UI/UX Design for apps

Community site for sharing information about UI/UX (User Interface / User Experience) design for smart applications.

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UX Myths series - Myth #7: Graphics will make a page element more visible

A common pitfall in web design is to emphasize an important piece of content with a graphic-heavy and flashy presentation. This approach, however, often makes it less visible.

When people look for something specific on a website, they search for text and links where they assume the information would be found. Very often people mistake visual, colorful page elements for ads and avoid them altogether.

It doesn’t mean though that you can’t use any emphasis. Contrast does work well and is essential for prioritizing content and thus creating effective web design.

Research and articles on the use and misuse of graphics:

Jakob Nielsen’s eye-tracking study confirms that people almost never look at anything that looks like an ad. -Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings. For a detailed discussion, see his book Prioritizing web usability.

“‘The big finding is that banner blindness is real. It is not just advertising banners but anything that looks like an advertising banner,’ says Jakob Nielsen, a principal at Internet user research firm Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, Calif. For example, one health-related nonprofit site has a box — not an ad — that tells users what to do if they think they are having a heart attack. But a study showed that people were missing it because of its location on the page” - from Marketers Seek a Banner-Blindness Cure

The ill effects of banner blindness also occured in the 2006 U.S. elections, where the design of the ballot resulted in 13% of the voters ignoring a complete section due to its positioning. - Banner Blindness in Ballot Design

Franck Largeault’s study with 300 subjects also confirmes the existence of ad-avoidance (though its main objective was to compare graphical banners with links). - Compared efficiency of advertisement banners and contextual sponsored links on the internet

Don Norman discusses that people have superb focus and how they miss anything that falls outside of it, and therefore don’t look for ad-like content when they usually find these in the form of links and text. -Commentary: Banner Blindness, Human Cognition and Web Design

The famous ad-copywriter, Howard Luck Gossage says about ad-avoidance: “The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.”

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UX Myths series - Myth #6: Accessible sites are ugly

Accessibility on the web means making your content available to users with different skills and devices. A key requirement of web accessibility is to separate content (HTML) from visual appearance (CSS) in order to allow those preferring - or requiring - to use their own specific style sheet to access the content.

Since the visual appearance of a site is defined by style sheets, accessibility in itself should not have any impact on visual design.

Great examples of beautiful yet fully accessible websites:

CSS Zen garden

The White House

Campaignmonitor

Apple.com

Further reading on accessibility vs. visual design:

According to the accessibility experts at Webcredible: “web accessibility demands very few restrictions on website design”.

Web strategist Paul Boag explains how accessible sites can still be visually appealling.

Accessibility specialist front-end developer Roger Johansson claims that “accessibility does not mean removing all colour and graphics”.

A quick guide on how to make your web site accessible without ruining the visual design.

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UX Myths series - Myth #5: Accessibility is expensive and difficult

To make your website accessible, you don’t need to add extra functionality or to duplicate any content. The key is simply to assess the requirements of those with different skills and limited devices when designing the user interface and your content.

To build from scratch a website that’s accessible therefore, costs virtually the same as to develop one that isn’t.

Correcting an already inaccessible site, however, might need extra effort but is always beneficial on the long run since accessible sites are easier and cheaper to maintain.

Why making your website accessible is beneficial:

Reaching a bigger audience - as many as 14% of the total population might live with disabilities.

An accessible site always has better usability.

An accessible website is also SEO friendly.

Accessibility has other benefits like faster page download

times, cross-browser compatibility and easier content management.

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UX Myths series - Myth #4: Design is about making a website look good

Many people regard web design as decoration; the art of making a website look good. However, design is more about how something works than how it looks. Design is about both form and function. In contrast with art, good design is not only visually and emotionally appealing but is made for use.

The goal of design is to efficiently solve problems. Design is based on the understanding of how users see the world, how they think and behave. And the toolset of the designer is broader than just colors and font-styles, as it also includes user-research, prototyping, usability testing, and more.

How designers define design:

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." - Steve Jobs

"Good design, when it’s done well, becomes invisible. It’s only when it’s done poorly that we notice it. Think of it like a room’s air conditioning. We only notice it when it’s too hot, too cold, making too much noise, or the unit is dripping on us. Yet, if the air conditioning is perfect, nobody say anything and we focus, instead, on the task at hand." - Jared Spool

"Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose." - Charles Eames

"What is design to me? Like design I think it’s best to break the problem up until you find the simplest solution." -  Paul Scrivens

"Design is not primarily supposed to entertain or to be nice or to aesthetically please. It’s supposed to perform." - Oliver Reichenstein

"What designers do is to solve problems by deciding on the look and function of something. This can be writing text, laying out an interface, planning a chair, or coming up with a better Netflix envelope, lightbulb, or chair." - Joshua Porter

"Right and wrong do not exist in graphic design. There is only effective and non-effective communication. Every one can complain about advertisements in the magazines, but clients are only interested in whether it attracts possible customers or not." - Peter Bilak

"Design is directed toward human beings. To design is to solve human problems by identifying them and executing the best solution." - Ivan Chermayeff

… for more similar quotes, see Luke Wroblewski’s site.

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UX Myths series - Myth #3: People don’t scroll

Although people weren’t used to scrolling in the mid-nineties, nowadays it’s absolutely natural to use the browser’s scrollbar. For a continuous and lengthy content, like an article or a tutorial, scrolling provides even better usability than slicing up the text to several pages.

You don’t have to squeeze everything into the top of your homepage or above the fold. To make sure that people will scroll, you need to follow certain design principles and provide content that keeps your visitors interested. Also keep in mind that content above the fold will still get the most attention and is also crucial for users in deciding whether your page is worth reading at all.

