Carousels come in many shapes and sizes. Some can be effective, others less so. You need a lot more data from a lot of different situations before you dismiss the pattern entirely. In this article, Kyle Peatt aims for a better understanding of the current argument against carousels and whether they really deserve the reputation they’ve gained, using real data. He’ll break down the arguments point by point and see if his data lines up with those expectations. He’ll also detail his findings and methods and make some recommendations on how and when you should use carousels in future.
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Interface designers can emulate real-life physics and movement on a digital screen. This type of motion is becoming more common, which is why it’s becoming easier for people to understand computers. We’re not getting better, the interfaces are! In this article, Drew Thomas will cover a little bit of the history of motion on the web, why that’s important, and what the future of motion on the web will look like. (Hint: motion is really important for usability, and it’s changing everything.) Then he’ll explain the CSS behind motion and how to use motion well.
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In this article, Alon Even will go over the importance of using visual mobile analytics to measure the user experience from day one, as well as provide examples and other insights, so that you can optimize your onboarding experience and increase your app’s retention rate. He will provide you with knowledge that you can apply to your own mobile app exploits, whether you are a developer or a mobile app publisher. While there is no magic bullet for creating a perfect onboarding experience, remaining focused and committed to monitoring your onboarding experience will get you further than any other strategy.
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For many of us, the idea of doing formal user testing, is a formidable challenge. There are many reasons why: you don’t have enough lead time; you can’t find enough participants, or the right type of participant; you can’t convince your boss to spend the money. User testing is the best way to improve your designs. If you rely on anecdotal data, or your own experience, you can’t design a great solution to your user’s problems. User testing is vital. But how do you make the case for it and actually do it?
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We all have our favored methods and techniques, but the general process is similar: Conduct research, prototype, then present to stakeholders and users. However, every once in a while something will take you by surprise. In this article, Chrisday will discuss the variety of challenges that he faced and how he eventually overcame them. Many of these learnings can be applied to enhance the user experience design process in smaller projects.
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Paul Boag would argue that the single most precious commodity in Western society is time. People hate to have their time wasted, especially online. We spend so much of our time online these days, and every interaction demands a slice of our time. One minor inconvenience on a website might not be much, but, accumulated, it is death by a thousand cuts. On each project ask two questions: “Am I saving myself time at the expense of the user?” and “How can I save the user time here?”.
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The debate about what a “User Experience Design” exactly is, is as old as the discipline itself, and while sitting back and watching the drama is sometimes fun, let’s try to figure out which user experience techniques are useful for startups, in-house teams, big corporations and anyone who wants to improve their website, product or service.
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Anthony Viviano has been working at incorporating lean UX at the enterprise level. In studying it, he fond that there’s a temptation to lay down rules, and if the rules aren’t followed, you can’t call it lean UX. At the end of the day, though, some lean UX is better than none.
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The best thing any designer can do is to collect feedback from real users. Recently, Joshua Gross had an opportunity to experience thiswhen iterating on HelloSign. Thanks to testing, the app went from four stars to a solid five stars after a redesign. You’ll look at how the app started, how they ran the tests and how the product ended up with five stars.
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If customers can’t find a product, they can’t buy it. Therefore we invested eight months conducting a large-scale usability research study on the product-finding experience. We set out to explore how users navigate, find and select products on e-commerce websites. Throughout the test sessions, the subjects would abandon websites because they were unable to find the products they were looking for. All of these usability issues have been distilled into 79 concise guidelines in a report titled “Homepage & Category Usability.” In this article, we’ll go over seven of the guidelines.
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