In a study by Google in August of 2012, researchers found that not only will users judge websites as beautiful or not within 1/50th – 1/20th of a second, but also that “visually complex” websites are consistently rated as less beautiful than their simpler counterparts.
The new Obamacare website, HealthCare.gov, has been getting much media attention over the past few weeks due to flaws in the user experience after its launch. Heavy traffic, network problems, and design flaws have hampered users from shopping for health insurance. Many agree that the new website presents a fragmented user-experience, which was not tested properly before its launch.
Our team has come up with ten usability guidelines for web developers and business owners. Following are the last five tips, continuing last week’s first five. For a free analysis of your website, request a free usability report from our experts.
Our team has come up with ten usability guidelines for web developers and business owners. Below are the first five, and Part 2 will follow. For a free analysis of your website, request a free usability report from our experts.
Summary: Websites and mobile apps both frequently cram options into too-small parts of the screen, making items harder to understand.
A computer screen’s precious pixels are the world’s most valuable real estate. Amazon’s Add to Cart button is 160×27 pixels, or 0.003 square feet (0.0003 m2) at a typical 100 dpi monitor resolution. You could crowd almost 800,000 Buy buttons onto the floor space of the average American home, which currently sells for $160,000. Even a single Buy button will often bring in more than that — let alone the revenue from 800,000 buttons.
Normally, when something is extremely valuable, you try to conserve it. But screen space shouldn’t be hoarded, it should be spent. I see too many designs that cram highly valuable content or action items into tiny spaces while wasting vast amounts of screen space.
Small companies should consider outsourcing the facilitation of their usability testing projects. On the surface, it makes sense to have a designer/developer who has a deep understanding of the project be in charge of usability testing, but in fact this can cause serious problems.
Users should not have to think too hard when they are using your website. They should not have to refer to help screens and they shouldn’t be made to feel stupid. Simply by observing your customers you can avoid this.
User-centered design (UCD) is an approach for employing usability. It is a structured product development methodology that involves users throughout all stages of Web site development, in order to create a Web site that meets users’ needs. This approach considers an organization’s business objectives and the user’s needs, limitations, and preferences.
Situated learning focuses on learning in situ, in the environment or context for which that knowledge applies. At Situated Research, we focus on examining technology in the actual environment in which it is used, in order to uncover user practices and behaviors that suggest ways in which technology is expected to behave.
