Web Usability Articles & Videos

  • Does Your Form Really Need a Dropdown List?

    Dropdown lists can be used in narrow, specific scenarios, but misuse can cause more harm than alternatives.

  • UX Quiz: 2025 Year in Review

    Test your usability knowledge by taking our quiz. All questions and answers are based on articles that we published last year.

  • Web UX: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn how users interact with the web and how to design effective web user experiences.

  • Few Guesses, More Success: 4 Principles to Reduce Cognitive Load in Forms

    Four principles of form design — structure, transparency, clarity, and support — minimize users’ cognitive load and improve usability.

  • Button States: Communicate Interaction

    Minor visual changes help users distinguish between 5 different button states: enabled, disabled, hovered, focused, pressed.

  • Less Effort, More Completion: The EAS Framework for Simplifying Forms

    Use the EAS framework — Eliminate first, Automate where possible, and Simplify what remains — to minimize user effort and improve form completion rates.

  • UX Quiz: 2024 Year in Review

    Test your usability knowledge by taking our quiz. All questions and answers are based on articles that we published last year.

  • A Lesson on Top Tasks from Hurricane Beryl

    Companies that do not support their users’ top tasks in a crisis fail their users and their reason for existence.

  • Menu-Design Checklist: 17 UX Guidelines

    People rely on menus to find content and use features. Use this checklist to make sure your menus do their job.

  • Breakpoints in Responsive Design

    Breakpoints determine when a webpage may adjust to different layouts. They help designers (and developers) maintain layout consistency across multiple screen sizes, orientations, and devices.

  • Homepage Design: 5 Fundamental Principles

    Effective homepages are simple and easy to access, communicate the organization’s and site’s purpose, show engaging content, and prompt users to take action.

  • Comparison Tables for Products, Services, and Features

    Use this versatile GUI tool to support users when they need to make a decision that involves considering multiple attributes of a small number of items.

  • User-Experience Quiz: 2023 UX Year in Review

    Test your usability knowledge by taking our quiz. All questions and answers are based on articles that we published last year.

  • In-Page Links for Content Navigation

    In-page links, often embedded in the table of contents, help users navigate to specific content sections on the same page. While research showed increased user familiarity with the design pattern, carefully consider content structures before implementation.

  • User-Experience Quiz: 2022 UX Year in Review

    Test your usability knowledge by taking our quiz. All questions and answers are based on articles that we published last year.

  • Three Pillars of User Delight

    Delight can be experienced viscerally, behaviorally, and reflectively. A great design is supported by all three of these pillars and is best evaluated with specific research methods.

  • Why and How to Use Demographics in UX

    Well-designed questions related to age, gender, race, income and other demographic characteristics help UX researchers screen participants, recruit a diverse participant pool, and segment data. These questions are sensitive and should put research participants at ease.

  • 5 Visual Treatments that Improve Accessibility

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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.