Here's a great Dilbert on how narrow minded graphic designers tend to sacrifice the communicative and functional aspects of design on the alter of eye candy.

Links:

• Dilbert, February 6, 2019 

Henrik Olsen - February 28, 2019

See also: Visual design (20) 

Jeff Sauro has complied a list of top 10 research-based usability findings of the year 2010. Here's a sample of the five most interesting:

- Users are able to self-report around half of the problems that can be found during moderated usability tests

- Usability accounts for at least 30% of customer loyalty

- Ratings of website usability after only 5 seconds are the same as those after 10 minutes.

- 10% of paid participants in remote user research will cheat

- Usability problems are almost 10-times more common on business applications than on websites

Links:

• Top 10 Research-Based Usability Findings of 2010 

Henrik Olsen - January 12, 2019

See also: Usability testing (70)  Cost-justification and ROI (28)  User research (24)  Research (130) 

In this article, David Travis shows how to exploit seven persuasion techniques in web design:

- Reciprocation. By doing people a small favour, such as a giving them free chapter from a book, they will feel obligated to return the favour and buy the book.

- Commitment. By making people make a public commitment to something (e.g. "Like" a product) they will feel more inclined to support it

- Social Proof. By indicating that something is popular more people will want it.

- Authority. People are more likely to take action if a message comes from a credible and authoritative source.

- Scarcity. By indicating that something is in short supply or available only for a limited time, people are more likely to want it.

- Framing. By overpricing some products, the other alternatives will seem cheaper.

- Salience. People are more likely to pay attention to elements in your user interface that are novel and relevant to their tasks.

Links:

• Persuasion Triggers in Web Design 

Henrik Olsen - December 10, 2019

See also: Persuasive design (23) 

A/B and multivariate testing are techniques used to tests how different design variations influence peoples' behavior on a website.

In this article, Paras Chopra explains how to set up such tests by first forming hypotheses about what might be wrong with a design and then testing possible solutions on the website to see how each of them perform.

In the article, Paras shows how some minor adjustments of a software download page increased its download rate by 60%.

Links:

• Multivariate Testing in Action: Five Simple Steps to Increase Conversion Rates 

Henrik Olsen - November 24, 2019

See also: Usability testing (70)  Persuasive design (23) 

If you want to make your paper prototyping a little easier, you might consider investing in a UXPin Portable Kit. It comes with a browser notepad and pads of restickable interface elements, such as buttons, text fields, drop down lists and check boxes, nicely packed in a hard-cover.

Links:

• The UXPin Portable Kit 

Henrik Olsen - November 17, 2019

See also: Prototyping and wireframing (119)  Tools (106)