CategoryUsability

April 6, 2016 — Can you improve your user experience with real-time features such as in-app notifications, geo-location tracking, collaboration and data visualisation? Real-time technology is fast becoming an integral part of our everyday lives; it’s in many of our favourite apps and it’ll soon be a big part of the smart homes of the future. Remember: expect today’s attractive feature to be tomorrow’s must-be. Should you be using real-time features in your product? In this article, Lauren Plews will look at the reasons why you should consider real-time. Read more…

March 1, 2016 — Pagination is still the most popular way to load new items on a website. However, the usability test sessions found “Load more” buttons combined with lazy-loading to be a superior implementation, resulting in a more seamless user experience. In this article, Christian Holst will present Baymard Institute’s usability research findings for both “Load more” buttons, infinite scrolling and pagination, including for both mobile and desktop. He’ll see how search results need to be implemented differently from category navigation, along with several pitfalls with implementation and examples from leading e-commerce websites. Read more…

February 24, 2016 — This is an experiment in a slightly different format for Smashing Magazine — using a storytelling approach to convey the same lessons learned that a traditional article would have provided. In this article, Lyndon Cerejo will take you through the story of Noah, the “UX guy” for the corporate office of a regional fast food restaurant, that was in the process of creating a mobile app to allow patrons to customize their meals, place orders and earn rewards. Read more…

January 20, 2016 — In this article, Becky White will try to point out how you could avoid common pitfalls through UX considerations such as the variety of ways you can usability test with children, when and how to use non–digital prototyping, why you shouldn’t forget about adults, or when to incorporate audio/visual feedback. It’s not just taking grown–up content and dumbing it down. In fact, there are many reasons why designing for kids is actually more difficult than designing for adults. Read more…

December 30, 2015 — Ideas begin with a small team of creative people at the heart of the company who communicate easily with each other. In this article, Dave Schools will talk about the six design principles inspired by the world’s greatest product designers and how they apply to 15 products using the steps of the product design test, such as immediate intuition, form and color agreement, approachable innovation, and replicable methodology. As you get accustomed to applying these design principles, you’ll be surprised by how your mind picks up on small things to appreciate, or to change, in the products you encounter every day. Read more…

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…