I can operate almost any user interface. After all, I have 33 years’ experience using computers and 25 years’ professional experience analyzing bad designs: I know most of the ways interaction designers can confuse or annoy users. I’ve seen it all before. Or so I thought.
Despite my prowess at defeating complicated user interfaces, I was recently stumped by a simple dialog box. I simply couldn’t figure out how to proceed, so I had to close the application and use another program to achieve my goal.
The offending software shall remain nameless; it’s a nice piece of shareware that I enjoy enough to have paid the fee. Also, a single...
Simplest GUI widgets are the building blocks for most functionality on the web, but it's rare to find sites that use all the dialog controls correctly. Even something as simple as radio buttons and checkboxes are incorrectly used half the time. And let's not even get started on drop-down menus
Be cautious with the source of the data used for personalization. For example, when you personalize information by location or role for an intranet, the database that stores this information must be kept up-to-date. We’ve heard several intranet teams complain that they would like to implement
If you must make your own scrollbars, stay as close to user expectations as possible. Unless your scrollbars look like scrollbars, users might not notice them. Unless your scrollbars behave like scrollbars, users might not be able to bring the desired content into view. In either case, your
10 Years After Bitcoin Began, are We Underestimating Crypto?
Many write off cryptocurrency adoption as part of a self-fulfilling ecosystem that doesn’t impact people outside of enthusiasts and speculators. In earlier years, that could have been argued. Today, I think you would have difficulty making that case. Why? Because technology titans across multiple
The Blockchain Talent Shortage May Be Nearing Its End
For starters, there are more ways to learn blockchain-related skills, and more ways to find people who have those skills. Platforms like Coursera are offering courses in blockchain basics, due partially to high demand, while platforms like CodementorX are allowing businesses to hire freelance
How Blockchain Brings Innovation in Staffing?
Therefore — the owner of the platform encompasses a very little or no role to play. This person can then decide what the details ought to be given or visible. The candidate can also determine WHO will access their information. This allows a direct interaction or transfer of encrypted
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
As his pillaging continued and Blackbeard grew in craftiness, he realized it would be prudent to extend the essence of his menacing nature from afar. He devised a tool to extend his message — an early version of the skull-and-crossbones pirate flag we all know well today. The flag served as
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Remote Ideation: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous
Asynchronous ideation avoids the tricky scheduling issues that synchronous sessions suffer from. People can share their ideas whenever they have time. That means each teammate can work around their own scheduling conflicts and deadlines, while still being able to contribute. Asynchronous ideation
Cognitive Maps, Mind Maps, and Concept Maps: Definitions
The idea of cognitive map originates from the work of the psychologist Edward Tolman, who is famous for his studies of how rats learned to navigate mazes. In psychology, it has a strong spatial connotation — cognitive maps usually refer to the representation of a space (e.g., a maze) in the
Ecommerce UX Trends: User Research Update
Many sites are adding details to reviews: relevant details about the person writing the review, such as gender or age, or particular product criteria for evaluation, such as sizing or quality. Sites are recognizing top contributors and letting readers rate the value of the review. They are
Store Finders: Why People Still Need Locator Links
Hallmark mobile site: Options to either ship each item to an address or to pick up in store for free, along with a link labeled Find a store, were displayed for each product shown in the shopping cart. This design made the feature discoverable. Listing the option for each item meant that users
6 Ways Ecommerce Sites Can Compete With Amazon
In-store experiential elements provide extra value for shoppers and attract them to your physical locations. For example, yoga-and-fitness retailer Athleta hosts yoga classes at many of its locations, bringing existing and potential customers into their stores on a regular basis. Joann Fabrics
Mobile's New Power Couple: PWA and AMP
AMP was effectively loading up landing pages faster and more efficiently than previous technology, but what about the rest of the website? Consumers desired a top-notch mobile ecommerce experience; they wanted to search for products, add to their cart, manage their points, use coupons, etc. AMP
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It’s Time to Take Advantage of Amazing Web Week Savings
StudioPress offers world-class WordPress themes that excel in design, security, and performance. The whole range of themes are built on top of the world’s most popular WordPress theme framework, the Genesis Framework. With the purchase of the Pro Plus Package you receive instant and unlimited
Naughty or Nice: Check Your Ecommerce Site Twice! .
Every year it can feel like the holidays sneak up on us. We assemble, we strategize, and we take the necessary precautions yet we frequently feel like we are scrambling. For ecommerce businesses, this time of year is crucial not only for generating revenue but for generating recurrent relationships
Long-Term Exposure to Flat Design: How the Trend Slowly Makes Users Less Efficient
Young adult users seem to rely heavily on hovering as a strategy to determine clickability. When asked how she knew what was clickable on web pages, one user said, “By scrolling over it … then you know. Otherwise I actually don’t know. Some stuff you assume. But it’s nice when links are
Dropdowns: Design Guidelines
A while back, as part of a presentation on web-usability methods, we ran a small user test for the audience. When completing a registration page, our test participant had to enter her address on a form with a text field for the name of the street but a dropdown menu for the type of street (Avenue
Tabs, Used Right
If you follow the design guidelines in this article, users will know how to use your tabs without further exploration or error-prone guessing. This again means that they can devote all their time and brainpower to understanding the content and features that you’re making available under these
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
Why AI and Viztech hold the key to a safer internet
Leading figures in both government and academia have been focused on a common cause in recent months – how best to solve the growing problem of online terrorist content. However, the jury’s out on whether the big digital media players, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, are up to the job
Blockchain’s Mainstream Debut Awaits Dev Ecosystem Evolution
Given that networks like EOS and Ethereum are ground zero for blockchain progress making it easy and inexpensive for developers to create things on these blockchains is paramount. This is a notion that’s been embraced by the blockchain community more in recent years. Major projects now focus the
How to Get Away From a Growth Mindset and Start to Scale
Clean data changes everything. Move integral datasets to the forefront so they’re highly visible. Hint: You can train your software to use metadata to sort all of your data, ensuring the most frequently used and most important datasets remain top of mind. Also, store the most important data in
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7 Best Free Tools for Bootstrapped Startups
Plenty of other companies compete in the crowded analytics space, but Google’s free options provide everything small companies need. You can access intuitive charts, detailed reports, and more, then share your findings with your teams through other Google products to design more effective
ShiftLeft Raises $20 Million to Ensure Security Keeps Pace with Accelerating Software
As the company works toward its aggressive growth goals, ShiftLeft has also assembled a new advisory board of prominent security and development experts, including Bob Flores (former CTO of the Central Intelligence Agency), Craig Rosen (CISO of AppDynamics), Yonatan Ryabinski (chief enterprise
Defeated By a Dialog Box | The Same Link Twice on the Same Page: Do Duplicates Help or Hurt?
The Same Link Twice on the Same Page: Do Duplicates Help or Hurt?
Providing redundancy on webpages can sometimes help people find their way. However, redundancy increases the interaction cost. Duplicating links is one of the four major dangerous navigation techniques that cause cognitive strain. Even if you increase traffic to a specific page by adding redundant
Scoped Search: Dangerous, but Sometimes Useful
Users’ understanding of the ‘entire’ site depends on their mental model of the website or organization. For example, some visitors to the website for the University of Pennsylvania’s business school (The Wharton School) might think of the school as the University of Pennsylvania. Others
Fight Against “Right-Rail Blindness”
Avoid turning the side column into a junk drawer. Have a strategy for tailored content based on users’ needs. Anticipate the user’s task and offer recommendations to match. Don’t display the same set of links or articles across different pages: it undermines the usefulness of the suggestions
