Monday, May 2, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Why Users Click Right Call to Actions More Than Left - #UX Movement
There are many home page focal points that put their call to action buttons in the bottom left area. This is the weak fallow area that users pay the least attention to. Users may sweep their eyes across your call to action button, but they won’t fixate on it for long. When the user finishes viewing and ends at the terminal area, they have to move their eyes back to the weak fallow area to click the call to action button. This not only forces users to move their eyes more, but going back to the weak fallow area is an unnatural movement that goes against their viewing rhythm. Call to actions belong in the terminal area because they’re the last thing users need to see to take action.
The example below arranges the home page focal point elements perfectly. The headline, which users read first, is in the primary optical area where users first look. The supporting text, which users read after the headline, is in the strong fallow area, where users move their eyes to second. The product image, which users look at after they read, is in the weak fallow area. This is the best spot for the product image because images tend to get longer visual fixations. Placing it in the weak fallow area means that the image won’t get fixated on too long over other elements. Each element is efficiently placed so that it follows the user’s natural viewing pattern. A call to action in the terminal area makes it quick and easy for users to take action.
The difference between a left and right call to action may only seem like its placement. But when you look deeper, where you place your call to actions can affect whether users click them or not. Knowing this will allow you to promote and display your product in an efficient way that makes users act.
source: http://uxmovement.com/buttons/why-users-click-right-call-to-actions-more-than-left
Monday, April 11, 2011
How Kids Consume Media
Some key points:
- Kids consume a heck of a lot of media--and more all the time. Basically, if kids are awake, they're consuming media. And, increasingly, they're consuming multiple forms of media at the same time.
- Kids' print media consumption is tiny and falling.
- Kids' digital media consumption is going through the roof.
No big surprise there. What is a surprise is how little parents seem to care about this. (Or, alternatively, how much parents encourage this media consumption by consuming a huge amount of media themselves.)
- In 2/3 of households, TVs are on during meals
- In 75% of households, TVs are on when no one is watching them.
- More than 70% of kids have TVs in their bedrooms
- Only 1/3 of households have media-consumption rules
No surprise, more media is consumed in households in which TVs are always on, where there are no media consumption rules, and where kids have TVs in their bedrooms.
And, no surprise, kids who consume the most media get the worst grades (but is this cause or effect?)
It's a long presentation, but it's awesome.
Flip through the presentation here >
Monday, March 28, 2011
Testing Checkout Sign-In Pages: Inspiration Gallery « Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog
The checkout process is a popular area of your site to test, and for good reason. When a visitor has added items to cart and clicks the “proceed to checkout” button, it’s a good indication of purchase intent! But often carts are abandoned early in the process – even at the login screen. Your design and copy on this page have a major impact on whether customers figure out which option is right for them (sign in, create account or guest checkout) and make it smoothly through to the next step.
As I’ve written about before, Amazon and Sears’ radio button approach is likely the “path of least resistance.” But if you want to test for yourself, the following is an inspiration gallery of 4 different approaches to log in: the aforementioned radio button, two-option, three-option and expanded/one-page.
Must read for anyone involved in usability and web design..
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Test your Website: A 57-Point Checklist for Maximum Usability | Virtual Hosting Blog
So you’ve got a website, but do you know whether it’s usable or not? The answer to this question can make the difference between a successful site and one that’s just ignored. Go through this checklist to make sure your site is up to snuff.
- Do you answer your user’s questions?: Users visit a site because they want answers, so it’s vitally important that your site gives them what they are looking for.
- Is your navigation clear and simple?: Make sure that your navigation lets the user know where they have been and where they can go in a clear, consistent manner.
- Do you provide anchor text?: Ensure that your visitor always knows where links are headed by discussing the site before you ask them to "click here."
- Does your design guide the eye?: Use color, position, size, and more to create a specific flow for your site.
- Do you start link names with important keywords?: Use important keywords in your links so that users know when they’ve found the right information.
- Is your wording straightforward?: Take a look at your language to make sure it’s simple enough for all users to understand.
- Does your writing look like an inverted pyramid?: Give web users the instant gratification they want by offering the most important information early on.
- Do you have "white space?": By placing too many elements too close together, you may overwhelm users. Spread things out a little.
- Have you offered contact information?: If your site doesn’t answer all of a visitor’s questions, they will probably want to speak to you about it. Allow them an easy way to contact you.
- Do you change URLs?: Don’t. This creates linkrot, in which links to your site are broken, and discourages other sites from linking to you in the future.
- Do you have a site map?: A site map is very important for a large site, because it helps lost users find their way and also makes it easy for search engines to spider your site.
- Does your information look like an ad?: Users will ignore information if it resembles a promotion, so avoid using large red text and other design elements found in advertisements.
- Does your site require unnecessary plugins?: Be aware that not everyone’s browser is fully decked out. Use a plugin only if it adds value and is absolutely necessary.
- Have you enabled graceful degradation?: Be sure that even if your site can’t display certain elements, the rest will still function properly.
- Does your logo link home?: Users expect that your site’s main logo will always link to your homepage, so make sure you’ve done this.
