Users don't work hard enough to discover how to use your design in the intended manner. Bad user! But really, they're just prioritizing their own time and interests and behaving the way evolution made people.
Members of a design team will often argue for different solutions to a UI problem. That's when to say "show me the data" to resolve the debate by empirical insights, rather than who argues the best.
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.
Directed user research where you ask people closed-end questions can bias the outcome in favor of those things that are being asked about. Unguided studies are often better at revealing true user preferences.
People react user experience at 3 levels of emotional processing, as defined by Don Norman: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Understanding these different levels is important for better UX design.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to preferentially seek out or believe data that confirms your expectations. For example, thinking that one part of the UI is well designed and another is bad, might you give more weight to observations of usability test participants having trouble with that second feature.
Humans have a deep need for autonomy, relatedness, and competency in their life. Catering to these needs in UX design can drastically increase user satisfaction.
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.
The reciprocity principle states that people, when given something upfront, tend to feel a sense of obligation to repay what has been provided. Login walls reverse this sequence and require users to disclose personal info before allowing access to content. People often resent this, and may not be as forthcoming or cooperative as a result.
It's frustrating for users to go back-and-forth and back-and-forth to the same web page, bouncing around without getting what they need. Analytics data can help identify pages that don't help users progress.
When users search for information, they don't always keep looking for the best solution. In our eyetracking studies 20% of the time, users make do with the first result and don't look any further.
Confirmatory and destructive actions should be far apart from each other; use additional redundant visual signals to differentiate between them and avoid user errors.
Extensive user research with people shopping online identified 5 main types of behavior: product-focused, browsing, researchers, bargain-hunters, and one-time shoppers. Each user type benefits from different UX elements.
We studied the most important activities users perform on the internet, repeating an old classic study. Users' most critical behaviors have shifted substantially over 22 years, due to more information available online and the constant presence of mobile devices.
