People often overlook new visual details added to an existing image. This affects the usability of many design elements, from error messages to navigation.
When users get 0 search results, there’s a high risk of site abandonment. Better design can turn this UX disaster into an opportunity for content discovery.
Users aged 65 and older are 43% slower at using websites than users aged 21–55. This is an improvement over previous studies, but designs must change to better accommodate aging users.
Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures.
6% of task attempts are extremely slow and constitute outliers in measured user performance. These sad incidents are caused by bad luck that designers can - and should - eradicate.
In addition to being expensive, collecting usability metrics interferes with the goal of gathering qualitative insights to drive design decisions. As a compromise, you can measure users' ability to complete tasks. Success rates are easy to understand and represent the UX bottom line.
Examples from tech support calls show the immense difficulties novice users have in using the Internet: be prepared if you field apps intended for broad usage.
