#ux (165 links)
When all the sections end evenly on the page, users subconsciously decide there isn’t anything else to look for and don’t try to scroll. Of course, if they don’t scroll, they miss important content, such as the list of products.
- 50 swinish ways to annoy web users | Blog | Econsultancy econsultancy.com
Makes a handy checklist of stuff not to do.
- The new natural search spam | Consumers may love faceted navigation, but Google hates it multichannelmerchant.com
While useful for consumers, faceted navigation as normally implemented actually confuses the search engines by generating massive numbers of URL permutations that contain mostly duplicated content. This is bot spam.
Good analysis of the recent WebAIM screen reader survey. Use <Hn> tags, think hard about accesskeys, use skip links, know your audience.
- Recreating the button | stopdesign stopdesign.com
The buttons we’re using are imageless, and they’re created entirely using HTML and CSS, plus some JavaScript to manage the behavior. They’re also easily skinnable with a few lines of CSS
- Geeking with Greg: Marissa Mayer at Web 2.0 glinden.blogspot.com
Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction.
For throwing at certain designers. Surprising how poor some cta's are.
- userfly userfly.com
Run instant usability studies for your website using your real users. You can get it up & running in seconds with one line of javascript, and immediately watch movies of your users’ browsing sessions to analyze their behavior.
"Axure RP is the leading tool for rapidly creating wireframes, prototypes and specifications for applications and web sites." Expensive.
- UX London, Clearleft uxlondon.com
Looks great, but £895 sounds rather steep, even for 3 days (conference plus workshops) . Doesn't look like it's possible to pay less and just attend conference day. Definitely aimed at corporate types, not that there's anything wrong with that.
A website showcasing the best (and sometimes worst) in e-commerce design, with a clear focus on the individual elements that make up online stores. We break down retailers and focus on individual user interface elements in order to provide a gallery of inspiration for designers, developers, information architects, and anyone working with online retail.
- adaptive path » blog » Peter Merholz » One way for surviving the downturn - delineate your business value (#7 and #10 in a series of 16) adaptivepath.com
By understanding a business’ problems or opportunities, we can figure out what behaviors we’re hoping to engage, and then connect that behavior to a financial outcome.
- Design for Emotion and Flow - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design boxesandarrows.com
When attention becomes a scarce resource, it’s important to invest it wisely. Information architects and designers play a critical role in ensuring the products they design provide users’ with a return on their investment of attention.
- Adactio: Articles—The System Of The World adactio.com
Brilliant. Wish I'd seen this.
- People-centric Mobile Computing | About Mobility Weblog weblog.cenriqueortiz.com
An Introduction to the mobile context and mobile social software, which explores the topics of the mobile context and its role on what I referred to as People-centric mobile computing.
- UserVoice » Customer Feedback 2.0 uservoice.com
Customer feedback app, as used on blip.fm.
Registration keeps out good posters and attracts trolls? Who'd have thought that?
Companies should create rich and immersive website experiences, drawing from some of the techniques for game design to build brand affinity and differentiate their sites.
- As the Page Scrolls uie.com
One of the most significant findings of our research on web-site usability is that users are perfectly willing to scroll. However, they’ll only do it if the page gives them strong clues that scrolling will help them find what they’re looking for.
- Features are a one-way street - (37signals) 37signals.com
Once your user base has grown beyond a certain point, you cannot take features away from them. They will freak out. Whether the feature is good or bad, once you launch it you’ve married it.
- Learning from "bad" UI - (37signals) 37signals.com
The fact that a screen is “cluttered” doesn’t automatically mean it is poorly designed or ill-conceived.
- Usability Testing is more than Testing thoughtballoon.co.uk
Products such as Morae allow 'usability labs' to be constructed from two laptops and a webcam. This has made Usability Testing as practical and almost exclusively necessary part of the building of any interface or application.
The Usage Lifecycle describes how far a person has progressed in using your web application, helping to identify the hurdles someone needs to overcome to become regular, passionate users.
Ends with some excellent form design tips.
What they need to do is make the store experience inviting, not so much about pushing product, but about being that Third Place (not home or work) where people can get a respite.
Users now do basic operations with confidence and perform with skill on sites they use often. But when users try new sites, well-known usability problems still cause failures.
- OmniGraffle Wireframe Palette | urlgreyhot urlgreyhot.com
Research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are now becoming the norm for all age-groups.
- Advancing Advanced Search - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design boxesandarrows.com
Advanced search functionality has not significantly developed in years. Poor matches and overwhelming search results remain a problem for users. Perhaps the standard search pattern deserves a new look.
Eight additional mistakes we've seen as we watch users try to create accounts and sign into the site.
- outbreak » Messing up the interface (written on December 13th, 2007 by Marko Mrdjenovic) friedcellcollective.net
"Let’s say you’re designing an interface for a contact form. There are a lot of people involved in the problem and they all have their own issues they want resolved." Contrived but useful example of how forms can get compllicated.
- SAKUZAKU » Blog Archive » I’ve Reached My Limit: Approaches to Character Limit Cutoffs blog.wearesakuzaku.com
"In real life, it’s important (and polite) not to obtrusively interrupt someone when they’re in the middle of something, and, of course, this carries over to website usability as well. So, how should we enforce form field character limits [...] ?
- adaptive path » Don’t design for “mobile” - design for mobility adaptivepath.com
"What I’ve seen in our work is that form factor, though important, is not crucial. In fact, it might be a misleading concern. The thing that’s interesting about designing for mobile isn’t the form of the device. It’s that the device comes with you
If however, you start off by thinking about web pages, site maps, left hand navigations and visual design you will very quickly photoshop yourself into a corner. You will find it difficult to create a web of data.
- UI-patterns.com ui-patterns.com
User Interface Design pattern library.
- Virtual Hosting Blog » Scientific Web Design: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies virtualhosting.com
A few tips from eye-tracking studies
- Content AND Presentation : Journal : Mark Boulton markboulton.co.uk
"Typography has an important place in the web at the moment. Social interaction, and how to design for it, it a hot design topic [...] But don’t forget that the medium of social interaction is language, and the way language is shaped and looks is typogr
- In Appreciation of Measures That Tell Stories - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design boxesandarrows.com
Click streams have made room for bounce rates, search analytics, and so much more. If we play our cards right, we can reduce and synthesize the raw data and give our clients more meaningful information that foments action.
Instead of cluttering client sites with this kind of widget I’ve started adding a set of pages with information that helps the user resize text in their browser.
- The Experience Stack (Schulze & Webb) schulzeandwebb.com
Matt Webb's excellent dConstruct presentation; "...highlights products demonstrating different layers of the experience stack, and the rationale for designing for good experience."
- Pulse Laser » Blog Archive » The Experience Stack revisited schulzeandwebb.com
The experience stack is a way of thinking about the different levels at which experience design operates.