Interaction Design Articles & Videos

  • Overcoming the Articulation Barrier in Generative AI Using Hybrid Interfaces

    Hybrid user interfaces that combine prompt-based inputs with a graphical user interface (GUI) can make AI image-generation tools more usable by reducing users’ cognitive load and improving discoverability.

  • Scrolljacking 101

    Altering the normal pace or direction of scrolling can contradict user expectations, control, and freedom. If businesses adopt the pattern, they can minimize usability risks by weighing it against functional value, cognitive load, and user efficiency.

  • Accordions on Desktop: When and How to Use

    Accordions simplify long pages, but reduce visibility and increase interaction cost. Use them on content-heavy pages where users don't need to combine information across sections.

  • Virtual Queues: 13 Best Practices for Managing the Wait

    Well-designed virtual queues help manage the wait to free up users to do other things.

  • Prototype Specifications: 3 Types

    Element, functionality, and content are three types of prototype specifications that help us document design details that are otherwise easily overlooked.

  • Onboarding Tutorials vs. Contextual Help

    Tutorials interrupt users, don’t necessarily improve task performance, and are quickly forgotten. Contextual help signals can avoid these pitfalls but require unintrusive ways to activate.

  • Mobile UX: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn how to write and present information that aligns with users’ needs and online behaviors.

  • 5 Tips for Augmented Reality Calibration

    Before users can use an AR app, they must often calibrate it first. Usability studies find many big problems in calibration designs that can prevent people from ever getting into the actual AR experience.

  • Hostile Patterns in Error Messages

    Premature error messages, aggressively styled fields, and unnecessarily disruptive system-status messages feel bad-mannered and increase cognitive load for users during otherwise simple tasks.

  • Augmented-Reality Calibration in Mobile Apps: 10 Guidelines

    Instructions for calibration should be clear, high-contrast, descriptive, and augmented with unambiguous visual examples. Users should be given explicit feedback about the results of their actions and about the progress of the calibration.

  • Use Good Prototype Specifications to Empower Team Collaboration

    Three types of prototype specifications help explain how a design looks and is implemented. Clear prototype specifications empower team collaboration and lower communication costs.

  • 3 Ways to Level Up Your Visual Design Skills

    Designers, researchers, and generalists alike can improve their visual design skills through creative exercises focused on identification, replication, or exploration.

  • The Aesthetic Usability Effect and Prioritizing Appearance vs. Functionality

    Users believe that designs that look good also work well, and UX should take advantage of this. But don't make aesthetic usability lead you astray as a designer, because the UI must actually work well for long-term success.

  • Designing Empty States in Complex Applications: 3 Guidelines

    Empty states provide opportunities for designers to communicate system status, increase learnability of the system, and deliver direct pathways for key tasks. This article provides guidance for designing empty-state dialogues for content-less containers.

  • Using Fitts's Law to Make Links and Buttons Easier to Click

    Fitts's Law describes how long time it takes to click a target, based on the distance to the target and its size. Use this information to make buttons and links faster to click.

  • 3 Ways to Onboard New Users

    How to familiarize users with new user interfaces? Onboarding techniques include feature promotion, customization, and instructions. All must be kept simple.

  • UI Modes and Modals

    Modes can be a hidden state and lead to user errors. But they can also make a user interface more efficient by allowing the same action to have different results, depending on the situation.

  • Direct Manipulation in User Interfaces

    Direct manipulation is an interaction technique in graphical user interfaces where users move depictions of objects around and get immediate feedback about their actions and the outcome of these actions.

  • UX vs. UI

    User experience and user interface are highly related. Both are important, but what's the difference between UX and UI? (Often confused!)

  • Sticky Headers: 5 Ways to Make Them Better

    Persistent headers can be useful to users if they are unobtrusive, high-contrast, minimally animated, and fit user needs.