All Questions
3
votes
2answers
1k views
Is there a standard “to left justify text and right justify numeric values.”
I'm being told by an experienced BA (> 25 years) that "Numeric numbers are usually totaled therefore should be right justified." And that text should always be left justified.
I have never heard ...
2
votes
2answers
87 views
Best way of handling a special requirement in shopping cart
I'm mocking up a shopping cart for a hair salon. It's going to end up on their Facebook fan page so I'm restricted to Facebook's tab size of 520px.
Because of this I've decided to use an accordion ...
4
votes
2answers
656 views
Does it matter if Pagination controls are Left, Centered, or Right-Justified?
Should Pagination Be Left, Centered, or Right-Justified? Does it matter? Any usability studies?
We are redesigning our pagination to be more usable. In the process a question came up of where to ...
3
votes
3answers
185 views
What is the best way to elegantly browse and select an item from a parent, child, or grandchild tree-structure?
they will select only one item
the items in this case will be sporting activities
the levels go from general to specific…..ex: biking (parent) > mountain biking (child) > downhill mountain biking ...
6
votes
4answers
812 views
Any usability studies on password strength meters?
I put together a password strength meter for a signup form, and overall it works very well. It hooks into our DB for the "rules" (number of characters required, mix of letters and numbers, etc.), and ...
1
vote
2answers
55 views
How do I show that text has been automatically translated
For some products on our website, we have reviews for the product on our foreign language sites. We want to show these on the UK site (and the UK reviews on the foreign sites). We give the ability ...
3
votes
2answers
255 views
Bland shades of grey application
I'm going to be working on enhancements to an existing desktop application, however, it's basically different shades of grey with some dark blue-grey. There are some icons with some color and that is ...
1
vote
2answers
619 views
Automatic redirect to mobilesite - Best practice
What if the user really wants to access the website rather than the mobilesite?
The solution I'm thinking of is this:
Having a special root page on the domain http://example.com. Here I detect when ...
4
votes
3answers
299 views
Any evidence of increased click through rates on blue underlined links in html emails?
I'm redesigning our company email template. At the moment links are grey, bold and not underlined. I don't think this makes it very clear that it is a link. My gut instinct tells me that I should make ...
3
votes
6answers
234 views
Why do some webmasters INSIST on having auto-playing music elements on their webpages? [closed]
Is there any positive reason why someone might implement an auto-playing audio feature onto a webpage? I seem to see it all the time, especially on band pages and so on. The frustrating thing is ...
2
votes
4answers
156 views
Optional Comments on Saving
Maybe I'm crazy, but every UI mockup I seem to get passed to me, I end up ripping apart. And in the end, my suggestions are often shot down. We end up creating UI's with what I consider to be a ...
1
vote
2answers
149 views
Map functionality when using a designed map with Google Maps
I'm working on a site that has a designed map of the US with market areas. There is currently only one market area per state. Once a market is clicked on, it will go to a Google map of the market with ...
2
votes
2answers
130 views
adding/removing/searching thousands of data
I have 2 tables : a contract table and a part table.
every contract has thousands of parts.
The user can select a contract and I display the thousands of related parts to the user using paging.
...
0
votes
3answers
182 views
How to improve my layout [closed]
I have a couple of questions here:
1) What if I have two news stories posted for a day should I bullet the titles or how should I format them so that it stands out more that they are separate news ...
5
votes
2answers
985 views
Alternatives to MDI layout?
As WPF has no built-in MDI support I was looking around for alternatives for a rather large graphical work oriented application. The application will have a lot of different widgets, and for a lot of ...
17
votes
1answer
340 views
Contributing UX/UI to Free/Open Source Projects?
I'd like to exercise some of my UX/UI knowledge by contributing to a couple of the FOSS projects that I've used over the years. I've found that these projects usually have a huge deficiency in the ...
8
votes
8answers
457 views
How can I make it obvious that a page element is to be hovered over?
On my webpage I have five boxes containing the names of each step in a five step process. When the user hovers over one of the boxes, it expands and shows text explaining that process.
How can I ...
9
votes
4answers
639 views
Good ways to handle precisely overlapping data points in a graph?
In an application, I have a graph of markers--either with or without connecting lines--in which it is possible to have data points, and therefore markers, that are at the exact same location, even if ...
6
votes
5answers
210 views
Is it normal for users to ask for more detail than should really be implemented?
I just released my first ever application into the world and asked for feedback. I was surprised by the feedback, because the users are asking for a lot of detail. They seem to want a user interface ...
5
votes
4answers
290 views
Does pagination make the impression that there is more content than when it is displayed all at once?
Does pagination make the impression that there is more content than when it is displayed all at once?
Note that this is not the regular "Is pagination better than scrolling?" question. I'm only ...
12
votes
1answer
392 views
What properly goes into the “caption” of a message box?
By convention, what is the best practice for the text that goes into the "caption" field of a text box?
The "caption" field is the text that shows up in the title bar:
I have experimented with ...
4
votes
2answers
304 views
Icon for collapsing/expanding left side panel on tablet [closed]
I'm struggling to find a good icon to represent to users that while reading an article or something similar, they can click a small icon to reveal a left side panel to show additional options.
I've ...
98
votes
16answers
4k views
How to discover what users NEED and not what they WANT?
I have been thinking a lot about my favorite quote from Henry Ford:
If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'Faster Horses'. -Henry Ford
The trouble I have been having is that ...
2
votes
2answers
155 views
What examples are there for grouping multiple site tools under one button or dropdown?
We're considering moving links to all our site tools under one button. Clicking the button would open a modal exposing links to these tools. The button would be in the header and be available on all ...
14
votes
5answers
708 views
Is user experience a job position?
What I meant by my question was is user experience a stand alone job position, or is it a technical or artistic position that uses some principles of user experience design?
