To design accessible visuals, account for color contrast, don’t rely on color alone, make interactive elements easy to identify, provide useful alternative text for images, and test your visuals with real users.
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.
When choosing typography to use in designs, narrow down your options by understanding the most common classifications, looking for typefaces with multiple variations and distinct characters, and pairing typefaces together with consistency and readability in mind.
To support the user experience, colors need to be combined wisely so that they work together well, do not overwhelm, and communicate the same kind of information everywhere in the interface.
Vertical navigation is a good fit for broad or growing IAs, but takes up more space than horizontal navigation. Ensure that it is left-aligned, keyword front-loaded, and visible.
We made the 10 heuristics’ posters easy to read and understand by iterating through multiple versions and improving each based on user-centered principles and methods.
Aesthetically pleasing designs can provide memorable experiences that differentiate a brand. However, interfaces should only include necessary elements, with high informational value. Clarity will always win over visual flourish.
A clear visual hierarchy guides the eye to the most important elements on the page. It can be created through variations in color and contrast, scale, and grouping.
The design of vote-by-mail materials (made imperative by the COVID-19 pandemic) have UX issues that make the voting process unnecessarily difficult and error prone.
Design elements that appear similar in some way — sharing the same color, shape, or size — are perceived as related, while elements that appear dissimilar are perceived as belonging to separate groups.
Our research shows that emojis in subject lines increase negative sentiment toward an email and do not increase the likelihood of an email being opened.