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...
Use a slider only when the precise value won’t matter to the user, but rather only the approximate range. Make sure that the users can select that range correctly without having to struggle too much to hit a precise value. In addition, any slider labels must be displayed above or beside the
Designing and developing a product often involves a large team of people with different backgrounds and experiences who must be on the same page about the project goals, the user needs and behaviors, and even the component processes involved. This common understanding is often built with
Are teens getting better or are websites getting better? Probably a bit of both. We observed many of the same bad user habits among teens in our last study as we saw in our first study, back in 2004. Thus, the improved performance obviously stems in part from improvements in website design. That
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
JS-Kit Score: Turn Your Site into a Localized Digg
Of course, because this is the only page on ReadWriteWeb that is running a Score widget, it won’t have any data on which content is the highest rated site wide. But the ease of installation is what really catches the eye. JS-Kit is building a suite of tools for web publishers that are modular
Sharing Economy 2.0: Technology is Removing the Need for Single Asset Ownership
Slock.it is a German-based company that is building real-world applications for the sharing economy, by connecting human-machine and machine-machine sharing using blockchains and IoT and BoLT. Among their many endeavors, they are developing smart switches which can be used with smart contracts to
Remote UX Work: The NN/g Case Study
But developing new UX talent is also a major challenge to remote work. New UX professionals often learn by closely shadowing or working alongside more experienced colleagues. Many people think that new UX employees shouldn’t be remote: they’ll feel disconnected from the organization, may be
defeated by a dialog box
Popups: 10 Problematic Trends and Alternatives
Some corporate websites link to content or applications that live on subdomains and external sites. Before users navigate away from the main site, a modal overlay appears to alert users of the impending transition. This type of popup is problematic because it overemphasizes the transition, making
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
When they call a regular cab, riders have no control — hence, all the anxieties listed above. With Uber, they suddenly get all the control they need: once they order an “uber”, they see how far away the car is and how much they have to wait, they know in advance how much the ride will cost
Large Devices Preferred for Important Tasks
Typing on mobile devices is still a pain. Even alternative input options like swipe keyboards and voice-to-text are often inaccurate and slow users down. Users fear making mistakes and anticipate the interaction cost of data entry on their mobile devices. Particularly if the activity is personally
Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking
In this step, the team moves through the stickies on the board collaboratively and clusters similar notes that belong to the same quadrant. Name your clusters with themes that represent each group (for example, “validation from others” or “research”). Repeat themes in each quadrant if
Cognitive Maps, Mind Maps, and Concept Maps: Definitions
Cognitive mapping can help UX researchers understand users’ mental models of a system or of a process. This understanding can be crucial when researching complex systems or even when embarking in the design of a new product. Mental-model elicitation is usually carried out through individual
How to Recover Abandoned Shopping Carts for WooCommerce Stores
Imagine this: You’ve spent months getting your new eCommerce shop up and running. You set up WooCommerce, installed a bunch of plugins, found a perfect theme, dotted all your i’s and crossed all your t’s on tax compliance, logistics, and customer service. You roll out your beautiful new shop
defeated by a dialog box
A First Look at WordCamp US .
People of all skill levels are welcome to join in contribution to WCUS 2018 Contributor Day. The event will be held Sunday, December 9th at the Music City Center in Exhibit Hall B. Teams include Accessibility, Community, Core. Design, Documentation, Gutenberg, Hosting, Marketing, Meta, Mobile
WordPress for Good: The Price of Water .
This year, WP Engine partnered with The Lovie Awards to bring Lovie For Good, a project highlighting digital experiences bringing positive change to the world. From an algorithm to promote compassionate leadership to campaigns recognizing the importance of fresh air, these winners are using the
Breaking Web Design Conventions = Breaking the User Experience
Instead of the traditional global navigation bar with several categories, the Bucknell site has an extremely narrow and deep hierarchy, with just 2 menu items: Start Exploring, (which has a drop-down for audience-based navigation) and The Everything Directory (which leads to an A-Z index). On
Toggle-Switch Guidelines
If immediate results are not achievable or seem ill-suited, an alternative (i.e. radio buttons or a single checkbox — see chart above) should be used instead. If you’re considering including toggles in long forms where other types of form fields are present, and users will need to click a
Personas vs. Jobs-to-Be-Done
If your organization uses personas already, but they don’t include the rich goals and behavioral details that are key to having effective personas, start by augmenting the persona artifacts with JTBD-like information: instead of simply listing the persona’s goals, consider formatting this
Rapid Experiments are Key to Making AI Technology Buy vs Build Decisions
The good news is that there are a broad landscape of vendors today that can work with clients to deliver all or some of these capabilities, becoming their AI team or an extension of their AI team. Enterprises should view the decision, not as “build or buy,” but as “build and buy,” where
Why AI and Viztech hold the key to a safer internet
Driven by deep learning and neural networks, it’s similar to the technology behind the iPhone X’s facial recognition system, but much more sophisticated. Rather than being reactionary, it’s predictive, filtering, identifying and categorising video content before it even appears online. In
These Are The Concerns Slowly Killing Ad-Tech
Black Mirror, recently bought by Netflix, is a hugely popular TV series that is a dark, twisted but spot-on portrayal of the possible ramifications of technology in the future. Advertisements for the show are ironically targeting ad block users, and some argue, are “intentionally creepy.” For
5 Real Life Blockchain Implementations Outside of Cryptocurrency
Medicalchain aims to use blockchain technology to securely store medical records. Using a distributed ledger for healthcare is a godsend as it allows doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacists, and health insurers to have more immediate access to health records, which could help save lives
defeated by a dialog box
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
Purpose, Balance and Interface Are Keys to Successful Teams
Today’s teams have so much technology for connecting; it leads to a mindset of always working all the time everywhere. In their book The Power Of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz point out long hours at one thing is a recipe for mediocrity. To become great at something, you need to
Defeated By a Dialog Box | Iterative Design and Testing of Icon Usability
Iterative Design and Testing of Icon Usability
We clearly had to get rid of the human in this icon, and for the second color icon, we retained only the lightning and the cogwheels. Users still complained that the thunderbolt looked too much like lightning striking the machinery and destroying it. We finally decided to get rid of the references
Beware Horizontal Scrolling and Mimicking Swipe on Desktop
Netflix.com: In its regular state, there are no visual cues to indicate that more content is available (top). Arrows appear only on hover (bottom). Additionally, to see more content within a category, users must hover over the arrow. When they do so, the strip starts to move; if users want to see
The Roots of Minimalism in Web Design
Proponents argue that minimalism reduces information overload: the more features and content you can cut out, the less people have to deal with. Minimalism done well can also create a positive emotional experience for users. People do tend to respond better to aesthetically-pleasing interfaces. As
