Articles & Videos

  • Kinect Gestural UI: First Impressions

    Inconsistent gestures, invisible commands, overlooked warnings, awkward dialog confirmations. But fun to play.

  • College Students on the Web

    Students use websites and social media extensively to complete various different tasks. They are multitaskers who appreciate simple, easy-to-use websites and products.

  • E-Mail Newsletters: Increasing Usability

    New research finds improved usability metrics for subscribing to newsletters, but problems with reading them on mobile devices.

  • Mega Menus Gone Wrong

    Big 2-D drop-downs can facilitate site navigation – if they're properly designed. Two examples illustrate some mega menu usability pitfalls.

  • Photos as Web Content

    Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to "jazz up" web pages.

  • Alphabetical Sorting Must (Mostly) Die

    Ordinal sequences, logical structuring, time lines, or prioritization by importance or frequency are usually better than A-Z listings for presenting options to users.

  • Inclusive Design: Part 2 (at asktog.com)

    In Part One, I argued that accessibility should not focus just on the needs of the profoundly disabled, that well-crafted solutions can be of service to all. This new approach is called, “inclusive design” and it starts with organization.

  • Should You Copy a Famous Site's Design?

    Although successful websites typically have high usability, average sites can hurt their business by copying design elements that don't work well in other contexts.

  • Corporate Blogs: Front Page Structure

    Showing summaries of many articles is more likely to draw in users than providing full articles, which can quickly exhaust reader interest.

  • Interviewing Users

    Despite many weaknesses, interviews are a valuable method for exploratory user research.

  • 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.