The reason I ask is ...
2
votes
3answers
631 views
travel website UX
Background
I have been asked to review a (very) beta version of a travel site (http://barrheadtravel.traveltek.net/holidays.phtml old site: http://www.barrheadtravel.co.uk/) and was wondering if any ...
19
votes
6answers
705 views
Is there a name for the UI that marks key positions in a scroll bar?
In Chrome, when you do a text search, you'll see the locations of found instances of the text string shown as yellow lines in the vertical scrollbar.
If you run Visual Studio with the Resharper ...
8
votes
4answers
282 views
email field or username for logging in an application?
What is the best solution for an app : Email or username field?
I like email because:
it's unique
user will easily remember
it's personal (which can be a disadvantage sometimes; Multiple users on ...
1
vote
3answers
214 views
How to provide keyboard navigation in editable table that includes drop downs?
I'm designing a business application.
When the user enters the main data entity in the application part of the form is tabular. Since some of the users will have an intensive usage of this ...
1
vote
1answer
179 views
Advertisement headers for a website
What are some good ways to incorporate a 728x90 ad into the header of a site keeping the navigation in mind?
4
votes
3answers
271 views
Navigation Bar, mixing links and buttons
I am trying to create a navigation menu with 2 functions in it... the website 'page' navigation links and 'action' buttons... sort of like this image
...
3
votes
1answer
694 views
What is best practice for designing a Persistent Navigation (or navigation that stays visible and fixed when the user scrolls)
Looking for best practices when designing a persistent navigation like below:
NFL (the scores in the banner)http://www.nfl.com/
Facebooks blue header http://www.facebook.com/
Creatticas header and ...
1
vote
1answer
144 views
Easy way to let every-day users embed images, videos, audio files, etc. inside text?
I need to let users embed videos, images, audio files, etc. inside text. For right now, these videos will come from urls, but they might one day point to videos/images/audio files stored on the server ...
6
votes
4answers
215 views
What are good rules for naming tags?
Similar to What are good rules for naming menu items?, what are good tag naming conventions?
For example, should one pluralize the topic (wavelets) or always use the singular (wavelet)? Is it better ...
3
votes
4answers
707 views
How do I make a table row on a web page look clickable?
I have a simple web-based report presented as a table:
Some rows are clickable, others are not (it can be seen with the third column. Greater than 0 means the row can be clicked and expanded in a ...
4
votes
3answers
102 views
Actions without text or hidden actions
In web UI as of late there seems to be a change in how actions (buttons and links) are displayed. Here are a couple of examples:
Actions are hidden until the user scrolls over the "thing" upon which ...
4
votes
3answers
343 views
Emails in plain text or HTML?
When communicating with customers, is it better to send emails in plain text or html formats?
Each has different strengths and weaknesses, but the question of which is better still remains. Which ...
7
votes
3answers
381 views
Help or support?
I'm interested in the difference between using the words help or support when used in the context of customer help/support on a website or application.
Which would you use and why? As always any ...
3
votes
3answers
162 views
Outline to improve the user experience
I am working on a project that is basically a search engine for food. It tells you the nearest place that serves the dish you want to eat. They requested me to make a simple outline about our actual ...
2
votes
3answers
298 views
What to ask for in a UX / IxD Masters degree
Ive just been accepted in a masters degree created by some of the most experienced interaction designers in my country. Before kicking off theyve asked each student to tell them a little bit about ...
0
votes
3answers
163 views
User Scrolling Issue
I have a site where I
am thinking about putting an ajax "click for more results" similar to twitter, etc. But each of my results is displayed with A, B, C next to the result. I'm wondering what I ...
4
votes
2answers
246 views
Best way to handle mobile website terms and conditions?
A form I am optimising for mobile has specific references to terms and conditions in numerous times (not just at the end usual checkbox, for example "We need this detail to sometimes contact you, read ...
0
votes
2answers
306 views
What is a good approach to reordering table rows from a usability standpoint? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Most intuitive way to offer manual sorting?
I have a web application that uses many table rows. Each row typically has an ordering field, and the client just put a ...
1
vote
1answer
125 views
Why at some web are pages always from 1,2,3 … for newest messages?
When I visit some pages, they have newest items first; page 1 has always the newest items. Some examples are imdb boards and icanhascheezburger.
I think this is case of top posting, because messages ...
2
votes
1answer
163 views
Best way to add account providers?
I briefly looked at spotify and I found that they use 2 providers: Themselves and facebook. Ie I can log in to spotify with facebook. But then it asks me for my spotify account when I downloaded the ...
6
votes
4answers
817 views
Deliberate Barriers to Entry in Web Design
ACHICA.com has taken the "members only club" concept to a level I've never seen online; you can hardly view anything on the site without registering. This is the first time I've seen barriers to entry ...
2
votes
3answers
199 views
How to design batch adding in a web application?
I'm creating a web application with batch adding and batch editting function. Could anyone suggest an interface on how this will go about?
Im using PHP as the server side language. I am creating an ...
4
votes
4answers
278 views
A portfolio of … text? (Information Visualization Challenge)
I'm trying to build a portfolio template for a writer's portfolio, and I'm having trouble finding an effective way to present so much text. Most portfolio sites have the benefit of (hopefully) ...
2
votes
3answers
122 views
Selection in a dropdown with two different input formats
I am building a tool which will be used on a regular basis by call center agents. The tool is concerned with supporting products - and as such each product has a product page which contains ...
3
votes
3answers
2k views
Better to use hover vs. click to display dropdown menus on main navigation of web app?
I work on a web-based medical records system. In the previous version, main horizontal menu employed ExtJS. It used the standard click to display the sub-menu found in ExtJS. I'm considering whether ...
