UI Design & Usability Blog

Understanding Your Users

One of the most important things you need to do when starting to design is trying to understand who your users are. Resist if you are told to design “for anybody”, this way you design will be good for nobody. Choose a target population even if you think that other people will use your site as well. Find out everything you can about your target audience.

In addition, you can consider your users computer savvy. Generally people think of users divided into 2 groups: beginners (people who hardly use computer) and experts (people who are fluent). This is not a realistic division.

It’s better to think about it this way:

1. There are people generally computer savvy.

2. People that know how to perform particular task, for example HR work.

3. People that know the particular software, but not fluent in other areas.

This type of scale will help you to position your users more correctly.

Using Search Boxes

One of the most important components of any website is a search box. Yet many people don’t always use them correctly. Some users don’t even understand the difference between a search on the site and web search.

To help them, it’s best to create only one search box for the site. Adding additional search boxes will confuse users and distract them from their task, making them wonder which one to use. Less is more in this case. Don’t add the ability on your site to search the web. Let people use their favorite search engine to do that and keep your site’s search less complicated. If additional search options needed, add advanced search page.

Search results have to tell the user how many hits/products found and make it easy to browse and sort them. Make sure the hits read different enough so users don’t think they got a faulty search engine that displays same hit over and over. Minimize repetition between hits. Make each entry easy to understand so users don’t need to click each and every one to see if they are relevant.

And don’t forget that he standard position for a search box is in the right top corner. It would be counterproductive at this point to place it anywhere else – users expect it there.

Designing for Wide Audiences

There are couple of things to keep in mind when designing a UI for consumers. And one of the most important is an unfortunate fact that about 40% of general population has low literacy. Keeping that in mind, design most pages for 6 grade level. Some other tips:

1.Make navigation simple by placing main choices in a linear menu

2. Take care that search is tolerant of missplennings

3. Prioritize information

4. Avoid moving, jumping, changing text – it makes it harder to read.

What’s important for Homepage?

Users spend very little time on Homepage. If the user is experienced, it can be as little as 25 seconds. What do you need to show them in this short period of time? Obviously, users don’t read long paragraphs of text. Most of those precious seconds are spent on figuring out where to go next. So the time needs to be used very wisely. Here are the most important thing the Homepage has to accomplish:

1. The user has to see immediately what site they arrived at and what is the purpose of it.

2. What benefits this site offers to the user.

3. How to get to the most relevant part of the site.

4. Information about the company and new offerings.

All these things have to be accomplished in seconds!

What Is Usability?

“The term “usable” means more then just easy to learn. Ease of learning is an important component of usability, but it is the least important of three components. To be usable, the product also has to be quick to use and relatively error-free. Most importantly, you must do what the user wants… Usability refers to three different components: the product does what you need it to do, it does that quickly and safely, and, last, it is easy to learn…”
- From the book by Jeff Johnson “GUI Bloopers”

What Annoys Users Most?

“One sure way for software to annoy its users is to ask them for data the software obviously doesn’t need. The form of this blooper that annoys users the most is asking them to reenter data they already entered…

Make it high priority not to require users to enter data repeatedly. Here are several ways:

• Ask only for data you really need. If you aren’t sure what you will do with a piece of data, you don’t need it.

• Stick to the current transaction. Data you would like for other purposes, such as marketing or establishing relationship with the user, should be requested in separate and optional areas of software.

• Don’t make any data “required” unless you really cannot proceed without it.

• Don’t require data some customers won’t have: you will just force them to make it up… or take their business elsewhere.

• When someone gives you information, deduce as much as you can from it. Use what you know to fill in other data fields.

Asking for data you don’t need scares away customers who value their privacy, prevents customers from achieving their goals, frustrates those who don’t have the information you require, and slows throughout.”

From a book by Jeff Johnson “GUI Bloopers”

Will PC be replaced by mobile devices?

Well, first we need to agree what the PC is. Let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s desktop and laptop computers. Then all other devises – ipad, phones, etc. are mobile devices.

Steve Jobs said something like this about a year ago:

Long time ago there were mostly trucks. But when population moved to more urban settings, there appeared a need for a car. Did the truck die? No, we still have them, but there are much fewer trucks now then in those early years.

So his take is that there will still be desktop computers but mostly for professional use. Your regular consumer will mostly use mobile devices. The transition may make many people uneasy.

Looks like the transition is making Jakob Nielsen a little uneasy. In his latest Alertbox (August 29) he writes that he disagrees with an opinion that “mobile devices will be the only important user interface platform in the so-called “post-PC” future” (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/3-screens-transmedia.html).

He states that PC’s have :

1. Much larger screens

2. Better input devices

3. Faster bandwidth

4. Hardware oomph

5. Software maturity

6. Printing

His conclusion: ”use of mobile devices will dramatically increase, but much high-value use will remain on desktop PCs. Most companies must support both device classes, and our usability research shows that this must be done with separate UI designs that target the different characteristics of the two types of user experience. One size UI does not fit all screen sizes”.

What do we think?

Typical Business Metrics for Website Success

For your website to be a success you need 3 components: a) new visitors coming to your site, b) these new visitors to become customers, c) the loyalty of your customers.

This is how it’s usually measured:

1. The number of the sells

2. Traffic numbers – page view statistics

3. Time needed for visitors to perform their tasks

4. Number of visitors that click on important links

Points to Consider Before Starting to Design

I was reading the book “GUI Bloopers” by Jeff Johnson and thought he makes a good list of questions about your users tasks to consider before starting your design. Here is his advise:

1. What tasks does a person do that are relevant to the application’s target task area?

2. Which tasks are common, and which are rare?

3. Which tasks are more important, and which ones are least important?

4. What are the steps for each task?

5. What is the result and output of each task?

6. Where does the information for each task come from, and how is the information that results from each task used?

7. Which people do which tasks?

8. What tools are used to do each task?

9. What problems, if any, do people have performing each task? What sorts of mistakes are common? What causes them? How damaging are mistakes?

10. What terminology do people who do these atsks use?

11. How are different tasks related?

12. What communication with other people is required to do the tasks?

Why use standard design elements?

In their book “Prioritizing Web Usability” Jackob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger make a strong case for using standard design elements. The book’s copyright is 2006, but this issue is still seems relevant. Here is a little box from the book that states the main points:

Seven Reasons for Standard Design Elements.

Standards ensure that users:

1. Know what features to expect

2. Know how these features will look in the interface

3. Know where to find these features on the site and on the page

4. Know how to operate each feature to achieve their goal

5. Don’t need to ponder the meaning of unknown design elements

6. Don’t miss important features because they overlook the design element that is not standard.

7. Don’t get nasty surprises when something doesn’t work as expected