CategoryUsability

September 27, 2012 — In this article, Stefan Klocek introduces a strategy for fixing broken experiences that start with surface improvements. By diving progressively deeper into structural issues, he explains how to achieve a more successful organizational shift. Read more…

September 25, 2012 — How does a company like Apple make such great new things that people already know how to use? As Alan Cooper writes in “About Face”: ‘All idioms must be learned; good idioms need to be learned only once.’ Read more…

September 11, 2012 — What is a sticky menu? Although sticky navigation can be applied to any menu, such as the footer or social media buttons, in this article, Hyrum Denney focuses on the main (or primary) navigation of a website. Read more…

August 29, 2012 — What do real-life UX design processes actually look like? Marcin Treder shares a couple of insights about the real-life UX design process and speaks from his own experience and research. Read more…

August 10, 2012 — Designing for device orientation brings various challenges and requires careful thinking. The experience must be as unobtrusive and transparent as possible, and we must understand the context of use for this functionality. Read more…

July 18, 2012 — We love to tell users that they have done something wrong. We have error messages for everything from poorly formatted telephone numbers to incorrect logins. But what about our user’s successes, do we celebrate them? Do we tell them they are doing something right? Read more…

June 27, 2012 — Error pages for form-field validation are dreadful. You’ve just filled out 20 form fields, yet you get the same bloated page thrown back in your face because a single field failed to validate. I clearly recall the often loud sighs of despair during our last usability study each time a test subject encountered a validation error page. Read more…

June 20, 2012 — Have you ever wanted your users to click a link but didn’t know how to get them to act? When some designers run into this problem, they’re tempted to use the words “Click here” on their links. Read more…

June 13, 2012 — Emergency car shopping is no fun. This past month was the second time I had to shop for a car in a short timeframe without advance warning. Like most informed shoppers, I went online to get a feel for my options, armed with knowledge of what I was looking for: apart from safety, gas mileage and reliability, it had to comfortably seat six and not require me to take out a second mortgage. Read more…

June 6, 2012 — Design patterns bring many benefits, as well as some drawbacks to watch out for. But we’d be foolish to ignore these helpful guidelines. There is no formula for what we need to do; rather, we need to operate within certain boundaries to ensure we’re creating great design solutions without alienating users. Read more…