Articles from around the web on all things user experience, sorted chronologically.
September 22, 2020 — Errors can provide a lot of diagnostic information about the root causes of UI problems and the impact such problems have on the user experience. The frequency of errors—even trivial ones—also provides a quantitative description of the performance of a task.
Read this storySeptember 21, 2020 — A few years ago, someone emailed me with a question: What makes UX writing good? They knew the basics, they said. And they knew what good writing looked like. But they wanted to know specifically about UX writing. How to think about it and evaluate it, what approach to take...
Read this storySeptember 21, 2020 — Donna Lichaw introduces story as a tool for building customer journeys — and a powerful tool for communication. People are natural storytellers. In realizing this, we can see that an experience is a story, and people are the heroes of their own story.
Read this storySeptember 21, 2020 — 36% of mobile sites fail to include the full category hierarchy in the breadcrumbs on mobile product pages. This can lead users to feeling lost, and uncertain of how to find the product they’re looking for. In this article, we’ll cover our mobile research findings on how to best implement breadcrumbs on mobile product pages.
Read this storySeptember 20, 2020 — Task analysis refers to the broad practice of learning about how users work (i.e., the tasks they perform) to achieve their goals. Task analysis is crucial for user experience, because a design that solves the wrong problem (i.e., doesn’t support users’ tasks) will fail, no matter how good its UI.
Read this storySeptember 17, 2020 — For the most part, always open links in the same browser tab or window. However, if you hypothesize that opening a new tab or window may help users in their task, don’t base this decision on the type of link or content alone. Rely on observational research methods...
Read this storySeptember 13, 2020 — Benchmark your UX by first determining appropriate metrics and a study methodology. Then track these metrics across different releases of your product by running studies that follow the same established methodology.
Read this storySeptember 7, 2020 — This is an excerpt from Amy Bucher’s book. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to structure users’ meaningful choices on their behavior-change journey so that it’s easier for people to select good options that ultimately support their goals.
Read this storySeptember 6, 2020 — Objects with similar visual traits are most likely related — or at least they should be, when it comes to user-interface design. Clear, consistently applied visual rules for each type of UI element are critical to helping people understand and use the design easily.
Read this storySeptember 4, 2020 — Choosing good colors for your charts is hard. This article tries to make it easier. I want you to feel more confident in your color choices. And if you have no sense for colors at all, here’s my attempt to help you find good ones anyway.
Read this storySeptember 3, 2020 — Consistent, and scalable spacing helps you eliminate guesswork whilst designing and developing. It requires fewer design decisions. And it enables a much faster turnaround on projects. The 8pt Grid is probably one of the most commonly used Layout Grid Systems there is, and for very good reason.
Read this storySeptember 1, 2020 — Brutalism has become a catchall term for websites that flout the conventions of modern web design with a kind of droll, utilitarian nostalgia for the early web. Think JNCO jeans in a sea of khaki Wordpress chino sameness. Things animate that shouldn’t, things don’t animate that should...
Read this storySeptember 1, 2020 — Usability testing can be used to uncover problems and assess the experience. Many usability tests will play both roles simultaneously, formative and summative, so the sample size ends up being a balance to meet the needs of both.
Read this storyAugust 27, 2020 — Like it or not, a Search UX is an integral part of any app UX these days. In this article, I will cover everything you need to know about an End-to-End Search UX. This includes how to design for a before search, during search and after search experience across different apps and use cases.
Read this storyAugust 26, 2020 — The ultimate goal of a website or a mobile application is conversion, and forms play a vital role in doing so. Therefore, getting a form’s UX right is critical for business and it becomes a top most task of a product designer to design a form, which is straightforward to work through, simple to understand, and easy to fill in.
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