Kara Pernice is President and CEO of Nielsen Norman Group. She began pioneering UX in the early 1990's, and now uses her vast experience to lead NN/g in its next exciting phase.
Task scenarios are core to usability studies. The way researchers write tasks can bias usability results by influencing where people focus their attention.
Related links are often chunked as a set, each with an icon. One bad icon hurts user interaction. A set of bad icons is worse because it amplifies confusion, adds clutter, and wastes screen real estate.
Eyetracking research shows that people scan webpages and phone screens in various patterns, one of them being the shape of the letter F. Eleven years after discovering this pattern, we revisit what it means today.
The phrase “validate the design” discourages teams from finding and following up on UX issues in user testing. UX research must drive design change, not just pat designers on the back.
Eyetracking research shows people read Web content in the F-pattern. The results highlight the importance of following guidelines for writing for the Web.
Even a talking-head video can keep people engaged. Take advantage of residual fixations upon scene changes; vary the facial expression, subject position, and even camera angle to reawaken the user’s attention.
