Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX) are two common terms that mostly mean the same thing, but have different connotations. Whatever your preferred term, it's important to consider design at 3 levels of experience.
Many issues in the user-experience field don’t have a simple answer. Rather there’s a tension between two good answers that are often polar opposites. Both extremes can be useful perspectives, and both have their advocates when people debate UX. How do we resolve these differences? This was Jakob Nielsen's keynote at the UX Conference in Las Vegas.
Having to register for websites, services, or apps is already annoying enough for users. But complications compound when they are faced with hidden requirements for what constitutes an acceptable password.
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.
In a graphical user interface, having the user move a cursor within a narrow path (e.g., in a hierarchical menu or a slider) follows a strict law for how easy or difficult it is to do, depending on specifics of the GUI.
Dropdowns, hierarchical menus, sliders, or scroll bars involve steering a pointer or a cursor through a tunnel; optimal design for these GUI elements should consider the Steering Law.
Simplicity depends on the capacity of the information channel and what's simple for one device, can be primitive or intricate for another, since screens are information channels with a limited capacity. When you're designing for multiple devices, don't go by common cliches like "simple is good."
A split button is a dual-function menu button that offers a default action as well as the possibility of choosing a different action by selecting from a set of alternatives.
In a modal interface, the same user action can have different results depending on the state of the system. Poorly signaled modes can easily trigger user errors with disastrous consequences.
Tooltips are user-triggered messages that provide additional information about a page element or feature. Although tooltips aren’t new to the web, they are often incorrectly implemented.
Gamification is the usage of game mechanics in non-game contexts, such as mainstream UX design. The most successful implementations of gamification begin with a learner-centered mindset.
Fitts's Law describes how long it takes a user to hit a target in a graphical user interface (GUI) or other design, as a function of size and distance. Understanding this law helps us design better buttons, forms, lists, and other interactive elements.
Reduce input effort for fields with values that vary little from the default by allowing users to increase or decrease the number in a single button press.
Encourage engagement with recommendations by presenting them prominently, segmenting suggestions into clear categories, and providing methods for users to give feedback.
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.
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.
Modes can be a hidden state and lead to user errors. But they can also make a user interface more efficient by allowing the same action to have different results, depending on the situation.
Direct manipulation is an interaction technique in graphical user interfaces where users move depictions of objects around and get immediate feedback about their actions and the outcome of these actions.
Consistent design enhances learnability and is usually best for usability. But if the problem you're solving is sufficiently different, then inconsistency may be better.
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.
User interfaces that simulate a presence in a physical space allow people to tour an environment without travelling there, but were mostly considered secondary by our research participants, partly because it’s currently slow and confusing to navigate virtual tours.
Demanding that users create a new account before they are able to access a website or mobile app is only justified in rare cases. Usually, people go away, rather than scale a wall placed between them and your offerings.
Two of the most fundamental usability metrics are learnability (the user's ability to use a new design they have not seen before) and efficiency (the speed with which people do tasks after they have learned the interface).
Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX) are two common terms that mostly mean the same thing, but have different connotations. Whatever your preferred term, it's important to consider design at 3 levels of experience.
Many issues in the user-experience field don’t have a simple answer. Rather there’s a tension between two good answers that are often polar opposites. Both extremes can be useful perspectives, and both have their advocates when people debate UX. How do we resolve these differences? This was Jakob Nielsen's keynote at the UX Conference in Las Vegas.
Having to register for websites, services, or apps is already annoying enough for users. But complications compound when they are faced with hidden requirements for what constitutes an acceptable password.
In a graphical user interface, having the user move a cursor within a narrow path (e.g., in a hierarchical menu or a slider) follows a strict law for how easy or difficult it is to do, depending on specifics of the GUI.
Simplicity depends on the capacity of the information channel and what's simple for one device, can be primitive or intricate for another, since screens are information channels with a limited capacity. When you're designing for multiple devices, don't go by common cliches like "simple is good."
Empty states provide opportunities for designers to communicate system status, increase learnability of the system, and deliver direct pathways for key tasks. This article provides guidance for designing empty-state dialogues for content-less containers.
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.
Virtual tours are an occasionally useful secondary tool for checking on specific details, but most users find them to be high effort, slow, and of limited value.
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.
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.
Dropdowns, hierarchical menus, sliders, or scroll bars involve steering a pointer or a cursor through a tunnel; optimal design for these GUI elements should consider the Steering Law.
A split button is a dual-function menu button that offers a default action as well as the possibility of choosing a different action by selecting from a set of alternatives.
In a modal interface, the same user action can have different results depending on the state of the system. Poorly signaled modes can easily trigger user errors with disastrous consequences.
Tooltips are user-triggered messages that provide additional information about a page element or feature. Although tooltips aren’t new to the web, they are often incorrectly implemented.
Reduce input effort for fields with values that vary little from the default by allowing users to increase or decrease the number in a single button press.
Encourage engagement with recommendations by presenting them prominently, segmenting suggestions into clear categories, and providing methods for users to give feedback.
Microinteractions convey system status, support error prevention, and communicate brand. They are initiated by a trigger, are single-purpose, and can make the experience engaging.
Users appreciate personalized content suggestions and are willing to give up some of their privacy for quality recommendations, while accepting some inaccurate recommendations.
