Usability & Testing articles

Remember the days when hovering and clicking with the mouse were the most used triggers for interaction with a site or app? Those days are gone. When Apple introduced the first iPhone, multi-touch technology became mainstream and users learned that they could not only point and tap on the interface, but also pinch, spread, and swipe. Gestures became the new clicks. Today the success of a mobile UI can be made by how effectively it uses gestures....

Information density is the amount of information in the form of content that a site visitor is greeted with as soon as he lands on a website or webpage. The greater the information density, the greater the amount of content a visitor will see on the site or page. Because of this tie-in to content, information density has an immediate impact on a user’s cognitive load, which in turn, has a huge impact on the site’s navigability, usability and...

A handy technique I learned from the wrong job… Years ago, I spent an awkward patch of my career as an instructional designer, creating courses for online learning. It was a bad fit and I moved on happily, but one part of that job has made me a better UX designer: learning objectives. Learning objectives are simply what you want the student to learn by the end of the training. If there’s a test, the test questions should be based on those objectives — otherwise,...

Web design has come a long, long way since the 1990s, when things like GeoCities and AOL dominated the Internet. Design itself has evolved, along with a deeper understanding of principles like usability and the user experience. There certainly hasn’t been a lack of studies examining everything from typography and site speed, to content above versus below the fold. The Nielsen Norman Group is one of the premier user-experience consultations...

User interface design is a hot topic these days and for good reason. In a world where digital experiences are such a large part of our lives, the value of a quality user experience is higher than ever. Not only is it important now, but the quality of user interfaces is bound to be even more important in the future given the tremendous growth of mobile, digital, and the Internet of Things. From web sites, to displays in our cars, to thermostat controls...

Usability testing is sometimes one of those things that designers conveniently ‘forget’ about. Why? Well do a search for it. Usability testing, as it is generally practiced, costs money. There are interviews to perform, a variety of tests to create for each and every project, services to pay for… and what if your client’s in another country? Or what if they’re a small business with a small budget, or a brand-new startup? What if the...

A lot of web developers are making me angry. Why? Because they’re literally trying to make it harder for me to build websites. Well, they’re making it harder to use their latest and greatest inventions, in any case. Take a look at some of these new content management systems for example. Especially take a look at the ones based on Ruby, or Node.js. What’s at least one thing they all have in common? You install almost all of them via the command...

What if I told you web designers out there that there are people who might visit your website that don’t care what it looks like? Visually impaired people navigate the web for the same reasons we all do, to find information, to shop and to perform a myriad of important tasks using web-based applications. But visually impaired people experience the web differently and we need to be sensitive to their needs when we design and build websites. According...

Usability testing, with real users, is one of the key areas that too many web designers skip. Often, there is little money in the budget for tests, but remote usability testing can be relatively cheap to perform, and the results can make a huge difference to a site’s conversions. To demonstrate the power of usability testing in design, we teamed up with UserTesting and Optimal Workshop to run some tests on Yelp as part of a redesign exercise....

In the past, fantastic web design was a simple business. All you had to do was ensure that the design looked good in Internet Explorer or Netscape, and your job was pretty much done. Some designers even took it upon themselves to mandate which browser the user should be operating. And for many designers, the visual design was not only a primary concern, but the only concern. That approach created a terrible legacy which is still sometimes experienced...

One of the most common pieces of writing advice out there is “know your audience.” Choosing to appeal to either middle-aged lawyers or college freshmen will alter everything from approach, to tone, to structure, even if the subject matter is the same. Why treat web design any differently? It’s common sense that middle-aged lawyers and college freshmen prefer different sites, right? Personas are all about applying imagination to...

Usability isn’t something you just can cook up in any one phase of design, but must be developed and refined throughout the entire process. If you want the best end product, you have to anticipate real user scenarios from the prototyping phase. Usability testing should be the last place to start thinking about usability. Why worry about usability testing so early in the process when prototyping already has a big enough to-do list? Because...

"Less is more" is one of the most important minimalistic design principles every designer learns: you read about it a lot, you know it's really important, but still you might get it all wrong. The important thing is to come around, learn from it, and evolve. And so we did. With the release of Todoist Next in January of this year, we introduced a new design alongside new features. From the beginning, our focus was to modernize the app and improve the...

I'm sure you've heard of personas and scenarios, but let's start with a quick explanation of how they are useful in the design process: A persona is an elementary tool of usability and user experience design and describes a typical member of your target audience. Although a persona is a fictional representation of a user, it is based on real data; the persona should be as close to a real potential user as possible. A scenario is a 'story' based on...