Any type of innovation requires users to learn the new pattern. It's worth departing from convention only if you are sure that the new pattern will perform better than what is already available.
Altering the normal pace or direction of scrolling can contradict user expectations, control, and freedom. If businesses adopt the pattern, they can minimize usability risks by weighing it against functional value, cognitive load, and user efficiency.
A cognitive walkthrough is a task-based usability-inspection technique used to evaluate the learnability of a system from the perspective of a new user.
Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about ethnographic research methods like field studies and diary studies.
Accordions simplify long pages, but reduce visibility and increase interaction cost. Use them on content-heavy pages where users don't need to combine information across sections.
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.
