Design Patterns Articles & Videos

  • Design-Pattern Guidelines: Study Guide

    Unsure how to design and implement user-interface patterns? Use this collection of links to our content about specific patterns.

  • Designing Empty States in Complex Applications: 3 Guidelines

    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.

  • Designing for Long Waits and Interruptions: Mitigating Breaks in Workflow in Complex Application Design

    5 guidelines help users tolerate the long waits and frequent interruptions that are typical of complex workflows.

  • 10 Usability Heuristics Applied to Complex Applications

    Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics can be used to analyze the UX of applications that support domain-specific, complex workflows.

  • Breaking out of the Content Silo

    Coming from a traditional content/writing background, Michelle Blake presents her case study of broadening her remit to a fuller range of user-experience issues and improved the design of her organization's website.

  • The Role of Design Ethics in UX

    The push for less-ethical or even deceptive user interfaces is often caused by short-term thinking and immediate UX metrics. The long-term impact of harming users can backfire and lead to reduced brand loyalty.

  • Modify Your Design for Global Audiences: Crosscultural UX Design

    Crosscultural design adaptations range from translation to localization. Researching general and contextual cultural differences helps you decide what type of design changes you should make.

  • When is It OK to Be Inconsistent in User Interface Design?

    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.

  • Livestream Ecommerce: What We Can Learn from China

    Livestreams allow users to see products in detail and get their questions answered in real time. They can be integrated in ecommerce websites and on social-networking apps.

  • Visual Hierarchy in UX: Definition

    A clear visual hierarchy guides the eye to the most important elements on the page. It can be created through variations in color and contrast, scale, and grouping.

  • Onboarding: Skip it When Possible

    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.

  • Popup Problems

    Popups and many kinds of modal dialogs are often intrusive user interface elements that get in the way of users' goals and cause annoyance. Here are some of the worst popup UX sins.

  • Data Visualizations for Dashboards

    To enable fast and reliable understanding of data shown on dashboard overviews, use visualization styles that work with human preattentive visual processing.

  • 8 Design Guidelines for Complex Applications

    Despite great diversity in the workflows and end users supported by complex applications, these 8 design guidelines are generally applicable.

  • Compensatory vs Noncompensatory: 2 Decision-Making Strategies

    Ease users’ purchase decisions by designing interfaces that support both compensatory and noncompensatory decision-making strategies.

  • State-Switch Controls: The Infamous Case of the "Mute" Button

    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.

  • Mobile-App Onboarding: An Analysis of Components and Techniques

    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.

  • Making Cutting-Edge Technology Approachable: A Case Study of Facial-Recognition Payment in China

    First-time users were concerned after using facial-recognition payment. Better onboarding experiences can relieve concerns and form factual mental models.

  • Mobile Tutorials: Wasted Effort or Efficiency Boost?

    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.

  • 5 Principles of Visual Design in UX

    The principles of scale, visual hierarchy, balance, contrast, and Gestalt not only create beautiful designs, but also increase usability when applied correctly.

  • Breaking out of the Content Silo

    Coming from a traditional content/writing background, Michelle Blake presents her case study of broadening her remit to a fuller range of user-experience issues and improved the design of her organization's website.

  • The Role of Design Ethics in UX

    The push for less-ethical or even deceptive user interfaces is often caused by short-term thinking and immediate UX metrics. The long-term impact of harming users can backfire and lead to reduced brand loyalty.

  • When is It OK to Be Inconsistent in User Interface Design?

    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.

  • Onboarding: Skip it When Possible

    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.

  • Popup Problems

    Popups and many kinds of modal dialogs are often intrusive user interface elements that get in the way of users' goals and cause annoyance. Here are some of the worst popup UX sins.

  • Data Visualizations for Dashboards

    To enable fast and reliable understanding of data shown on dashboard overviews, use visualization styles that work with human preattentive visual processing.

  • "It Depends": Why UX Is Dependent on Context

    When we’re asked questions, UX professionals will often respond with, “it depends.” Why do we rely so much on this phrase?

  • The Immutable Rules of UX (Jakob Nielsen Keynote)

    Jakob Nielsen's keynote at the Las Vegas UX Conference discussed the foundational principles of user experience that are stable decade after decade.

  • Design Patterns For Complex Apps and Workflows

    Two design principles for supporting complex and repetitive workflows.

  • The 3 B's Test For When to Follow Design Trends

    Know when to follow or banish a design trend. The 3 B's: Budget, Brand, and Behavior will help you make the right decisions.

  • Making Flat Design Usable

    The hazards of flat design and 5 key UX guidelines for making flat design usable.

  • Is UX Getting Better or Worse? (Jakob Nielsen Keynote)

    Each UI generation often takes two steps forward, then one step back. Even as new technologies emerge (e.g., Artificial Intelligence (AI) and speech recognition), knowing established UX guidelines will help you avoid missteps. This was Jakob Nielsen's keynote at the UX Conference in Copenhagen.

  • Tips for Icon Usability

    6 UX guidelines to ensure that your users recognize your icons and know what they mean.

  • Jakob's Law of Internet User Experience

    Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know. Design for patterns for which users are accustomed.

  • 4 iOS Rules to Break

    Page control (dots), Submit at top, and the Plus (+) and Move icons are 4 common iOS patterns that cause usability problems in testing.

  • Animation for Attention and Comprehension

    Moving elements are a powerful tool to attract users’ attention. When designing an animation consider its goal, its frequency of occurrence, and its mechanics.

  • Breaking Web Design Conventions = Breaking the User Experience

    Bucknell University caused a stir with its unconventional responsive redesign, but at a high cost to usability, as shown in tests with students and parents.

  • Accordions Are Not Always the Answer for Complex Content on Desktops

    Longer pages can benefit users. Accordions shorten pages and reduce scrolling, but they increase the interaction cost by requiring people to decide on topic headings.

  • Beware Horizontal Scrolling and Mimicking Swipe on Desktop

    Even as more sites mimic swiping gestures and incorporate horizontal scrolling in desktop designs, users remain reluctant to move sideways through content.

  • The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design: Pros and Cons

    People usually recognize that a magnifying-glass icon indicates a search tool, even when it has no label. Unfortunately, showing only the icon makes search more difficult to find.

  • Instructional Overlays and Coach Marks for Mobile Apps

    Instructions in mobile applications must be designed for optimal scannability, as users tend to dismiss them quickly and do not read thoroughly.

  • Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid

    For desktop sites, demoting your main content categories into a drop-down menu makes it harder for users to discover your offerings.

  • Infinite Scrolling Is Not for Every Website

    Endless scrolling saves people from having to attend to the mechanics of pagination in browsing tasks, but is not a good choice for websites that support goal-oriented finding tasks.

  • Fight Against “Right-Rail Blindness”

    Users have trained themselves to divert their attention away from areas that look like advertising. When designed well, sidebars can effectively increase content discoverability.

  • Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes of 2008

    Application usability is enhanced when users know how to operate the UI and it guides them through the workflow. Violating common guidelines prevents both.

  • Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes

    Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.

  • The Need for Web Design Standards

    Users expect 77% of the simpler Web design elements to behave in a certain way. Unfortunately, confusion reigns for many higher-level design issues.

  • When Bad Design Elements Become the Standard

    Anything done by more than 90% of big sites becomes a de-facto design standard that must be followed unless an alternative design achieves 100% increased usability.