GUUUI - The interaction designers coffee break

Cram product pages with feature specs

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:47:41 -0700

The standard recommendation for product page design is that we should focus on descriptive text about products' benefits rather than feature specs. But observing people shopping on various sites, Cyd Harrel found that customers often need specifics first. They typically scroll past general copy in their search for very specific and deal-breaking details that they want to have confirmed before considering putting the product to their list of options.

7 myths about paper prototyping

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 07:37:32 -0700

David Travis addresses seven objections to paper prototyping:

- Yes, you can draw!

- No, wireframes are not paper prototypes

- No, sketches on whiteboards are not prototypes

- Yes, paper prototypes are just as fast and flexible as digital ones

- Yes, you can do reliable usability testing with paper prototypes

- Yes, it looks unprofessional. But it isn't

- Yes, you can simulate interactivity.

Useful information clutters designs

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:13:16 -0700

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.

Top usability findings 2010

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:35:21 -0700

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

7 persuasion techniques

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:53:09 -0700

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.

How to do A/B and multivariate testing

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:14:33 -0700

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%.

UXPin - a paper prototyping kit

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:27:53 -0700

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.

How to build a successful design company

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:05:32 -0700

UX Movement has published an eight step guide on how to build a multi-billion dollar design company.

1. Make design everything. Everything!
2. Let design report to Steve Jobs
3. Let a very small elite team design all major products
4. Let designers make the design decisions
5. Make pixel-perfect mock-ups
6. Make designers and engineers work closely together
7. Don't do market research. Trust your own taste.
8. Don't let anything that isn't perfect go out

P.S. If you don't have a Steve Jobs, a Jonathon Ive might do.

Users ignore decorative images

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 14:09:54 -0700

In this article, Jakob Nielsen shows how eyetracking studies reveal that user pay close attention to images on websites that contain relevant information (such as product images), but completely ignore "fluffy pictures" that are purely decorative.

What Jakob forgets to mention is that eyetracking equipment only records eye fixations and not peripheral vision, that is, what we are able to see outside the center of gaze. So the studies don't prove that "feel-good" imagery fail their mission.

Design conservatively to fit peoples' mental models

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:47:23 -0700

According to Jakob Nielsen, many usability problems stem from a mismatch between users' mental models and the application they use. That is, a mismatch between how users expect an interface to work and how it actually works.

Since users tend to stick to their mental models, Jakob suggest that we stay conservative in our design of user interfaces � unless some new interaction style is vastly superior to the to the well-known ones.