Hot answers tagged usability
73
A better modification of such a statment which I see being used is:
'A company_name employee will never ask for your password'
This message alerts the user that if the person is asking for a password, there is something fishy and he should alert the concerned authorities immediately. With all the live chat functionalities that most industries are ...
39
Most security breaches are from social engineering, and so telling someone that they should never under any circumstances give anyone their password is an attempt to increase security. I would suggest a statement more like:
If anyone asks you for your password, you should assume they are a criminal and report it immediately!
Idea provided by @Kaz
As ...
22
You should use an empty alt attribute for images that are purely decorative. I'd argue that in the example you gave it is worth supplying an alt attribute that describes the image e.g. alt="Portrait of Jane Doe". @KitGrose mentions that including this text will also make the image searchable to image search engines such as Google Image.
I reserve empty alt ...
18
I cannot comment on your user test results since I do not know your parameters and scenario.
But, talking about gmail's new email input method. The advantage which desktop email applications had over the web based ones was, while composing the email (in a separate window) you could freely browse older emails and look into content you might want to refer. ...
17
I think you're trying to solve a readability problem the wrong way.
Line length (measure) is your real problem. The number generally advised for a readable measure is about 60-70 characters. Cut the measure to about 60% of it's current length and you'll find you have far less trouble. The other way to solve it is a bigger font size ... that would be really ...
14
Yes, there have been formal studies demonstrating that as users become increasingly familiar with mobile devices, they shift increasingly toward using native apps.4 This trend is likely a combination of three factors:
People prefer the familiar. If people know of a site or app that's likely to address their needs, they're more likely to use that known ...
12
Unless you can proceed without selecting (leave the field blank) one SD options, I would suggest you go with a radio button.
You layout remains consistent if you are using the same input mechanism for similar tasks. Making it easy for the user to proceed quickly.
Radio buttons are faster (easier also in many cases) than using a drop down menu. The ...
11
There is a good chance that someone will want to output content to a directory that exists, but make a typo when entering it. If you don't prompt the user and just create it, they are likely to get frustrated because you aren't saving it into the directory that they think they saved it to.
If on the other hand you let them know that the directory doesn't ...
10
2007 article from NN/g Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful
Summary: One line of text shows a page's location in the site hierarchy. User testing shows many benefits and no downsides to breadcrumbs for secondary navigation.
Consistency is a key principle for UX design. If you implement breadcrumb for some pages and not for others, you are breaking ...
9
It's terrible UX, and should be avoided. As a customer, if I highlight some text and copy it, and you thin insert some other text, you are spamming me. I didn't ask for that text, and at no point was I asked if that is what I want to copy.
One of the most basic principles of UX is that any common action should respond in a predictable way. "Cancel" ...
9
Two level menus are better for usability than traditional drop-down menus, because the user doesn't have to navigate carefully in multiple directions.
As AskTog explains, with traditional, multi-level drop-down menus:
The bottleneck is the passage between the first-level menu and the second-level menu. Users first slide the mouse pointer down to the ...
9
The guidelines given for the various platforms are all based on the idea that the minimum size should be 9-12mm. The variation between the guidelines is mostly due to differing pixel densities on the devices, and hence different number of pixels needed to reach the 9-12mm figure.
Note, that this isn't an ideal dimension to make the button easier to use, ...
8
Yes, size can be an issue. Touch targets need to be bigger than typical desktop targets because the finger precision is worse than the pointer+mouse precision. With this worst precision the odds to do missed taps is bigger (like not touching a button or touching the incorrect one).
Usually, touch studies use as principal study variable the error rate. The ...
8
Radio buttons will be the most clear, as far as indicating that the options are mutually exclusive. Your Option 2 check box is very unclear. It looks like you can do a search with or without promotions, but from your description you're either searching for reservations or promotions.
I suggest something more like this:
download bmml source – ...
8
This was originally a comment, because I had assumed it was considered and not used prior to this question being posted..
