Vitaly Friedman has spent a lot of time working with various companies trying out various approaches and studying them in usability tests. This series of articles is a summary of observations and experiments made throughout that time. He’ll be exploring everything from carousels to car configurators. Let’s look into the design of date and time pickers today. With a date picker you can combine day, month and year into one input field, add a fancy calendar icon, and prompt a calendar overlay that exposes the main purpose of the calendar prominently. In fact, there are plenty of contexts in which date pickers matter! Let’s find out.
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Users can be reluctant to fill out forms, so make the process as easy as possible. Minor changes can significantly increase usability. Forms remain one of the most important types of interactions for users on the web and in apps. In this article, Nick Babich will show you practical techniques that have been gleaned from usability testing, field testing, eye-tracking studies and actual complaints from disgruntled users. These techniques enable designers to produce faster, easier and more productive form experiences. All you need to do is to download Adobe XD and get started right away. At the end of the article, you’ll also find new ways to design forms.
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Quantitative research methods come with effective statistical techniques for determining a sample size. Qualitative research methods currently have no similar commonly accepted technique. Yet, there are steps you should take to ensure you have collected and analyzed the right amount of data. In this article, Victor Yocco will propose a formula for determining qualitative sample sizes in user research. He’ll also discuss how to collect and analyze data in order to achieve “data saturation.” Finally, Victor will provide a case study highlighting the concepts explored in this article.
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Even though gestural controls have been around since the early 1980s and have enjoyed a level of ubiquity since the early 2000s, designers are still in the beta-testing phase of making gestural controls intuitive for everyday use. In this article, Kyle Sanders will explore the benefits and drawbacks of gestural controls for mobile UIs, as well as offer advice on effective implementation that avoids the gap in user familiarity.
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Buttons are a vital element in creating a smooth user experience, so it’s worth paying attention to the best essential practices for them. In this article, Nick Babich will show you the essential items you need to know in order to create effective controls that improve user experience, such as making buttons look like buttons, making the most important button clearly identifiable, or labeling buttons with what they do for users.
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Navigation is generally the vehicle that takes users where they want to go. When you examine the most successful interaction navigation designs of recent years, the clear winners are those who execute fundamentals flawlessly. While thinking outside the box is usually a good idea, there are some rules that you just can’t break. In this post, Nick Babich will help you better understand the principles of good navigation for mobile apps, then show you how it’s done using two popular patterns. The easier your product is for them to use, the more likely they are to use it.
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It’s not enough to simply design something and meet a goal. Finding your principles will help you find the right place to work and to do your best work. Giving your products a soul will make them better, more engaging products. The next time you’re designing, ask yourself what would make someone find your product useful, and what would make them care about it more than another product? In this article, Joshua Mauldin would like to share how he found his principles and regained a sense of fulfillment.
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If there is one thing that will stand the test of time, it’s thumb placement on mobile devices. This makes consideration of the “thumb zone”, a term coined in Steven Hoober’s research, an important factor in the design and development of mobile interfaces. In this article, Samantha Ingram will share the knowledge she’s acquired about the thumb zone and how to apply its rules to navigation, cards and swipe gestures.
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Every $92 the average company spends attracting customers, a meager $1 is spent converting them. Real conversion optimization is rooted deeply in psychology. In this article, John Stevens will analyze seven psychology studies that date as far back as 1961. Each experiment raises principles that will help you boost conversions on your website. Effective conversion optimization goes beyond simply changing a button’s color or making a few tweaks here and there. The trick is knowing the fundamental principles that make people act the way they do. Hopefully, the psychology studies reviewed in this article will provide you with some practical insight to boost your conversion rates.
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Every time the browser has to recalculate the positions and geometries of elements in the document, a reflow happens. This happens when new DOM elements are added to the page, images load or dimensions of elements change. There are many solutions for avoiding the jump effect on page load, and implementing all of these techniques would take some time, but it is totally worth it — until scroll anchoring is supported in more browsers. In this article, Michael Scharnagl will share techniques to minimize this content shifting.
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