Skip navigation

Application Design Articles & Videos

  • Top 10 Intranet Trends of 2016

    Hero images, carousels, fat footers, video, minimalist design, and responsive navigation, are among some of the top feature trends of the best intranets of 2016. We even see a revival of online help that’s actually helpful to employees exploring new features or attempting complex tasks.

  • Slider Design: Rules of Thumb

    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.

  • Indicators, Validations, and Notifications: Pick the Correct Communication Option

    Status feedback is crucial to the success of any system. Knowing when to use 3 common communication methods is key to supporting users.

  • A Checklist for Designing Mobile Input Fields

    When you design an input field for use on mobile devices, check whether it satisfies this list of 14 usability requirements.

  • Help People Create Passwords That They Can Actually Remember

    Human memory studies can inform design so they help people remember passwords. This makes customers happy, saves money and time, and increases security.

  • 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.

  • Radio Buttons: Select One by Default or Leave All Unselected?

    Select a single radio button by default in most cases. Reasons to deviate or not: expedite tasks, the power of suggestion, user expectations, safety nets.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Form Design Quick Fix: Group Form Elements Effectively Using White Space

    Improve the layout of your online forms by placing form labels near the associated text field and by grouping similar fields.

  • Mobile: Native Apps, Web Apps, and Hybrid Apps

    Native and hybrid apps are installed in an app store, whereas web apps are mobile-optimized webpages that look like an app. Both hybrid and web apps render HTML web pages, but hybrid apps use app-embedded browsers to do that.

  • Best Application Designs

    Winning app UIs include domain-specific solutions that allow humans to focus on deeper issues while the software takes care of the mechanics.

  • Disruptive Workflow Design

    Smooth-flow task performance makes application use pleasurable. But disruptions are all too common due to crinkly design or creaking implementation.

  • Browser and GUI Chrome

    'Chrome' is the user interface overhead that surrounds user data and web page content. Although chrome obesity can eat half of the available pixels, a reasonable amount enhances usability.

  • Overloaded vs. Generic Commands

    Overloading different outcomes on similar commands can be confusing. Using the same command for multiple actions enhances usability if the results are conceptually the same.

  • Workflow Expectations: Presenting Steps at the Right Time

    Actions at one step of an application impact subsequent steps. When users don't understand this relationship, usability suffers.

  • Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design

    Users overlook features if the GUI elements (such as buttons and checkboxes) are too far away from the objects they act on.

  • Testing Expert Users

    It's more difficult to conduct usability studies with experienced users than with novices, and the improvements are usually smaller. Still, improving expert performance is often worth the effort.

  • Customization of UIs and Products

    Websites that let users customize the UI have the same measured usability as regular sites. Sites for customizing products, however, score substantially worse due to complex workflow.

  • 10 Best Application UIs

    Many winners employ dashboards to give users a single overview of complex information and use lightboxes to ensure that users notice dialogs. Also, the Office 2007 ribbon showed surprisingly strong early adoption.

  • 3 Ways to Level Up Your Visual Design Skills

    Designers, researchers, and generalists alike can improve their visual design skills through creative exercises focused on identification, replication, or exploration.

  • The Aesthetic Usability Effect and Prioritizing Appearance vs. Functionality

    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.

  • Short-Term Memory Limitations Impact User Interface Design

    People can only hold a small amount of information in their short-term memory, which fades fast. These facts impact most aspects of screen design and dictate many usability guidelines.

  • Using Fitts's Law to Make Links and Buttons Easier to Click

    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.

  • 3 Types of Onboarding New Users

    How to familiarize users with new user interfaces? Onboarding techniques include feature promotion, customization, and instructions. All must be kept simple.

  • Tooltips in the User Interface

    Tooltips are small user-triggered popups that explain UI elements when the user points to something. They are useful, but don't use them for critical information.

  • Designing Complex Applications: A Framework

    5 different sources of UX complexity help explain and analyze the special design issues in complex applications.

  • Product Redesigns: Incremental or Overhaul

    Redesigning a user interface can be done in many smaller incremental releases, or as one big complete redo. Big change is risky, but necessary in 3 cases.

