In-context descriptions or hints can help clarify what goes inside each form field, and therefore improve completion and conversion rates. There are many ways to provide hints. A common implementation is by inserting instructions within form fields. Unfortunately, user testing continually shows that placeholders in form fields often hurt usability more than help it.
Labels and Placeholders
Labels tell users what information belongs in a given form field and are usually positioned outside the form field. Placeholder text, located inside a form field, is an additional hint, description, or example of the information required for a particular field. These hints typically disappear when the user types in the field.
Whether you're designing web pages, web-based applications (e.g., SaaS), or native mobile apps, one of the basic building blocks is the humble text-input field: a box where the user can enter some text. Uses of this widget are plenty and not the topic of this article. We should point out that there
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
Research on a wide variety of hypertext systems has shown that users need response times of less than one second when moving from one page to another if they are to navigate freely through an information space. Traditional human factors research into response times also shows the need for
Can the blockchain and IoT solve international freight’s issues?
DS: The main technological innovation of IOTA is the Tangle, which is a completely new Blockchain design that gets rid of the blocks and introduces a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) (NOTE: you can read the whitepaper on this technology at http://iotatoken.com/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf). The way the Tangle
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
RW Q&A: Monisha Perkash, founder of Lumo Bodytech
Perkash came up with the idea for Lumo seeing her co-founder and CTO, Andrew Chang, suffering from debilitating back pain. Perkash is married to a spine and sports physician, so she could understand how important posture really was. Perkash advised Andrew to attend a posture class and as a result
When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps
Storytelling and visualization are essential facets of journey mapping because they are effective mechanisms for conveying information in a way that is memorable, concise and that creates a shared vision. Fragmented understanding is chronic in organizations where KPIs are assigned and measured per
shows placeholders in form fields are harmful of
Brand Vocabulary in the Context of UX: Key Terms Defined
Typically, brands have a set of 3–7 brand attributes, which are well-defined within the context of the organization. In both the Walmart example above and the Spotify example below, the organization has taken time to provide specific definitions for what these potentially vague terms mean for
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
At first, you might think that such an innovation in the field of reverse logistics should not be discussed in a UX article, but many pieces of the user experience are improved by optimizing this backend operation. A traditional UI-only solution to the problem of high demand would be to clearly
UX Mapping Methods Compared: A Cheat Sheet
Think of service blueprints as a part two to customer journey maps. Similar to customer journey maps, blueprints are instrumental in complex scenarios spanning many service-related offerings. Blueprinting is an ideal approach to experiences that are omnichannel, involve multiple touchpoints, or
Store Finders: Why People Still Need Locator Links
While a lot of shopping does happen completely online, many shoppers begin the research process online but complete the purchase in person. (The online–offline combo is a key element in omnichannel customer journeys.) Thus, a tool that allows users to see only products available in a specific
Remote UX Work: The NN/g Case Study
UX design often requires collaboration to generate ideas. In-person ideation workshops are much easier than the remote equivalent. When ideation participants are in the same room together, they have a shared context — it’s easy to see what they’re sketching on a sheet of paper and what
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: EMEA
Last week, WP Engine employees from our Limerick and London offices came together for the bi-annual All Hands event in Limerick. All Hands is a 2-day event where employees come to engage with, collaborate, and strategize with employees from other offices. This year’s theme was “Boldly
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WP Engine Named the #4 Best Place to Work in Texas
Texas’ economy is the second largest in the United States, a measure of success that’s only expected to continue; Texas ranks first for its growth prospects due to impressive growth forecasts and competitive employment rates across the state. To tap into this statewide success, however
WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner Named as 2019 Great Place to Work For All Leadership Award Honoree
The award itself was inspired by recent research conducted by Great Place to Work, which surveyed about 500,000 U.S. employees at nearly 800 public and privately-owned companies—mostly based in the U.S. Employees were asked how often they were included in larger, strategic decisions, whether they
5 Steps to Service Blueprinting
In a service blueprint, customer actions are depicted in sequence, from start to finish. A customer-journey map is an ideal starting point for this step. Do note that a blueprint’s focus is the employee experience, not the customer’s experience, thus this portion does not need to be a fully
User Experience vs. Customer Experience: What’s the difference?
However, it’s not the case that the relationship-level experience is better or more important than the experience of a single interaction. We’ve seen many grandiose plans falter on a few poorly written words of UI copy. While it is important to design the longitudinal experience, it’s equally
Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid | Nielsen Norman Group
For sites that have only a small number of global categories, hiding them in a drop-down menu doesn’t make sense. T-Mobile, for example, has placed all of their service offerings and devices within a drop-down menu labeled Shop. But the Shop menu has only 5 links, which could easily fit in a
Microsoft-GitHub Purchase’s Huge Price Tag Belies Big Competitive Worries
And, now Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub repeats the pattern. GitHub is a software company that few people have ever heard of, but on which programmers, developers, and techies depend. The price tag, which is approximately 30 times GitHub’s annual recurring revenue
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
Dear Senior Citizens – You Folks are the Easy Target of Hackers
The victim receives a call from a stranger posing as his or her grandkid, using a frantic-sounding voice, that he or she is in trouble. Arrest, accident, or a robbery. Want to up the drama? The caller sometimes claims to be stuck in a foreign country — and to impersonate more intensity, throw
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
usability placeholders in form fields are harmful worst
Is Artificial Intelligence Still Relevant for Startups?
The company is probably not a scam — they may be “bragging.” Many companies are just using the term “articifial intelligence” because they plan to use this technology at some point. They just can’t afford actually to do the work AI entails – now. Due
Trademark Protection for Startups
Once infringement of your trademark is discovered you must act quickly to stop the same. There are numerous ways to enforce your trademark depending upon how it is being infringed upon. For instance, if a competitor has registered and is using a domain name that is similar to your trademark, a
Placeholders in Form Fields Are Harmful | Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored
Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored
Sadly, in this case, neither search, nor navigation, nor the Population Finder led the majority of users to the correct answer. Indeed, search was particularly bad on this site. One user said, "I know where I can probably find it faster: Google," and promptly abandoned the official Census Bureau
Four Bad Designs
My bet for biggest business loss is the content-poor jazz page. Our user testing of product pages shows that people are much more likely to buy when a page answers their questions about its offerings. With virtually no information, it's pretty much guaranteed that this Jazz at Lincoln Center page
Kill the 53-Day Meme
I arrived at the estimate by quite simple means: I collected estimates of the number of web servers from many public sources, such as the various WWW robots (programs that traverse the Web and move on from each server to any other servers it links to). I used the average of the numbers from those
