Interaction Design Articles & Videos

  • Timing Guidelines for Exposing Hidden Content

    Events triggered via hover or click require distinct timing to avoid accidental activations and ensure that the user feels in control of the interface.

  • Beware Horizontal Scrolling and Mimicking Swipe on Desktop

    Even as more sites mimic swiping gestures and incorporate horizontal scrolling in desktop designs, users remain reluctant to move sideways through content.

  • First Principles of Interaction Design (Revised & Expanded)

    Basic principles are fundamental to the design and implementation of effective interfaces, whether for traditional GUI environments, the web, mobile devices, wearables, or Internet-connected smart devices.

  • Interaction Cost

    Interaction cost is the effort users spend to achieve their goals on a site or app.

  • Suggested Readings From Design of Everyday Things, Revised edition (at jnd.org)

    Don Norman's list of general books for interaction design from the 2013 revision and expansion of the book "Design of Everyday Things."

  • Providing Predictable Targets (at asktog.com)

    Predictable Target should appear high on your list of mandatory rules, only to be violated when it can be proven that another consideration, in a particular circumstance, will result in even greater productivity.

  • Browse vs. Search: Which Deserves to Go? (at asktog.com)

    A reader asks for advice: "Why on earth we seem to want to browse or scroll long lists to find something when typing into a search box is so much more efficient?"

  • Parallel & Iterative Design + Competitive Testing = High Usability

    3 methods for increasing UX quality by exploring and testing diverse design ideas work even better when you use them together.

  • How to Achieve Painless Registration (at asktog.com)

    I'm about to give you a number of ways to increase sales on ecommerce sites and increase sign-ups on service sites, but first, raise your hand if you personally, when surfing the web, enjoy registering to use a site.

  • Restoring Spring to iPhone/iPod Touch Springboard (at asktog.com)

    The killer app for the iPhone/iPod Touch is the App Store. 85,000+ apps have been written and, via the App Store, 2 billion copies of those apps have been downloaded. Apple gets 30% of the revenue; the developers, 70%. Everyone has been making a lot of money.

  • Apple's Flatland Aesthetic, Part 1: The Mac (at asktog.com)

    Appleland is becoming progressively flatter and, at the same time, less usable. Properly-designed interfaces scale, so that they support the new user as well as the expert.

  • Slashing Subjective Time (at asktog.com)

    The typical web experience is a series of slow, stuttering steps, punctuated by moments of utter boredom. We can do better, and we can do it without faster processors, servers, or networks. How? By taking advantage of subjective time.

  • Progressive Disclosure

    Progressive disclosure defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone.

  • Checkboxes vs. Radio Buttons

    User interface guidelines for when to use a checkbox control and when to use a radio button control. Twelve usability issues for checkboxes and radio buttons.

  • Improving System Usability Through Parallel Design

    In parallel design multiple designers independently of each other design suggest user interfaces. These interfaces are then merged to a unified design. In a case study, measured usability from version 1 to version 2 was improved by 18% when using traditional iterative design and by 70% when using parallel design.

  • Iterative User Interface Design

    In 4 case studies, the median usability improvement was 165% from the first to the last iteration, and the median improvement per iteration was 38%. Iterating through at least 3 versions of a UI design is recommended, since some usability metrics may decrease in some versions if a redesign has focused on improving other parameters.