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...
Tooltips are hard to discover because they often lack visual cues. If tooltips are erratically displayed throughout your site, people may never discover them. It’s important to be consistent and provide tooltips for all the elements in your design rather than just for some. If only some of the
We get countless questions about small details in UI design that don't matter much to the overall user experience. One classic is the order of buttons in dialog boxes: OK / Cancel Cancel / OK Both are reasonable choices, and people can argue for hours about their preferences: Listing OK
Some winning applications had special small control panels for direct access to important operations that would usually have required a switch in context. This doesn't quite equate to a modeless design, because complex applications do tend to have several distinct stages or areas of workflow and
Blockchain in Retail: Changing the Shopping Experience
From a more efficient supply chain aligned with cyclical end-user needs and marketplaces with higher quality components to the ability to provide the most authentic products possible for consumers, blockchain technology is altering how the retail environment works to enhance the overall experience
Blockchain Trends that Everyone Should Watch Out For 2019
I’m not going to be inept or sufficiently reckless to anticipate that the estimation of cryptographic forms of money is going to shoot into the stratosphere (once more) in 2019. As I’ve said previously, guessing on the estimation of these computerized resources isn’t my business
How Blockchain Can Put an End to Conflict Minerals
During the transfer stage, the purchaser gets a number of tokens equivalent to the ordered tonnage, transferred to their account via blockchain. In the third and final reporting stage, the report is generated, showing the percentage of documented material that moves through the supply chain. This
Unmoderated User Tests: How and Why to Do Them
For extremely large qualitative studies, consider tools which can collect some quantitative measures or which offer automatic transcription. These features don’t eliminate the need to carefully review your recordings, but they can certainly expedite the process by directing your attention to
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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
Net Promoter Score: What a Customer-Relations Metric Can Tell You About Your User Experience
While other satisfaction metrics also suffer from the disadvantages mentioned above, NPS has another major problem: its calculation method ignores a lot of the information provided by the ratings by grouping them into three bins (promoters, passives, and detractors) and then ignoring the passives
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
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
How to Display Taxes, Fees, and Shipping Charges on Ecommerce Sites
Under the Shipping & Returns accordion menu on the same product page, there was a brief mention about the surcharge directing users to the aforementioned-surcharge detail near the price, which was not helpful. However, clicking the link to the Shipping and Delivery
Recapping the State of the Word 2018
WordPress is entirely portable making it both free and priceless. WordPress is also scalable. Mullenweg said that means that you can keep WordPress with you your entire life. It will grow with you. You can be sure, that what you out into WordPress now, you’ll be able to get out a decade later
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A Look Back at the 2018 WP Engine Summit
In our third round of keynotes on Thursday, we heard from tech leaders about breaking edge technologies and the ethics that accompany them. Barb Palsner, Global Product Partnership at Google, talked about the importance of a mobile-first approach and technologies like AMP and PWA that can work
Hackathon 2019 Goes Boldly Where No Engineers Have Gone Before
Last week, our first hackathon of the year kicked off with more than a dozen teams and respective projects. After the 48-hour build period was up, those groups presented their cutting edge ideas to a packed audience of WP Engine employees. The presentations lasted an entire day, and only after all
Contextual Menus: Delivering Relevant Tools for Tasks
Don’t make users scan through a long list of disorganized commands. To help users focus on the most relevant options, place the ones used most often at the top. Because people scan lists from top to bottom, place seldomly used commands low down in the menu. Let users decide which option best
Beware Horizontal Scrolling and Mimicking Swipe on Desktop
However, because horizontal scrolling is a lot less common on desktops, users often have no idea that they can discover content by “swiping” on large screens. Since people interact with mobile and desktop devices differently, the one-size-fits-all approach can backfire. The key point is that
Case Study: Iterative Design and Prototype Testing of the NN/g Homepage
Early layouts used a grid of squares to present articles, videos, and training events. Users said they liked this grid — but when we added an alternative layout using a list format for articles, people unanimously gravitated towards the list version. (Pay attention to what people do, which is
Internet of Warnings: How Smart Technology Can Threaten Your Business’s Security
Science fiction technology may not be as far off as we believe. The Internet of Things (IoT) uses the powerful combination of Wi-Fi and cloud technology to send information and perform actions through devices with Internet capabilities. This advance stems from the use of telemetry, decades-old
Past Bitcoin to Making Money from the Blockchain
There are jobs listed from all over the world for every specialty from developer to trader to meme specialist (it’s real – look it up). There are also gig economy opportunities for blockchain and cryptocurrency companies if you don’t want to quit your day job. You can even do gigs and get
The Biggest Hacking Risk? Your Employees
Just as importantly, HR representatives must be aware that negligence isn’t the only cause for an internal data breach. In fact, a significant number of cybercrimes are inside jobs — at least 22 percent, according to Shred-it’s report — so HR personnel should be on the lookout for
Mistakes University Students and Graduates Make in Their Jobs
The other mistake most of the students commit in their career is that they do not use customize resume. Resume is the base to the company where one can judge your capabilities, knowledge, skills, abilities. When you are applying for the same post in different companies you might print multiple
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Top Outsourcing Destinations in Latin America for 2019
Though part of the U.S., Puerto Rico is a popular software development outsourcing hub due to its cultural similarities with both the U.S. and Latin America, its local tax incentives, and its highly-trained workforce. As the island undergoes its recovery from the devastating Hurricane Maria, many
Building a Startup Culture that Encourages Wellness
The reason that’s the case is that startups establish much of their workplace culture early on in their development, and there’s a risk that they could enshrine some negative practices into the company ethos that won’t be easy to shake. That’s one of the factors feeding a
Defeated By a Dialog Box | Best Practices for Homepage Links on websites
Best Practices for Homepage Links on websites
In most cases, using different labels for the home links to the various homepages (subsites vs. official site) will help. As with all links, provide as much information scent as needed to help users disambiguate the meaning of the link. In some situations, an abbreviated URL (e.g
Store Finders and Locators
Ninety-seven percent is an astoundingly high success rate. Of course, finding an appropriate location address is a simple task compared to using other website services. Consider, for example, the much higher complexity of tasks such as managing your investments, researching car purchases and
Why Country Sites Are So Bad
When they're fed substandard websites, local customers notice. In our testing of B2B websites, we often hear business customers express contempt for international vendors' localized sites. Users suspect that these sites have impoverished product information that's been translated without an
