Behavior Patterns Articles & Videos

  • How AI Literacy Shapes GenAI Use

    Using generative AI often doesn’t mean using it well. AI literacy requires both prompt fluency and the ability to assess outputs.

  • How AI Works and How Users Think About It: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about how artificial intelligence works, and how users think about it.

  • 7 Deadly AI Sins for UX Professionals

    Succumbing to AI temptations weakens your UX skills. Strive for the AI virtues to keep yourself strong as you use AI in your work.

  • The Hamburger-Menu Icon Today: Is it Recognizable?

    Hamburger menus are a more familiar pattern today than 10 years ago, but the same old best practices for hidden navigation still apply.

  • Designing for Serial Task Switching

    Serial task switching, or rapidly shifting attention between tasks, is a natural user behavior that lowers productivity and increases stress and the chance of errors.

  • Clean the Sludge from Decision-Making Workflows

    Help users make choices they’ll be satisfied with to boost satisfaction and retention by simplifying decision-making workflows.

  • Response Outlining with Generative-AI Chatbots

    Users add specificity to their prompts by outlining the structure of the desired response.

  • Psychology for UX: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about principles of human psychology and how they relate to UX design.

  • The 4 Degrees of Anthropomorphism of Generative AI

    Users attribute human-like qualities to chatbots, anthropomorphizing the AI in four distinct ways — from basic courtesy to seeing AI as companions.

  • Accordion Editing and Apple Picking: Early Generative-AI User Behaviors

    Two new user behaviors are prevalent in interactions with text-based AI chatbots. User research shows the iterative and often complex ways users engage with AI tools for productivity.

  • The Hawthorne Effect or Observer Bias in User Research

    Individuals often modify their behavior if they know they are being observed. That phenomenon became known as the Hawthorne effect or the observer bias. We can mitigate this effect by building rapport, designing natural tasks, and spending more time with study participants.

  • 10 Survey Challenges and How to Avoid Them

    Response biases make it difficult to create good surveys. Follow these tips to counteract 10 of the major survey response biases and improve your survey data.

  • The Context CUEs Framework in Field Studies

    Context CUEs framework is rooted in distributed cognition theory and guides in-depth observations of users’ physical and social settings.

  • Enriched Site-Search Suggestions: Rarely Used

    Enriched search suggestions are expanded content recommendations related to a user’s search query on a website. While they can be useful, they are rarely utilized due to a range of implementation issues.

  • Three Methods to Increase User Autonomy in UX Design

    Designers should help people use interfaces in ways that align with personal preferences and priorities.

  • Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence in UX Design

    Addressing these 3 fundamental psychological needs in our products increases user motivation and well-being. Users will be more engaged and more likely to use our designs.

  • Dangerous UX: Consequential Options Close to Benign Options

    Confirmatory and destructive actions should be far apart from each other; use additional redundant visual signals to differentiate between them and avoid user errors.

  • Compensatory vs Noncompensatory: 2 Decision-Making Strategies

    Ease users’ purchase decisions by designing interfaces that support both compensatory and noncompensatory decision-making strategies.

  • COVID-19 Has Changed Your Users

    People’s behaviors and preferences have shifted. Research will help you figure out how your users have changed and how your designs need to adapt.

  • Different Information-Seeking Tasks: Behavior Patterns and User Expectations

    Fact-finding tasks were less memorable, while complex research-based tasks required more effort from users. Top user expectations for each task type varied.