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...
Personalization and customization should enhance an already good experience, rather than try to fix a poor one. They should be used thoughtfully, with a clear purpose. Consider that both customization and personalization require work and maintenance over time. Personalization requires regular
Today's children will spend a large fraction of their lives communicating with computers. We should think about the trade-offs between ease of learning and power in computer-human interfaces. If there were a compensating return in increased power, it would not be unreasonable to expect a person to
Having the right tools available in any given situation makes all the difference, especially when it comes to correctly and efficiently getting things done. Without the relevant tools, we waste time and are left feeling frustrated, lost, and confused. Just as bad: when there are too many tools
Why Small Businesses Need to Be Vigilant About IoT Security Too
Many devices come out of the box with easy-to-access administrator credentials. For example, they often have username and password combinations like “admin/1234.” Even popular network devices like routers are wont to have such default settings. This is among the most common ways attackers and
Cryptocurrency Fraud Is the Exception, Not the Rule
And of course, legitimate services attract fake copycats. For instance, an app posing as MyEtherWallet, one of the most popular services for storing Ethereum and other coins, rose to the top of Apple’s App Store charts in December 2017 before it was revealed to be a scam. Although these
Shaping Healthcare Ecosystem with Blockchain
To overcome the shortcomings, blockchain technology facilitates interoperability by sharing the data of different physicians. It has the power to connect all the fragmented systems to generate quick and better results similar to a distributed network of systems. For instance, patients with similar
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
While “branding” products with an identifying mark (definition #1) has been around since people first began trading and selling goods, the use of brands to differentiate products — to truly attempt to influence consumers’ perceptions and choices within a market (definition #2) — is a
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The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
For sure, anybody who works on a design project will have a more accurate and detailed mental model of the user interface than an outsider. If you target a broad consumer audience, you will also have a higher IQ than your average user, higher literacy levels, and, most likely, you’ll be younger
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
In their definition of user experience, Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen claim that “the first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother.” Brands that choose to address an unmet user need at the core of their business are
When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods
The distinction here is an important one, and goes well beyond the narrow view of qualitative as “open ended” as in an open-ended survey question. Rather, studies that are qualitative in nature generate data about behaviors or attitudes based on observing them directly, whereas in quantitative
Creepiness–Convenience Tradeoff
Similarly, when it comes to creepy technologies in general, we expect to see the same type of bimodal distribution: Some people will be apathetic about the creepiness, and will adopt them with no apparent creepiness–convenience evaluation. For these people, the cost of lost privacy is very low
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
To identify a design's most important usability problems, testing 5 users is typically enough. Rather than run a big, expensive study, it's a better use of resources to run many small tests and revise the design between each one so you can fix the usability flaws as you identify them. Iterative
StudioPress Theme Spotlight: Generate Pro
In an effort to help the WordPress community grow and prosper as well as expand and add value to the WP Engine Digital Experience platform, WP Engine recently acquired StudioPress. For our customers, this means, in addition to the Genesis framework, they’ll have access to 35 premium themes. All
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Bringing Array Themes into the WP Engine Family
At WP Engine, we’ve realized this is just as important as the speed and SEO that helps you show up in search rankings, or the analytics and targeting features that help you cater to narrower sets of demographics. Great-looking websites are the basis of effective digital experiences, and with our
WP Engine Named a Great Place to Work in Ireland
Almost three years ago, WP Engine expanded its global presence and opened a second international office in Limerick, Ireland (our first was in London). Known as a city where technology and culture collide, Limerick has been the perfect location for WP Engine to grow and evolve. At its start, the
Web Page Footers 101: Design Patterns and When to Use Each
Some companies are so massive that they own or preside over dozens of other companies. Some use universal navigation to connect these child companies with the parent one. It can also be helpful to include a list of subsidiaries and brands in the footer to reinforce awareness of other brands or
Beware Horizontal Scrolling and Mimicking Swipe on Desktop
Dennys.com: This design offers obvious global navigation in addition to arrows to advance through content. In testing this site, a user never used the arrows to swipe between pages. Instead, he relied entirely on the global navigation and was able to complete all the tasks successfully. Note, too
User Intent Affects Filter Design
Net-a-porter.com: The moment between when a facet is selected (in this case, Black) and the new results are displayed minimizes visual distractions; the entire results area dims and an animated spinner shows progress. Even with a fast system, designs should avoid visual changes that happen too
Is Data the Next Front in the Trade Wars?
Although the Equifax blunder has shown that personal data integrity may not be highly prized by the private sector, the US government is taking a much harder line, with CFIUS blocking more transactions over the last seven years than the previous 37 years combined. This is also evident from the
Five Best Open-Source Antivirus’ for Carefree Cyber-Threat Protection
You can detect a lot of different types of malicious software by using open source antivirus products. Experienced developers in both fields will tell you this is the most secure way to connect to the internet today. These programs simply make their code available for free so you can modify and
Three things every IoT manufacturer should do to improve security
When it comes to security, corporations are struggling to keep up with the speed at which problems evolve. For example, a researcher with Google Project Zero recently discovered a flaw in Broadcom Wi-Fi chips that could allow someone to remotely execute code on affected iPhones, Nexuses and
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
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Enterprises and AI Need to Connect Better – Here’s Why
Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic across the board. Everyone from developers, to data scientists, journalists, and general user-bases of all profiles are talking about it on a global scale. Entrepreneurs have taken notice of the benefits of AI in most areas of everyday life, whether
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
Defeated By a Dialog Box | Intelligent Assistants Have Poor Usability: A User Study of Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri
Intelligent Assistants Have Poor Usability: A User Study of Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri
During the usability-testing portion of the study, we asked participants to use the assistants to complete a variety of tasks, ranging from simple (e.g., weather for the 4th of July weekend, pharmacy hours for a nearby Walgreens, when George Clooney was born) to more complicated (e.g., the year
Give Thanks for Good UX
Thanksgiving is fast approaching in the US. So, in the holiday spirit, we’d like to take a moment to express appreciation for some of the designs that bring us joy. I know that sometimes we, UX professionals, can get a reputation as curmudgeons: always criticizing and pointing out flaws. However
Because of the heroic efforts of the developers and designers who stepped in to fix Healthcare.gov, the website is in much better shape in 2017 (although not all of our guidelines have been followed and some new problems have been introduced). Kudos to the "rebel alliance" of digital-government