- Have you grouped information?: Make it easy for users to find what they’re looking for by arranging related information together, such as your corporate history alongside your career offerings.
- Do you provide visual clues for links?: Make sure that you’ve made your links obvious with colored, underlined text.
- Have you used color properly?: Avoid placing light-colored text on a light-colored background, or it will be hard for visitors to read your content. The same goes for dark-on-dark.
- Do you support deep-link users?: Check all of your site’s pages to make sure a user could orient themselves if they arrived on that page before any other place on your site.
- Is your site organized with a consistent structure?: Be sure to include headings, lists, and a unifying structure from page to page.
- Do you show users where they’ve been?: Differentiate between visited and unvisited links so that visitors can navigate with ease.
- Is your text annoying?: Use bold, italic, and upper-caps text sparingly.
- Do your graphics mean anything?: If your graphics seem irrelevant or frivilous, users won’t be impressed, so make sure that any images you use are directly related to the content.
- Do you date your content?: Don’t make users guess about which content is current and which is obsolete. Add dates to articles, press releases, and other content.
- Is your site full of animation?: Cut down on unnecessary animations to avoid overwhelming the user.
- Have you optimized your writing for the web?: Ensure that your text is short, scannable, and to the point, offering answers and common language.
- Do your links work?: Always double check your site for broken links, as they’re one of the worst user annoyances out there.
- Do you have a tagline?: Use a tagline to give visitors an extremely quick summary of what you do and what the site’s about.
- Do you offer prices?: If you’re using your website as a sales tool, it is vitally important that you answer what is almost certainly your customer’s biggest question-how much is it?
- Do your error messages help?: Take a look at your error messages, and consider whether they just tell the user they’re wrong, or if they actually provide suggestions for how to remedy the problem.
- Have you tested alternative browsers?: Although the majority of the Internet is still on Internet Explorer, it’s vital that you make sure your page renders correctly in browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera, and more.
- Does your content require horizontal scrolling?: Cut down on user annoyance by ensuring that your page’s width does not exceed your visitor’s browser.
- Have you added descriptions to images?: Let your users know what purpose an image serves by placing information in the ALT and TITLE attributes.
- Do you link within a page?: If so, cut it out. Linking to a different position on the same page will confuse visitors and undermine their understanding of the browser.
- Is your design consistent?: Don’t leave users guessing whether they’ve stumbled upon a different site. Use similar colors and typefaces throughout your entire site.
- Is your name and logo on every page?: Don’t assume that just because a user is on your site, they know who you are. Place your name and logo prominently on your site.
- Have you accelerated to the next step?: Make it painstakingly easy for users to see where they’re supposed to go next.
- Does your FAQ answer real questions?: If your FAQ is full of questions that you only wish your visitors would ask, you need to reassess. Make sure that you’re actually featuring frequently asked questions so that the FAQ is actually useful.
- Can users find information quickly?: Follow the 3-click-rule, which states that users will stop using a site if they can’t find the information they want within 3 mouse clicks.
- Is your information cluttered?: If so, you need to break pages down into different sections.
- Are your forms too much trouble?: Cast a critical eye on your forms to make sure you’re allowing flexible inputs and not asking for unnecessary information.
- Is your site accessible for users with disabilities?: Check to make sure your site is readable by those with disabilities, especially the blind.
- Are your fonts readable?: Make your text readable by avoiding small font sizes and allowing font resizing.
- Is your site broken down into digestable chunks?: Follow the 7, plus or minus 2 principle, which states that users can retain only about 5-9 things at one time.
- Does your page load quickly?: Make sure your pages load quickly so that your website is friendly to those on slow Internet connections, or who have to pay per minute of Internet access.
- Is your title descriptive?: Make sure that your page title makes sense for the content you offer.
- Does your site render correctly in different screen resolutions?: If you’re only optimized for 1024×767, you’re rendering your site incorrectly to a lot of visitors.
- Offer a search function: Make it incredibly easy for users to find information by providing a search box.
- Have you outlined a privacy policy?: It drives users crazy to give away their contact information without knowing what will be done with it. Make it explicitly clear whether you’ll sell their email address, and how often they’ll get email from you.
- Do you have a liquid layout?: Frozen layouts and fixed page widths make it difficult for large browsers to render your page, and this design poses problems with printing.
- Does your content have spelling errors?: Check your content for errors in spelling or grammar, and don’t rely solely on a spell-check function because sometimes that software’s online engineering isn’t perfect.
- Use tabs responsibly: Use tabs to change views while still in the same context, and make them incredibly readable and logically broken up.
- Is your splash page absolutely necessary?: Most users prefer to get right to the content instead of watching and waiting for a splash page to complete.
- Do you have a brandable URL?: Use a short URL so that it can be easily relayed from one user to the next, and you’ll make viral marketing easier to come by.
- Have you filled out TITLE and META tags?: Make sure you’ve filled out this information to let users and search engines know what your site’s all about.
- Do you emphasize high-priority tasks?: Make sure that your homepage highlights the important actions you’d like visitors to make.
