Posts tagged usability
Is Realistic UI Design Realistic?

Is Realistic UI Design Realistic?

Posted on November 5, 2010 · 28 notes

ONE: A Universal Points Card (Concept)

mikhailstdenis:

• View All Current Deals at the stores you have money with.
• Co-Operative Advertising (Buy a coke, and Gap Jeans, Get a free iTunes Song)
• Advertising Benefits View Buying Trends & create deals on the fly.
• Lost / Stolen? Lock your card via your mobile app. Receive a new one in the mail. 
• Trade Points with Friends and Family. Group purchases can lead to more rewards. 

How great would this be? I can’t get myself to pollute my Slimmy with all of those cards, so this would be perfect. Hopefully someone can bring this to fruition.

Posted on June 10, 2010 · 10 notes
As part of their recent design refresh, Google removed almost all underlines from links on the search results page. They kept the primary link titles underlined while cleaning up secondary and supportive UI links for reduced visual clutter. Methinks the Google News team could benefit from some of this text-decoration:none goodness.

As part of their recent design refresh, Google removed almost all underlines from links on the search results page. They kept the primary link titles underlined while cleaning up secondary and supportive UI links for reduced visual clutter.

Methinks the Google News team could benefit from some of this text-decoration:none goodness.

Posted on May 13, 2010 · 4 notes
A mockup by the Chromium team exploring UI treatments for various Omnibox states. There’s an interesting discussion around the cleanness of hiding the http://, but how usability suffers - especially in regards to cut-and-paste actions. (via ultimatenerd)

A mockup by the Chromium team exploring UI treatments for various Omnibox states. There’s an interesting discussion around the cleanness of hiding the http://, but how usability suffers - especially in regards to cut-and-paste actions. (via ultimatenerd)

Posted on April 14, 2010 · 4 notes
Seriously, Jacob? The placement of that link may not be completely optimal, but for the 99.9% of users who aren’t running iTunes fullscreen on a 30” display, the proximity faux pas isn’t nearly as big a deal.

Seriously, Jacob? The placement of that link may not be completely optimal, but for the 99.9% of users who aren’t running iTunes fullscreen on a 30” display, the proximity faux pas isn’t nearly as big a deal.

Posted on March 25, 2010 · 1 note
Best. Restroom pictograms. Ever.

Best. Restroom pictograms. Ever.

Posted on March 15, 2010 · 1 note
Luke Wroblewski says that a “Mad Libs” Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’ve seen this informal, inline type of form before but the supporting copy has always been very sparse and the number of fields limited to a couple. The example shown was actually A/B tested, giving the 25-40% improvement. I’m not sure if this was the only form tested or not, but I’d wager there’s a novelty effect at play here. I’d love to see some more in-depth research results related to this theory.

Luke Wroblewski says that a “Mad Libs” Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’ve seen this informal, inline type of form before but the supporting copy has always been very sparse and the number of fields limited to a couple.

The example shown was actually A/B tested, giving the 25-40% improvement. I’m not sure if this was the only form tested or not, but I’d wager there’s a novelty effect at play here. I’d love to see some more in-depth research results related to this theory.

Posted on February 25, 2010 · 4 notes

I Love/Hate the “Load More Posts” Pattern

I just came across a nice post by Kevin Nuut where he talks about the recent trend of websites (Facebook, Tumblr, etc.) using a “Load more posts”-type link to dynamically pull down more content. The benefits are obvious, but the downside is that most implementations don’t preserve the state of what you loaded so that when you leave the page and hit the Back button, you’re back to the initial batch of data, requiring you to re-“Load more posts”. Kevin proposes a solution, but I’m thinking it can be solved more simply.

This solution requires Javascript (but since we’re talking about loading content via AJAX, that’s not an issue) and (optionally) a little bit of server-side magic.

Each time you do an AJAX request for additional data, update the hash for the current URL with an identifier for the new batch of content. For example, as you browse through your paginated Gmail views, you’ll see your URL change from something like:

https://mail.google.com/mail/#label/travel to https://mail.google.com/mail/#label/travel/p2 to https://mail.google.com/mail/#label/travel/p3

These states are preserved in your browser’s history. For the hash values, you could use timestamps, post IDs, or whatever - and even nested values like above (type/label name/page number). Sidenote: there’s a nice jQuery plugin that handles the intricacies of this.

So then, when you navigate away from the page and then click the Back button, you’ll be loading a page with a hash identifier on it that you can access on the server side (or on the client-side after the page load via. an additional AJAX call) and getting the proper amount of data to render.

Posted on January 25, 2010 · 2 notes
Hmmm. Check out Stack Overflow’s collection of horrible UIs.

Hmmm.

Check out Stack Overflow’s collection of horrible UIs.

Posted on January 22, 2010 · 1 note
When you click the Login link in the main nav on lunarpages.com, this is the page you see. There actually is a login form there, you just have to find it. Fail.

When you click the Login link in the main nav on lunarpages.com, this is the page you see. There actually is a login form there, you just have to find it. Fail.

Posted on January 20, 2010 · 0 notes

Revisiting "The Fold"

I’m thrilled to see more debunking of “the fold” lately. This time, Jeff Atwood weighs in on the non-problem. The only thing I take exception to is the warning about lining up page elements along the fold, giving the impression that the page complete at that point - as if the fold is an actual pixel measurement and the same for everyone. I’d buy this argument for device-specific layouts (ie. iPhone), but within standard web browsers? Not so much.

Posted on October 30, 2009 · 0 notes

More reactions to Tog’s iPhone concept

I’m relieved to see that I’m not the only only one who isn’t a fan of Bruce Tognazzini’s proposed concept for organizing iPhone apps across multiple screens. Like John Gruber and Lukas Mathis, I have the utmost respect for Tog, but I’m with them in thinking the idea is very kludgy. Lukas took the time to write up a nice piece outlining the problems. And I do like the Springboard Exposé concept shown in the article.

Posted on October 12, 2009 · 0 notes

The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing

Will this finally put the debate to rest? No, but at least I’ll have more proof for clients that insist on accounting for the mystical fold.

Posted on October 8, 2009 · 0 notes