  • Workplace Application Usability

    Enterprise applications that support work often do so poorly and have bad user experience. The usability requirements and tradeoffs for workplace app design are different from consumer apps.

  • 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.

  • UX Animations

    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.

  • Time to Make Tech Work

    Users waste unacceptably much time struggling with computer bugs. Users' mental models suffer when systems don't work as advertised, leading people to question their understanding of the UX.

  • 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.

  • Error Handling on Mobile Devices: Showing Alerts

    Using a modal dialog to display an error message can cause usability problems on mobile devices. Error handling must respect human-memory constraints and remain visible as the user is fixing the problem.

  • The Visual Principle of Scale in User Interface Design

    Users pay more attention to big things than to small things, and this design principle can be used to prioritize a user experience design, such as a web page or application screen.

  • Myths About Complex App Users

    Three stereotypes explain much resistance to improving the usability of complex applications for domain-specific tasks: that people like the old ways, that they are experts in the existing UI, and that training will make up for bad design. All are misleading.

  • Virtual Reality and User Experience

    Virtual reality (VR) user interfaces are currently more difficult for users to manipulate than a traditional GUI, partly because of more degrees of freedom and partly because VR is still new, so people have less experience using it. Advice for how to employ usability studies to alleviate this problem.

  • Mask Interaction Delays with Progress Indicators

    In case of slow response times in a user interface, indicate that the wait time will soon be over by showing an animation. For longer delays use a percent-done indicator.

  • Complex Apps 101

    3 tips for designing applications for experts or specialized user groups doing complex domain-specific tasks (often with nonlinear workflows).

  • What Can UX do to Help With Covid-19?

    At the very first Virtual UX Conference, Jakob Nielsen answered a participant question about what user experience can do to help with the coronavirus crisis.

  • 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.

  • Feature Checklists Are Not Enough: How to Avoid Making Bad Software

    A good design relies on a thorough task analysis of the steps required to complete a task, as well as determining what information users need at each step.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Complex Application Design: A 5-Layer Framework

    Various contexts of complexity should be considered by UX designers and researchers designing complex applications, including complexities of integration, information, intention, environment, and institution.

  • 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.

  • Listboxes vs. Dropdown Lists

    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.

  • 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.

  • Mental Models for Cloud-Storage Systems

    Users have a rudimentary understanding of cloud services and attempt to fit them into their existent, simpler mental models that they had formed for similar, more-traditional services.

  • Treemaps: Data Visualization of Complex Hierarchies

    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.

  • 3 Design Considerations for Effective Mobile-App Permission Requests

    Mobile permission requests are often poorly designed. Consider the content and timing of these requests, avoid dark patterns, and enable users to reverse their decision.

  • Contextual Menus: Delivering Relevant Tools for Tasks

    Contextual menus are displayed on demand and contain a small set of relevant actions, related to a control, a piece of content, a view in an app, or an area of the UI. When designed right, they deliver relevant tools for completing tasks without adding clutter to the interface.

  • UI Copy: UX Guidelines for Command Names and Keyboard Shortcuts

    Labels for commands should be brief, informative, rely on verbs and adjectives, and avoid branded terms. Command shortcuts must limit the number of modifiers and follow standard conventions.

  • Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes

    Application usability is enhanced when the UI guides and supports users through the workflow.

  • How to Report Errors in Forms: 10 Design Guidelines

    Help users recover from errors by clearly identifying the problems and allowing users to access and correct erroneous fields easily.

  • Tooltip Guidelines

    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.

  • Apps Within Apps: UX Lessons from WeChat Mini Programs

    Our user studies in China found that embedded-app designers must consider the context of use, the core functionality of the parent platform, and how the programs will be used.

  • Designing Effective Infographics

    Information graphics translate data into a visual medium that is easy to understand and engaging, aiming to integrate text and pictures.

  • Toggle-Switch Guidelines

    On/off switches are UI elements that prompt users to choose between 2 mutually exclusive options, always have a default value, and provide immediate results.

  • Confirmation Dialogs Can Prevent User Errors — If Not Overused

    8 UX guidelines to avoid many serious user errors reduce the risk that people automatically agree to a warning without realizing the consequences.