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Articles

Katie Sherwin

Katie Sherwin is a Senior User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. She specializes in helping organizations utilize principles of user-centered design and strategic communication to achieve their goals. 

Articles and Videos

  • Screen Readers on Touchscreen Devices

    People who are blind or have low vision must rely on their memory and on a rich vocabulary of gestures to interact with touchscreen phones and tablets. Designers should strive to minimize the cognitive load for users of screen readers.

  • Low-Contrast Text Is Not the Answer

    Low-contrast text may be trendy, but it is also illegible, undiscoverable, and inaccessible. Instead, consider more usable alternatives.

  • Password Creation: 3 Ways To Make It Easier

    By making password requirements visible upfront, allowing users to unmask the password, and showing a strength meter, designers can improve the frustrating user experience of creating a password.

  • Pop-ups and Adaptive Help Get a Refresh

    Presenting adaptive help in a small overlay can make it faster to find answers to simple questions, but the tradeoffs of obscuring the page and failing to predict user needs may not be worthwhile.

  • Scoped Search: Dangerous, but Sometimes Useful

    Restricting search to a specific area of a website can provide better results, faster. But users overlook, misunderstand, and forget about the search scope.

  • Shopping Online for an iPhone Plan Is Painful

    The experience of researching and purchasing a mobile plan online is marred by hard-to-access cost information, site-specific jargon, and disruptive pop-ups.

  • Progress Indicators Make a Slow System Less Insufferable

    Wait animations, such as percent-done bars and spinners, inform users of the current working state and make the process more tolerable to the user by reducing uncertainty. Users experience higher satisfaction with a site and are willing to wait longer when the site uses a dynamic progress indicator.

  • 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.

  • Placeholders in Form Fields Are Harmful

    Labels or sample text inside a form field makes it difficult for people to remember what information belongs in that field once they start data entry.

  • 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.