Hot answers tagged usability
69
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 ...
35
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 ...
13
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. ...
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
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.
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 ...
6
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 ...
5
I would believe the main reasoning behind this as you pointed out was to have a continuous flow as the user scans the page and allow it to blend with the design but another reason is to ensure the primary point of focus is the content of the site itself and not the navigation. There are a lot of apps which use this design to ensure the focus is on the ...
5
It seems like the different options are more related with each other than that they are unrelated. They all manage "tree operation". In that sense it would make a lot of sense to combine them on just 1 tab. It would take away the need for users to constantly switch between the tabs.
The fact that you have plenty of screen real estate left is also an ...
3
For web browsing, if the page is very long - has a long content - then this would be advisable because it saves the user some time to scroll all the way up. In mobile applications is more commonly used for apps that handle text - reading.
Additionally there are 2 important points for this to work:
Contrast. In the example that you give above it shows a ...
3
Apple used to solve this in Carbon (on page 34) in two ways:
1. Use a double cursor
When you are on a space between the LTR and RTL parts of the text and you type LTR characters, it will appended to the LTR part of the text, when you type RTL characters you will append it to the RTL part.
The cursor is positioned at the end of the Arabic text and the ...
3
Go with the 2nd option. It is a standard practice followed by many websites. It allows for showing examples in-context which is better than giving directions for the user to follow. eg: Enter email below,example: amdin@user.gov
Make the text visibly lighter (grey) than the default color.
Optional: Give some added visual que like changing the ...
2
There is a third approach:
.shorten {
white-space: nowrap;
overflow: hidden;
-o-text-overflow: ellipsis;
-ms-text-overflow: ellipsis;
text-overflow: ellipsis; /* or "clip" */
}
See dev.w3.org for more information.
2
As you mentioned, the user cannot select both SD and HD formats. Why not roll up into a single group annotated as "Format Type". All options can then be listed within the group as radio buttons. This may work better but takes up slightly more space.
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
2
It's definitely a "better safe than sorry" tactic, but I feel that these messages are meant more for the non-tech savvy user.
I've worked with several older clients that are simply unaware of such vulnerabilities.
Ultimately, it also depends on the audience of the site. I doubt github or stack exchange will have such messages.
However, if you're a bank, ...
2
I do not like this implementation of transparent fixed header.
If you want to keep the header fixed, it means the things in the header are important. Then you go ahead and make it semi-transparent to make it harder to read? Counter-intuitive?
Even if I am able to focus on the content better (?) when I finally want to look at the header, I need to focus ...
2
Choosing the service when logging is a bad idea. The login page is just a step in the process of using an application. It does not make sense to choose the service when logging since when going to the appropriate page the choice has already been made.
Use two login pages with one logging (SSO if needed).
Ask her to log once and when she goes to the other ...
2
Welcome to the ever changing web.
The navigation should be as small as readability and legibility will allow, but large enough that you can touch the button safely in a mobile device.
Apple's got a good idea about the touch size, so based on the pixel dimensions for their app icons on various devices a safe bet would be between 57 pixels high and wide to ...
2
What your client proposes works, I would change the order though: Accounts first then services.
It is understandable, there is no confusion, you can add as many services as you want.
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
Maybe what is confusing is the fact that the services names are numbers so I imagine there is some ...
1
I like a modal window for "interruption" tasks. That is, tasks that are performed when you're really trying to do something else.
Signing in is a good example. From any page I can click to sign in, complete the little form, and get back to my current task.
Granted, that can be done without a modal (when Sign In is on its own page, submitting can jump you ...
1
Modals are a popular for a good reason: They provide fast, focused, contextual interaction. Page loads should be saved for when they're really needed to move the flow forward.
Another contextual information option is content that loads into the page as needed. I've used this solution for payment forms in particular in the past.
This article reminds us of ...
1
Both otpions have been mentioned before, what's missing is the if:
If they use the same credentials, one login for both.
Otherwise make it two separate pages.
Barring significant differences in cost: if both products have the same branding, go with one login.
Unless there's virtually no overlap between the two user bases, a second login is just a ...
1
The dialogs are not modal, so one can compose multiple mails in parallel by clicking Compose again. All parallely composed mails are auto-saved to drafts, they are undockable and minimizable in the window, so one can still browse and answer incoming mails in the also GMail-style "conversation" view.
As you see, these dialogs are quite powerful. The reason ...
1
There was a study done by UX matters. They use eye-tracking and field association in their study.
From the results of our second test, we knew that the nearer a label
is to its input field, the more quickly users could move from the
label to the input field. So, we were not surprised when we noticed
that most of the fixations were right on the ...
1
I am not sure if the question is specific or general but in this very peculiar case I would not recommend to use a description at all.
You want the user to put his email address. If you consider she can use this address for any reason in your application, then she knows what a email address looks like.
You want to show an example in case the email is ...
1
In theory, you should provide enough information for the user find the answer to her question, and no more. Inadequate support pages drive down customer loyalty (more details here), but complex pages encourage users to give up before finding an answer (more details here).
In practice, it’s very hard to make a support page both simple and comprehensive.
...
1
Make it intuitive and proceed observantly.
In 2009 a Nielsen Norman Group finding Big, 2-dimensional drop-down panels group navigation options to eliminate scrolling and use typography, icons, and tooltips to explain users' choices.
This sounds great... but (and this is all very old by internet standards).
In 2010 they revised their statement after ...
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