At the moment, these are your URLs (with "summary" being a type of action, presumably):
/region
/region/{action}/{id}
Your question is, what should you do if someone tries to access it without an ID, like this:
/region/{action}
I ...
8
Consider opportunity for better IA:
Instead of just thinking how one could show 150 or even 50 menus on mobile page, I think first of all the efforts should be directed for better information architecture.
Ideally it should be identified by users (Card sorting) but at some level (considering experience and domain knowledge) designer and stakeholders can ...
8
I was surprised to learn that teenagers share passwords much more than I expected.
So maybe for some demographics, it is necessary to reinforce more secure behavior.
7
I think it's ok to make guesses about where your users were trying to go, but always provide the correct HTTP response code to indicate that the item was not found or was "Permanently Moved" and consider showing a simple message on the page in case the user really was trying to go somewhere they thought was legitimate and are confused why you redirected ...
7
Strictly talking about desktop navigation:
It is really going to depend on the content displayed but under ~970 px width and/or ~400 height do not use a sticky menu, the menu is going to eat the content. Be responsive in that matter.
Do not be afraid to go big, Facebook menu is about 90 px high and feels really natural. Did you realized that Gmail is in ...
7
The most common implementation of such a feature which I see everyday is the tagging system. As you continue typing, the ajax search is on and you can see results popping up. Img 1: You can select from the results or type in the entire thing. Img 2: Or, you can add your own tag in a similar manner and it will accept the tag and add it in the system for ...
6
Why don't you try a more graphical approach ?
Use a calendar and put your times directly into context.
To repeat from a week to another, just add a "periodic" option close to the validation
6
For most sites asking for locale information hurts UX by having a more complicated selection. However, there are sites for which this information may be necessary.
Usually locales are interesting when you need to change how you format data to match that locale. For example in one country you may want to show € 1,000.00 while in another € 1.000,00, while ...
6
How about this layout?
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
I guess the users need to decide if they want either SD or HD so this should be the main option. Then, secondary, they can select whatever other option you offer.
This solution also enables you to set a default for users. You could work with radio buttons ...
6
I think all of these are quite functional, but there are pros and cons for each one:
1st: may need a lot of vertical space.
2nd: does not consume any additional space at all, but will disappear once user enters this field. It's quite popular though, and not a bad practice.
3rd: again, should the example text be longer, it may force you to make the left ...
6
The evils of the modern information age.
Chat programs, e-mail programs, and most non-SSL web pages transfer information back and forth in a clear text format. This means that it's non-encrypted and readable by anyone with access to the text.
Even though the network your computer is connected to seems like a physical straight connection to the router or ...
5
The most effective way that I have seen is to use text. Simply have a checkbox that says "show password" or "hide password". It's clear and everyone understands it.
However, it's also becoming increasingly common to use the eye symbol as "show password", so if I had to chose a symbol and not text, I would use an eye icon.
5
In a forum thread, users are likely to want to go to the start, or end of the thread fairly often, as well as possibly a particular point in the thread. That makes forum threads a poor candidate for infinite scrolling, as to get to the beginning (or end depending on how you set up your forum), someone will have to scroll through the entire thread. And some ...
5
Tables are already very heavy visually so you can add some sort of icon next to the text to indicate that it is a link. i.e.
The advantages of doing this are:
- The user can quickly identify which cells have buttons
- The essence of the table remains
- The visual weight will look balanced
5
The purpose of zebra striping is (with arguable success) to connect items in a row that are a distance apart...often as you'd see in a table and where scanning (rather than reading line-by-line) is often a goal.
Item Item Item
But a paragraph of text has no such problem--the lines of text, themselves, make ...
5
Readability is everything
Smashing Magazine conducted a Typographic Study for best User Experience. What they found is plain clean backgrounds with standard type treatments tend to work best. People will typically have an easier time reading what they're familiar with. There is no one set rule for the number of characters per line. It depends on the amount ...
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