Error messages can be a crucial point in the user experience. To be effective, they must be clearly visible, which can be accomplished by displaying them close to the error's source, using noticeable, redundant, and accessible indicators, designing them based on their impact, and avoiding displaying them prematurely.
Time on task decreases with the number of times the task has been performed in the past. As a result, a new version of an app translates into a temporary productivity loss for its users.
Applications native to smartwatch operating systems get used the most. Just because a new smartwatch app could offer basic functionality, it does not mean that users will find it valuable.
Smartwatches are for more than just receiving notifications and tracking steps. They afford at least 6 different types of interactions that users find useful.
Identify UX problems with error messages consistently and effectively using a scoring rubric based on established usability best practices for error messages.
Tutorials interrupt users, don’t necessarily improve task performance, and are quickly forgotten. Contextual help signals can avoid these pitfalls but require unintrusive ways to activate.
The HEART framework is great for B2C products but is lacking for workplace applications where users cannot choose the product. CASTLE offers a complementary assessment framework for UX that focuses on the needs of internal product teams.
Users often struggle to find their time zone from a time-zone selector. Where possible, locate users’ time zones for them, organize time zones alphabetically in a dropdown, and allow users to search by city and country.
In application design, prevent users from being overwhelmed by putting things in predictable places, using a clear visual hierarchy, and taking advantage of progressive disclosure.
Well-designed empty states in applications can help increase user confidence, improve system learnability, and help users get started with key tasks quickly.
To reduce complexity in a user interface, employ progressive disclosure to defer secondary options to a subsidiary screen. This focuses users' attention on the primary options, which are the only ones shown by default.
Table design should support four common user tasks: find records that fit specific criteria, compare data, view/edit/add a single row’s data, and take actions on records.
Designers, researchers, and generalists alike can improve their visual design skills through creative exercises focused on identification, replication, or exploration.
Users believe that designs that look good also work well, and UX should take advantage of this. But don't make aesthetic usability lead you astray as a designer, because the UI must actually work well for long-term success.
People can only hold a small amount of information in their short-term memory, which fades fast. These facts impact most aspects of screen design and dictate many usability guidelines.
Error messages can be a crucial point in the user experience. To be effective, they must be clearly visible, which can be accomplished by displaying them close to the error's source, using noticeable, redundant, and accessible indicators, designing them based on their impact, and avoiding displaying them prematurely.
Time on task decreases with the number of times the task has been performed in the past. As a result, a new version of an app translates into a temporary productivity loss for its users.
In application design, prevent users from being overwhelmed by putting things in predictable places, using a clear visual hierarchy, and taking advantage of progressive disclosure.
Well-designed empty states in applications can help increase user confidence, improve system learnability, and help users get started with key tasks quickly.
To reduce complexity in a user interface, employ progressive disclosure to defer secondary options to a subsidiary screen. This focuses users' attention on the primary options, which are the only ones shown by default.
Designers, researchers, and generalists alike can improve their visual design skills through creative exercises focused on identification, replication, or exploration.
Users believe that designs that look good also work well, and UX should take advantage of this. But don't make aesthetic usability lead you astray as a designer, because the UI must actually work well for long-term success.
People can only hold a small amount of information in their short-term memory, which fades fast. These facts impact most aspects of screen design and dictate many usability guidelines.
Fitts's Law describes how long time it takes to click a target, based on the distance to the target and its size. Use this information to make buttons and links faster to click.
How to familiarize users with new user interfaces? Onboarding techniques include feature promotion, customization, and instructions. All must be kept simple.
Tooltips are small user-triggered popups that explain UI elements when the user points to something. They are useful, but don't use them for critical information.
Redesigning a user interface can be done in many smaller incremental releases or as one big complete redo. Big change is risky but necessary in 3 cases.
Enterprise applications that support work often do so poorly and have bad user experience. The usability requirements and tradeoffs for workplace app design are different from consumer apps.
Onboarding instructions that users must digest before they start using an app or other product require attention and effort and thus reduce usability. They should be avoided as much as possible.
Animations can make user interfaces both easier and nicer to use, but the timing has to be right, as we demonstrate in this video. Many other details also contribute to the quality of animation in the user experience.
Users waste unacceptably much time struggling with computer bugs. Users' mental models suffer when systems don't work as advertised, leading people to question their understanding of the UX.
To enable fast and reliable understanding of data shown on dashboard overviews, use visualization styles that work with human preattentive visual processing.
Applications native to smartwatch operating systems get used the most. Just because a new smartwatch app could offer basic functionality, it does not mean that users will find it valuable.
Smartwatches are for more than just receiving notifications and tracking steps. They afford at least 6 different types of interactions that users find useful.
Identify UX problems with error messages consistently and effectively using a scoring rubric based on established usability best practices for error messages.
Tutorials interrupt users, don’t necessarily improve task performance, and are quickly forgotten. Contextual help signals can avoid these pitfalls but require unintrusive ways to activate.
The HEART framework is great for B2C products but is lacking for workplace applications where users cannot choose the product. CASTLE offers a complementary assessment framework for UX that focuses on the needs of internal product teams.
Users often struggle to find their time zone from a time-zone selector. Where possible, locate users’ time zones for them, organize time zones alphabetically in a dropdown, and allow users to search by city and country.
Table design should support four common user tasks: find records that fit specific criteria, compare data, view/edit/add a single row’s data, and take actions on records.
A good design relies on a thorough task analysis of the steps required to complete a task, as well as determining what information users need at each step.
On–off controls that switch between two different system states need to clearly communicate to users both the current state and the state the system will move to, should the user press that control.
Various contexts of complexity should be considered by UX designers and researchers designing complex applications, including complexities of integration, information, intention, environment, and institution.
Onboarding is the process of getting users familiar with a new interface. It can involve one or more of the following components: feature promotion, customization, and instructions.
Listboxes and dropdowns are compact UI controls that allow users to select options. Listboxes expose options right away and support multi-selection while dropdowns require a click to see options and support only single-selection.
Our research shows that tutorials don’t make users faster or more successful at completing tasks; on the contrary, they make them perceive the tasks as more difficult.
Users have a rudimentary understanding of cloud services and attempt to fit them into their existent, simpler mental models that they had formed for similar, more-traditional services.
A treemap is a complex, area-based data visualization for hierarchical data that can be hard to interpret precisely. In many cases, simpler visualizations such as bar charts are preferable.