Many research findings prove that people do scroll:

Heatmap service provider ClickTale analyzed almost 100.000 pageviews. The result: people used the scrollbar on 76% of the pages, with 22% being scrolled all the way to the bottom regardless of the length of the page. That said, it’s clear that page top is still your most valuable screen estate. - Unfolding the Fold andClickTale Scrolling Report and Part 2

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s eye-tracking studies show that while attention is focused above the fold, people do scroll down, especially if the page is designed to encourage scrolling. - Scrolling and Attention

Upon reviewing the analytics data of TMZ.com, Milissa Tarquini found that the most clicked link on the homepage is at the very bottom. She also points out that polls and galleries at the bottom of AOL’s Money & Finance homepage get a lot of clicks in spite of their position. - Blasting the Myth of the Fold

Another eye-tracking study conducted by CX Partners confirms that people do scroll if certain design guidelines are followed. - The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing

Usability studies by the Software Usability Research Laboratory’s  show that users can read long, scrolling pages faster than paginated ones. Their studies confirm that people are accustomed to scrolling. - The Impact of Paging vs. Scrolling on Reading Online Text Passages

Jared Spool’s usability tests from 1998 tell us that, even though people say they don’t like to scroll, they are willing to do so. Moreover, longer and scrollable pages even worked better for users. - As the Page Scrolls

SURL conducted another usability study, confirming that people find both scrolling and paging natural on search results pages. - Paging vs. Scrolling: Looking for the Best Way to Present Search Results

More articles about scrolling:

In July 2011, Apple removed the scrollbar from Mac OS X (it’s the default setting, though users can put it back). This clearly shows that people are so familiar with scrolling that they don’t even need the visual clue for it.

Jared Spool’s article on design guidelines to encourage scrolling: Utilizing the Cut-off Look to Encourage Users To Scroll.

Chris Fahey describes how the fold became more nuanced in The Scrolling Experience and “The Fold”.

Don’t miss Life below 600px, a witty article on the page fold.

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UX Myths series - Myth #2 All pages should be accessible in 3 clicks

Usability tests have long challenged the so called three-click rule. Contrary to popular belief, people don’t leave your site if they’re unable to find the desired information in 3 clicks. In fact, the number of necessary clicks affects neither user satisfaction, nor success rate. That’s right; fewer clicks don’t make users happier and aren’t necessarily perceived as faster.

What really counts here is ease of navigation, the constant scent of information along the user’s path. If you don’t make the user think about the clicks, they won’t mind having a few extra clicks.

Studies that challenge the three-click rule:

UIE’s usability tests showed that people don’t quit after 3 clicks and don’t feel frustrated if they have to click more. - Testing the Three-Click Rule

Jakob Nielsen’s usability tests found that “users’ ability to find products on an e-commerce site increased by 600 percent after the design was changed so that products were 4 clicks from the homepage instead of 3.” from the book Prioritizing Usability, quoted in Highlights from Prioritizing Web Usability.

Further UIE usability tests show that it’s not the number of clicks but the well-labeled links with information scent that play a key role in usability. - Getting Confidence From Lincoln

A practical advice is to replace the three-click rule with the one-click rule: “Every click or interaction should take the user closer to their goal while eliminating as much of the non-destination as possible.” - Breaking the Law: The 3 Click Rule

Further reading:

David Hamill’s thoughts on why the three-click rule is nonsense: Stop Counting Clicks

An article by CX Partners about the rule: 3 isn’t the magic number.

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Library for Flat UI Design

Color swatches for Photoshop. This set contains only good-named harmonic combinations of colors for creating modern flat user interfaces.

Click HERE and download your own color pallete!

*Load it at swatch palette in Adobe Photoshop.

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UX Myths series - Myth #1

People read on the web

People only read word-by-word on the web when they are really interested in the content. They usually skim the pages looking for highlighted keywords, meaningful headings, short paragraphs and scannable list. Since they’re in a hurry to find the very piece of information they’re looking for, they’ll skip what’s irrelevant for them.

So don’t expect people to read content that seems neither easily scannable nor relevant for them, therefore long text blocks, unnecessary instructions, promotional writing and “smalltalk” should be avoided on the web.

How little do users read?

In 2013, analytics vendor Chartbeat analyzed Slate and other websites and found that most visitors scroll through about only 50-60% of an article page. What’s more interesting, it seems to be no correlation between sharing and scrolling: people readily share your articles even without reading them - You Won’t Finish This Article

Jakob Nielsen’s eye-tracking study from 2008 indicated that less than 20% of the text content is actually read on an average web page.

In another usability test, Nielsen tested different wording styles for a website. Concise, scannable and objective copywriting resulted in 124% better usability.

In a usability study Gerry McGovern discovered that only 1 out of 15 users could locate a specific piece of information that was not scannably placed on the page.

Steve Krug claims in Don’t Make Me Think that one of the most important fact about web users is that they don’t read, they scan.

When people read word-by-word:

If people find the very piece of information they are interested in, they are likely to read the related content word-by-word.

Research shows that if people read a piece of content for pleasure, they read more thoroughly and find reading effortless even on a computer screen.

Studies show that there are methodical web readers who usually don’t scan but read from top to bottom.

Well structured pages that are designed for cursory reading are more likely to be read.

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UX Myths series

Build your website based on evidence, not false beliefs!

UX Myths collects the most frequent user experience misconceptions and explains why they don't hold true. And you don't have to take our word for it, we'll show you a lot of research findings and articles by design and usability gurus.