Interface help comes in two forms: proactive and reactive. Proactive help is intended to get users familiar with an interface while reactive help is meant for troubleshooting and gaining system proficiency.
Shortcuts— unseen by the novice user — speed up the interaction for the expert users such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users.
Jakob Nielsen explains the heuristic evaluation method, which allows you to judge a user interface design based on 10 well-proven general principles for human-computer interaction.
No. 10 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is provide user assistance at appropriate times in the interaction, making sure that such information is easy to search, focused on the user's task, lists concrete steps to be carried out, and not too large.
No. 9 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to write error messages that help users understand the problem and to provide information that constructively teaches users how to recover from the error.
For 30 years, the recommendations have remained the same for improving usability in a UX design project on a tight budget: simplified user testing with 5 users, early test of paper prototypes, and heuristic evaluation.
No. 8 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to remove unnecessary elements from the user interface and to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of the design.
No. 5 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to prevent interaction problems from occurring in the first place: either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation dialog.
No. 4 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to stick to UI conventions and follow existing standards, so that users know what to expect and how to operate the interface.
No. 3 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to allow users freedom to be in control of the interaction, even if they make mistakes and will need a clearly marked way out of trouble.
No. 2 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to speak the users' language, use terms familiar to the user, follow real-world conventions, and make information appear in a natural and logical order; all in the interest of achieving a match between the system and the real world.
No. 1 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to provide visibility of system status through proper feedback, so that the user knows how commands are being interpreted and what the computer is up to at any time.
#6 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to design user interfaces to facilitate #memory recognition which is easier than recall because there are more cues available to facilitate the retrieval of information from memory.
Jakob Nielsen explains the heuristic evaluation method, which allows you to judge a user interface design based on 10 well-proven general principles for human-computer interaction.
No. 10 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is provide user assistance at appropriate times in the interaction, making sure that such information is easy to search, focused on the user's task, lists concrete steps to be carried out, and not too large.
No. 9 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to write error messages that help users understand the problem and to provide information that constructively teaches users how to recover from the error.
For 30 years, the recommendations have remained the same for improving usability in a UX design project on a tight budget: simplified user testing with 5 users, early test of paper prototypes, and heuristic evaluation.
No. 8 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to remove unnecessary elements from the user interface and to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of the design.
No. 5 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to prevent interaction problems from occurring in the first place: either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation dialog.
No. 4 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to stick to UI conventions and follow existing standards, so that users know what to expect and how to operate the interface.
No. 3 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to allow users freedom to be in control of the interaction, even if they make mistakes and will need a clearly marked way out of trouble.
No. 2 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to speak the users' language, use terms familiar to the user, follow real-world conventions, and make information appear in a natural and logical order; all in the interest of achieving a match between the system and the real world.
No. 1 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to provide visibility of system status through proper feedback, so that the user knows how commands are being interpreted and what the computer is up to at any time.
#6 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to design user interfaces to facilitate #memory recognition which is easier than recall because there are more cues available to facilitate the retrieval of information from memory.
Critiquing a design is not the same as criticizing a design. Keep opinions out of design reviews to remain objective and increase the value of the design assessment.
Interface help comes in two forms: proactive and reactive. Proactive help is intended to get users familiar with an interface while reactive help is meant for troubleshooting and gaining system proficiency.
Shortcuts— unseen by the novice user — speed up the interaction for the expert users such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users.
Communicating the current state allows users to feel in control of the system, take appropriate actions to reach their goal, and ultimately trust the brand.
Showing users things they can recognize improves usability over needing to recall items from scratch because the extra context helps users retrieve information from memory.
Discount usability engineering is our only hope. We must evangelize methods simple enough that departments can do their own usability work, fast enough that people will take the time, and cheap enough that it's still worth doing. The methods that can accomplish this are simplified user testing with one or two users per design and heuristic evaluation.
Participants in a course on usability inspection methods were surveyed 7-8 months after the course. Factors which influenced adoption were cost, rated benefit of the method, relevance to current projects, and whether the methods had active evangelists.
Heuristic evaluation is a good method of identifying both major and minor problems with an interface, but the lists of usability problems found by heuristic evaluation will tend to be dominated by minor problems, which is one reason severity ratings form a useful supplement to the method.
Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the "heuristics"). Adherence to specific methods can improve the outcome of an heuristic evaluation.
Usability inspection is the generic name for a set of methods that are all based on having evaluators inspect a user interface. Typically, usability inspection is aimed at finding usability problems in the design, though some methods also address issues like the severity of the usability problems and the overall usability of an entire system.
Rating usability problems according to their severity facilitates the allocation of resources to fix the most serious problems. Severity ratings are a combination of frequency, impact, and persistence.
Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are broad rules of thumb for UX and not specific usability guidelines.
