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 first supports the natural reading order in English and other languages that read left-to-right. Many other button sets have a natural progression (say, Yes / No or Previous / Next). You should always list these so that the reading order matches the logical order — in this case, OK / Cancel. Further, assuming users need OK much more frequently than...
Even if it were desirable, full control is becoming impossible with networked computers. User control assumes you are the only actor in the system, but these days, millions of people are on the Internet and can change the system behind your back. Indeed, it is one of the benefits of the Internet
When pages feature both vertical and horizontal scrolling, users have to move their viewport in two dimensions, which makes it hard to cover the entire space. For people with poor spatial visualization skills, it's especially challenging to plan movements along two axes across an invisible plane
Last but not least, if one of your priorities is providing a user experience that is consistent with the operating system and with the majority of the other apps available on that platform, then native apps are the way to go. That doesn’t mean that you cannot provide a good mobile user experience
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
Can Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies Alone Save $2 Trillion in Preventing Cybercrime?
It’s through smart contracts that transactions can be made whilst their details can be kept both transparent and secure. Writing about their new smart contracts-based Ethereum trading platform, Confideal stated: “To put it simply, code is not law, but smart contracts created on a platform
Zest labs brings IoT and blockchain to the fresh food supply chain
If you think about quality in freshness, it’s more than just sensor data thrown into a block or a transaction in a block and so we see the opportunity to take this universal ZIPR code and for those folks where blockchain makes sense to their business. Given the very nature of what blockchain
User Experience vs. Customer Experience: What’s the difference?
The widest scope of user experience is the relationship level (aka the customer experience). At the relationship level we focus on the lifetime experience that a person has with an organization and his cumulative impression as a patron of that organization. Rather than assessing the quality of one
ok-cancel or cancel-ok? the trouble with buttons
Social Impact and Sustainability on Corporate Websites
The heading Corporate Responsibility made some users feel like the website was using overly complex, corporate jargon to describe its social efforts. Conclusion How companies act along with how they portray themselves on their corporate websites matters. Users today expect companies to take a
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
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
If you run at least one user study per week, it's worth building a dedicated usability laboratory. For most companies, however, it's fine to conduct tests in a conference room or an office — as long as you can close the door to keep out distractions. What matters is that you get hold of real
Amazon: No Longer the Role Model for Ecommerce Design
It's good that Amazon offers fully localized sites in six countries outside the United States, but there is no integration across the sites. If you're a French user looking at a book on the American site, for example, there's no indication that you can order the same book from Amazon.fr or that a
6 Rules for Persuasive Storytelling
Along with understanding the terminology of your audience, you need to know what your audience members care about. Are they only interested in how much money the product will cost? Do they have a strict timeline they need to adhere to? These are concerns that will be running through their minds as
It’s Time to Take Advantage of Amazing Web Week Savings
WP Engine is the WordPress Digital Experience Platform that gives companies of all sizes the agility, performance, intelligence and integrations they need to drive their business forward faster. WP Engine’s combination of tech and innovation and an award-winning team of WordPress experts are
ok-cancel or cancel-ok? the trouble with buttons
WordPress for Good: The Price of Water .
Earlier this year, we honored Webby for Good nominees using WordPress to bring positive changes to the world. On November 15th, 2018 industry experts and technology innovators from across the EU will meet for the Webby’s European sister show, The Lovie Awards. Winners are selected for creating a
StudioPress Theme Spotlight: Generate Pro
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to get readers to take action, investigate a product, or change a behavior. The success of your email marketing, however, comes from your email list. If you need to generate more and better email leads, you need web design that specifically
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
Augmented Reality: What Does It Mean for UX?
In the absence of an AR system, the mechanic would have to remember not only how to use the smartphone or the desktop to find information about the part, but also the part number itself (unless the mechanic would have chosen to write it down or use another form of external memory — a decision
Narrative Biases: When Storytelling HURTS User Experience
It’s easy to overlook sample size and instead look for a story that provides some reasonable explanation for why events happened. But a few instances should not be presumed to represent meaningful behavior patterns, unless there is specific contextual information to the contrary. (For example
3 Surprising Benefits of the Cloud in IoT
In the past, industrial companies have questioned the protection of the cloud because they viewed it as losing the ability to touch and feel their data. Much like consumers who were reluctant to move their savings from under their mattress into a bank account, many businesses have held similar
How to Improve Digital Security for Your Business
The bad news is that numerous breach strategies still work, including malware, phishing, skimming, hacking, and inadvertent disclosure of information on the Internet. These attacks cost businesses a significant amount of money. The IBM-sponsored 2018 Cost of a Data Breach study conducted by
The Business Benefits of Visualizing Your Data
Because visualizations are easier to read and understand, that means more people can get involved in the analytical processes. More importantly, having access to the dynamic and active systems used in data visualization means much better opportunities for collaboration. You can get more of the team
Coming to Terms – Why Terms of Use are Critical for Your Company
While this may seem like a nefarious or underhanded practice to take advantage of unwitting users, it is actually business critical for the software publisher to be able to prevent abuse of the software or service by malicious users, hackers, or even competitors. These terms also limit the
ok-cancel or cancel-ok? the trouble with buttons
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
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
OK-Cancel or Cancel-OK? The Trouble With Buttons | Breaking Web Design Conventions = Breaking the User Experience
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
Iterative Design and Testing of Icon Usability
The second row shows our next round of attempts where a person was used to represent the developers. As you can see, we couldn't restrain ourselves from having a propellerhead despite the fact that we had rejected this aspect from the first iteration of the home page. The first developer icon was
100 Million Websites
Even though there will be many more sites to come in absolute numbers, what matters to the user experience is the rate of change , which has stabilized. From tech explosion to commodity in only 15 years: that's in itself an indication of the fast-moving nature of the modern world. It probably took