- Do users know when they’re clicking an email link?: Ensure that users know when to expect their email program to pop up.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Avoiding Web Habits in Your iPhone Apps #ux
- Reset expectations about typing. Typing is so commonplace these days, we barely think about it. But no matter how speedy someone is on a mobile keyboard, it is always easier to select text on a touch device than it is to type it. Before you add a text field ask yourself: is this absolutely necessary? If it makes sense for your application, dynamically populate a list of possible answers below an input field once the user starts typing a letter or two (Google and Path are two of the many apps with this type of autocomplete functionality). Shave seconds off of interactions wherever you can because those seconds add up!
- Condense labels for forms and tables. Brevity is always advisable on the web, but it’s nonnegotiable in iOS. Any time label text for table elements is wrapped or truncated it interrupts the visual flow. Keep labels as short as possible without sacrificing meaning.
- Rethink forms. Instead of a consecutive list of questions and input fields on one long screen, think about forms on iOS as several quick interactions strung together. It’s helpful to maintain consistency with iOS standard controls by keeping cancel/back and submit/next buttons in the navigation bar at the top. The best forms are not drudgery to the user but just steps that must be taken to get something useful done.
- Take advantage of gestures, but… Gestures are tricky because they’re easy to both under and overuse. There are three ways that I find gestures most appropriate:
- Offer them in the same way you might offer a keyboard shortcut in a desktop application — it’s there for improved experience and efficiency, but it’s not necessary to make the app function.
- Use them if you have created realistic controls that mimic real-world interactions.
- Present them in your app when you need to require deliberate intention (like answering your phone or deleting an account).
- Think in taps, not clicks. A finger tip is infinitely bigger than the tip of a mouse pointer and that significantly affects your interface. Once you have a wireframe or mockup put together for a screen of your app, step back and look at it. Does it look like Honey I Shrunk the Web Page with lots of touchable areas crunched together? Is someone with thick fingertips going to be tempted to throw their phone across the room out of frustration? This seems obvious, but it is can be a daunting challenge to stop thinking in clicks.
- Don’t go overboard. It’s easy to swing too far in the other direction and use an array of different native elements because they’re there. The switch is an example of an element that has been widely overused because of its novelty. Well-placed interface elements put the people using your app in control, but superfluous interactions can make them feel like your marionette. A critical eye and some honest colleagues will help prevent interface bloat.
Instead of strictly following these guidelines, which will change as the platform changes, it’s best to focus on thinking critically about the medium and the people your product reaches. The advent of hundreds of millions of mobile touch devices is revolutionizing the way we think about the web and even desktop applications. Stay ahead of the curve by challenging your paradigms now!
Monday, December 6, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Twelve (12) emerging best practice for adding user experience work to agile software development
- Drive: UX practitioners are part of the customer or product owner team
- Research, model, and design up front - but only just enough
- Chunk your design work
- Use parallel track development to work ahead, and follow behind
- Buy design time with complex engineering stories
- Cultivate a user validation group for use for continuous user validation
- Schedule continuous user research in a separate track from development
- Leverage user time for multiple activities
- Use RITE to iterate UI before development
- Prototype in low fidelity
- Treat prototype as specification
- Become a design facilitator
Monday, September 27, 2010
20 Fantastic Usability & Conversion Analysis Tools | SpyreStudios
Once you’ve built or designed a website, it’s absolutely vital that you perform some degree of usability testing to ensure that it’s functioning as it should. Analyzing conversion rates (the percentage of visitors to your site who perform a desired action) is also a must.
Complete Beginner’s Guide to Information Architecture | UX Booth
Information architecture is an often misunderstood job title. Are they Designers? Developers? Managers? All of the above? In this article we’ll discuss what information architecture is, why it’s related to usability, and what are the common tools/programs used in information architecture.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Children's Websites: Usability Issues in Designing for Kids (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
The biggest finding in both the new and old research is the need to target very narrow age groups when designing for children. Indeed, there's no such thing as "designing for children," defined as everybody aged 3–12. At a minimum, you must distinguish between young (3–5), mid-range (6–8), and older (9–12) children. Each group has different behaviors, and the users get substantially more web-savvy as they get older. And, those different needs range far beyond the obvious imperative to design differently for pre-readers, beginning readers, and moderately skilled readers.We found that young users reacted negatively to content designed for kids that were even one school grade below or above their own level. Children are acutely aware of age differences: at one website, a 6-year-old said, "This website is for babies, maybe 4 or 5 years old. You can tell because of the cartoons and trains." (Although you might view both 5- and 6-year olds as "little kids," in the mind of a 6-year-old, the difference between them is vast.)
Finally, it's important to retain a consistent user experience rather than bounce users among pages targeting different age groups. In particular, by understanding what attracts children's attention, you can "bury" the links to service content for parents in places that kids are unlikely to click. Text-only footers worked well for this purpose.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Creative ways to solve usability problems
It's sometimes said that usability professionals are good at finding problems, but not quite as good at coming up with creative solutions. This article describes a creativity technique called SCAMPER that will help you effortlessly generate dozens of design solutions to any usability problem you identify.