Modal ads, ads that reorganize content, and autoplaying video ads were among the most disliked. Ads that are annoying on desktop become intolerable on mobile.
Interfaces that temporarily hide the UI elements to emphasize content often increase the interaction cost, cognitive load, and the number of attention switches.
Intranet tools and programs come and go, but bad UIs linger for years, impact employee productivity and morale, and ultimately increase organizational costs.
Mobile navigation must be discoverable, accessible, and take little screen space. Exposing the navigation and hiding it in a hamburger both have pros and cons.
Selecting a precise value using a slider is a difficult task requiring good motor skills, even if the slider is well designed. If picking an exact value is important to the goal of the interface, choose an alternate UI element.
Moving elements are a powerful tool to attract users’ attention. When designing an animation consider its goal, its frequency of occurrence, and its mechanics.
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.
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.
Even as more sites mimic swiping gestures and incorporate horizontal scrolling in desktop designs, users remain reluctant to move sideways through content.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
To enable fast and reliable understanding of data shown on dashboard overviews, use visualization styles that work with human preattentive visual processing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
First-time users were concerned after using facial-recognition payment. Better onboarding experiences can relieve concerns and form factual mental models.
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.
The principles of scale, visual hierarchy, balance, contrast, and Gestalt not only create beautiful designs, but also increase usability when applied correctly.
Even great companies make mistakes. Don’t risk your UX by assuming it’s safe to follow a design pattern just because it’s used by a successful company.
Alternate methods for accomplishing a frequent action in a user interface support expert users by speeding up their interactions, without hindering novices.
Distinguishing between these two actions is critical to avoiding losing users’ work. Save changes before closing a view, use text labels rather than an X icon, and provide a confirmation dialog before destructive actions.
Whether modal or not, most overlays appear at the wrong time, interrupt users during critical tasks, use poor language, and contribute to user disorientation.
