layout Articles & Videos

  • Validate Your Visual Design: 6 Methods

    Test your site’s visual design using these 6 methods: 5-second test, first-click test, preference testing, visual design questions after usability testing, eyetracking, and A/B testing.

  • Visual Design Principles in Action

    Use the 5 key visual design principles—scale, hierarchy, balance, contrast, and Gestalt principles—to objectively critique and improve designs.

  • Card View vs. List View

    List view allows for easy sorting and is space efficient, while card view is visually engaging and creates effective groupings.

  • 6 Types of Useful Smartwatch Interactions

    Smartwatches are for more than just receiving notifications and tracking steps. They afford at least 6 different types of interactions that users find useful.

  • Using Imagery in Visual Design

    When choosing images for your visual designs, match similar characteristics, balance high quality with adequate file size, prioritize information-carrying images over purely decorative ones, and provide robust alternative text.

  • Using Grids in Interface Designs

    Grids help designers create cohesive layouts, allowing end users to easily scan and use interfaces. A good grid adapts to various screen sizes and orientations, ensuring consistency across platforms.

  • Text Scanning Patterns: Eyetracking Evidence

    Eyetracking research shows that there are 4 main patterns that people use to scan textual information on webpages: F-pattern, spotted pattern, layer-cake pattern, and commitment pattern.

  • The Layer-Cake Pattern of Scanning Content on the Web

    When headings and subheadings visually stand out on the page and are descriptive, users engage in an efficient scanning pattern that allows them to quickly find the information that they need.

  • Pencils vs. Pixels for UI Prototyping and Sketching

    UX designers answer the question of when they prefer to use hand-drawn sketches of a user interface design vs. pixel-perfect designs generated on a computer.

  • Why You Should Use a Grid for Designing Layouts

    Grids are a great framework to help designers quickly put together a clean, well-aligned interface, and help users to easily scan, read, and use those interfaces.

  • Why Chunking Content is Important

    Chunking makes content easier to comprehend and remember. Chunking text help users understand the relationship between content elements and information hierarchy.

  • Attention Leans Left on Websites

    Eyetracking research shows people spend disproportionately more viewing time on the left half of the page versus on the right half.

  • The Fold Manifesto: How to Encourage Scrolling

    The page fold still matters and still applies. Even though the exact location of the fold differs between devices, it exists for every single user on every single screen.

  • Zigzag Image–Text Layouts Make Scanning Less Efficient

    In two-column layouts, vertically aligned images support efficient scanning better than images that alternate placement with text.

  • Centered Logos Hurt Website Navigation

    Getting back to the homepage is about 6 times harder when the logo is placed in the center of a page compared to when it’s in the top left corner.

  • The Fold Manifesto: Why the Page Fold Still Matters

    What appears at the top of the page vs. what’s hidden will always influence the user experience — regardless of screen size.