Visual Design Articles & Videos

  • Photos as Web Content

    Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to "jazz up" web pages.

  • Horizontal Attention Leans Left (Early Research)

    Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable.

  • Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design

    Users overlook features if the GUI elements (such as buttons and checkboxes) are too far away from the objects they act on.

  • Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored

    A site did most things right, but still had a miserable 14% success rate for its most important task. The reason? Users ignored a key area because it resembled a promotion.

  • Banner Blindness: The Original Eyetracking Research

    Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the 4 design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.

  • Recommended Books About Visual Design

    Jakob Nielsen's short list of recommended books about visual interface design (especially Web graphics).

  • Screen Resolution and Page Layout

    Optimize Web pages for 1024x768, but use a liquid layout that stretches well for any resolution, from 800x600 to 1280x1024.

  • Differences Between Print Design and Web Design

    Anything that is a great print design is likely to be a lousy web design. The big canvas size and controlled layout make print visually superior; web interaction is more engaging.

  • Usability Testing of Advanced Homepage Concepts for the Sun Microsystems' 1997 Web Design

    Users' reactions to early design ideas for the Sun Microsystems' 1997 Web site demonstrate that users are becoming more web sophisticated, and prefer straightfoward access to content.

  • Seductive User Interfaces

    Because computers are no longer used exclusively for utilitarian tasks, we should use systematic methods to design products that are not just efficient but also attractive to users.

  • Iterative Design and Testing of Icon Usability

    Icons for Sun Microsystems' website design were designed and tested in several iterations, both independent of and in context with the full Web site design.

  • Why No Graphics?

    Useit.com, Jakob Nielsen's site from 1995-2012, had almost no graphics because fast download times are the number one criterion for Web usability.