guidelines for Usability Research

    Let stakeholders help gather data during user research sessions. Customize this handout for observers to fit your situation.

  • The UX Intern

    Jakob Nielsen interviews our UX intern, Yunnuo Cheng, at the UX Conference in Atlanta about her internship experience with Nielsen Norman Group. Yunnuo "Yuno" Cheng (程云诺) conducted user research on both broad issues in web usability and on emerging interaction styles such as conversational user interfaces.

  • Design Critiques: Encourage a Positive Culture to Improve Products

    Open feedback is essential for a collaborative UX process.

  • The Negativity Bias in User Experience

    People remember the bad more than the good. Users’ tendency to identify flaws in designs raises the bar for what they consider acceptable.

  • 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.