Web Usability Articles & Videos

  • 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.

  • Tabs vs. Accordions: When to Use Each

    Tabs and accordions organize and layer content on the same page. Tabs suit a few long sections, while accordions fit many short ones. Choose based on your content structure and user needs for optimal layout.

  • 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.

  • In-Page Links: 3 Usability Tips

    In-page links help users navigate to specific content sections on the same page. For effective use, use descriptive headings that match the destination, and clearly distinguish in-page links from other links.

  • 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.

  • Responsive Web Design: 3 Key Fundamentals

    Responsive web design adapts to various screen sizes while emphasizing developmental efficiency over device-specific designs. It's key to prioritize content based on different contexts of use across devices and create a cohesive experience for all users.

  • 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.

  • Cognitive Walkthroughs Help Assess Interface Learnability

    A cognitive walkthrough is a task-based usability-inspection technique used to evaluate the learnability of a system from the perspective of a new user.

  • Visual Treatments that Improve Accessibility

    To design accessible visuals, account for color contrast, don’t rely on color alone, and make interactive elements easy to identify.

  • Usability 101

    Usability assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. Usability is defined by 5 quality components: learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction.

  • 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 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.

  • 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.

  • Design for Them Not for You (UX Slogan #13)

    It does not matter whether you like a design or whether you find the product easy to use. We must design for the way real customers actually behave.

  • 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.

  • Why UX?

    Key arguments why companies should have systematic user-experience processes. Plus a discussion of the main arguments against UX. (Jakob Nielsen's UX Conference keynote.)