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Articles

Hoa Loranger

Hoa Loranger is VP at Nielsen Norman Group and has worked in user experience for over 20 years. She conducts research worldwide, and presents keynotes and training on best practices for interface design. Hoa has consulted for companies such as Microsoft, HP, Allstate, Samsung, Verizon, and Disney. She authors publications, including a book, Prioritizing Web Usability.

Articles and Videos

  • Redesigning Your Website? Don’t Ditch Your Old Design So Soon

    Testing your site’s existing design along with a few competitor websites provides valuable insight for new designs. Competitive studies help you avoid developing unusable new features.

  • Related Content Boosts Pageviews, When Done Right

    Links that follow up on the user’s current interest encourage site exploration and reduce bounce rates. With the proper invitation, people will stay longer on your site.

  • UX Without User Research Is Not UX

    UX teams are responsible for creating desirable experiences for users. Yet many organizations fail to include users in the development process. Without customer input, organizations risk creating interfaces that fail.

  • Doing UX in an Agile World: Case Study Findings

    Agile teams are more proficient in executing the development process, but the compressed timescale forces some to abandon user research and degrade the resulting user experience.

  • 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.

  • Break Grammar Rules on Websites for Clarity

    Web writing differs from print writing to emphasize scannability. Some grammar rules are worth breaking if they improve fast comprehension.

  • 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.

  • Avoid Category Names That Suck

    Categories and hypertext act as signs and should give people a strong indication of what will happen before they click the link. People avoid clicking unknown items, or even worse, ignore them altogether.

  • State the Price to Give B2B Sites a Competitive Advantage

    Prospective customers want to know the price as their #1 info need on any website — including B2B sites, but these sites often hide or obscure pricing information.

  • 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.