CategoryUsability

October 16, 2015 — Building persuasive user experiences is like a relationship and you need to treat it like one. So, what do you want? A one-night stand or a lasting partnership? There are three common challenges when engaging users with a product: Sign-up challenge: seducing your users, first-time use challenge: falling in love with your product, and ongoing engagement challenge: staying in love. Your approach to engaging users should be appropriately adjusted to the relationship you have with them. We will examine the three stages of a user relationship and what tools are appropriate to use for each challenge. This article is a summary of Anders’ talk on designing with persuasive patterns at the Push Conference 2015. Read more…

July 21, 2015 — A lab environment can never replicate the natural environment of the participant, and the mere presence of a research facilitator or moderator creates a dimension of artificiality that can thwart the research goals. How you moderate will have a significant impact on the quality of your research findings. The goal, of course, is to get realistic findings. An effective moderator understands how the nature and timing of questions can influence — and sometimes even drive — the outcome. A skillful moderator is adept at managing these potentially conflicting goals in order to ensure the integrity of the research and equally adept at ensuring that their findings appropriately inform their business partners’ decisions. Read more…

May 25, 2015 — In this article, Colleen Roller will show us that defaults are powerful because they provide a way for users to passively decide, thereby easing the difficulty and effort associated with decision-making. Also, that providing a default option is not always appropriate. Sometimes, it’s better for users to make an explicit choice — especially when they are more likely to follow through with a decision and be more committed to taking action on it. It’s imperative to understand that the design matters. UX design professionals have a responsibility to understand how design itself influences — and sometimes even drives — user perception and behavior and, therefore, decision outcomes. The decisions we make as designers matter. Read more…

May 14, 2015 — When it comes to providing pleasure or delight in our websites and apps, animations contribute a lot. But always remember that they must be functional first. In this article, Amit Daliot shows us video examples that show functional animation. The following rules map well to every animation Amit encountered so far. They helped him to assess animations that he saw in interfaces, and they are a strong set of guiding principles in deciding how to add animations to a wireframe design. Read more…

April 20, 2015 — Given the importance of filtering, Christian Holst and the entire team at the Baymard Institute spent the nine months researching how users browse, filter and evaluate products in e-commerce product lists. At the core of this research was a large-scale usability study testing 19 leading e-commerce websites with real end users, following the think-aloud protocol. In this article Christian will take a closer look at some of the research findings related to the users’ filtering experience. He’ll walk through each of some filtering insights, showing you the usability test findings, examining the benchmark data and presenting best practice examples for creating a good e-commerce filtering experience. Read more…

March 25, 2015 — Toward the end of 2014, a Google spokesperson hinted that the mobile user experience would become a ranking factor. In January 2015, a number of website owners received messages warning about mobile usability issues on their websites, linking to a section of Webmaster Tools where they could review the problems. In this article, Tim Jensen will review how to flag mobile issues in Webmaster Tools, explain the most common issues and show you how to assess mobile usability problems on your website based on these flags. Read more…

February 9, 2015 — Carousels come in many shapes and sizes. Some can be effective, others less so. You need a lot more data from a lot of different situations before you dismiss the pattern entirely. In this article, Kyle Peatt aims for a better understanding of the current argument against carousels and whether they really deserve the reputation they’ve gained, using real data. He’ll break down the arguments point by point and see if his data lines up with those expectations. He’ll also detail his findings and methods and make some recommendations on how and when you should use carousels in future. Read more…

January 19, 2015 — Interface designers can emulate real-life physics and movement on a digital screen. This type of motion is becoming more common, which is why it’s becoming easier for people to understand computers. We’re not getting better, the interfaces are! In this article, Drew Thomas will cover a little bit of the history of motion on the web, why that’s important, and what the future of motion on the web will look like. (Hint: motion is really important for usability, and it’s changing everything.) Then he’ll explain the CSS behind motion and how to use motion well. Read more…

November 20, 2014 — In this article, Alon Even will go over the importance of using visual mobile analytics to measure the user experience from day one, as well as provide examples and other insights, so that you can optimize your onboarding experience and increase your app’s retention rate. He will provide you with knowledge that you can apply to your own mobile app exploits, whether you are a developer or a mobile app publisher. While there is no magic bullet for creating a perfect onboarding experience, remaining focused and committed to monitoring your onboarding experience will get you further than any other strategy. Read more…

November 5, 2014 — For many of us, the idea of doing formal user testing, is a formidable challenge. There are many reasons why: you don’t have enough lead time; you can’t find enough participants, or the right type of participant; you can’t convince your boss to spend the money. User testing is the best way to improve your designs. If you rely on anecdotal data, or your own experience, you can’t design a great solution to your user’s problems. User testing is vital. But how do you make the case for it and actually do it? Read more…