When designing a user interface, it is important to create a good end user experience. In fact, some features that are popular can be a real annoyance to your visitors. In this article, we will cover 5 user interface design features that are commonly seen online that provide a horrible user experience.

1. CAPTCHA

As the internet has increased in popularity, so has spam. However, spam is more of a technical problem rather than a human problem. All of this can be stopped on a technical level. Making the user pay by having to fill in forms with ambiguous letters makes interaction with your website a chore. Spam is easy to catch in many cases because spambots share a similar design and have predictable behavior. For example, when fighting spam and deciding on your user interface design, the following questions will help you identify the real users on your site:

1. How long did it take to fill in the form? If it was a matter of seconds, it’s probably a spambot.
2. Was Javascript used to submit the form? If so, it’s probably a spambot.
3. Were all fields filled with URLs? If so, it’s probably a spambot.
4. Was data entered into a non visible text field to the user? Then it’s probably a spambot.
5. Is the same IP address making repeated visits for just a few seconds on your website?

The answers to these questions can help fight spam on your site and take the load off of your end user. Alternatively, consider utilizing a human oriented question that is specific to your audience. For example, if you’re within the the design space, a question such as “mixing yellow and blue together produces what colour?”. This gives users a positive emotion by utilizing their smartness. They are treated better than being asked to input gibberish.

Either way. Lets stop CAPTCHA now. Your users will thank you for it!

2. Reset Buttons

This applies to forms and anywhere that text can be entered on a page. Having this “feature” coded too close to the submit button is a recipe for disaster for many websites. This is especially true if you are using your website to build a following. How many scenarios can you think of where your user just took time to fill out a form, and they then realized “I have no need for EVERYTHING I just entered. Please remove it all.” If you have a user that accidentally clicks this nasty button, you may have just permanently implanted a negative experience in their mind. To save the world from more trouble, lets just stop doing it. There is literally no need for it to exist. It does nothing that can’t be achieved by other means UNLESS there is a specific case (we’ve yet to see one).

3. Pop-Up and Surveys

Many of your visitors will just want to browse and peruse through your site. Websites that incorporate popups within the first few seconds will annoy more visitors than they will make happy. Popups to chat before your user is really sold on your website will also add an extra annoyance. Simply placing a Chat button in clear view is more than adequate. The same applies for surveys.

4. Redundant Forgot Password Workflow

This is a very common feature of many websites and simultaneously an annoyance to many users. Much of the standard workflow for retrieving a forgotten password is as follows:

User enters their username/email address and wrong/no password ——> User Clicks “Forgot Password” ——> User is prompted to enter username or their email address again.

Having your website store their username so it populates after they click “Forgot Password” is better than your website “forgetting” who they are and asking them to re-enter their information. The former is impersonal and requires too much repetition for end users. Remember, the purpose of your interface is to create a good user experience, even when they have forgotten their password.

5. Auto-Playing Slideshows

Having slideshows set at any speed are much harder to click or browse through than content that can be scrolled through. This common mistake made by websites interrupts the flow of your user experience and can even frustrate your visitors, especially when the slide show is the main content on the website. It simply makes the user feel out of control.

While many of the features are extremely common online, it doesn’t mean it’s good practice. Focusing on your users helps to keep them coming back. Taking these 5 design flaws into heavy consideration when you are making your final decisions on your user interface design will help create both clarity and an overall good web experience for your visitors. Incorporating them may put you at risk for losing and frustrating your website visitors.

We came across a great quote recently on an old blog post:

“If you can give me an application that can accurately predict tomorrow’s stock market, I’ll put up with the grossest usability issues, even a command line interface. On the other hand, if you give me an application that tells me what already happened on the market, it better have better UX than the one I currently use or I won’t switch.”

Design, on its own, doesn’t sell by itself. Good design makes things easy to use, more obvious and intuitive. If there are several things with equal, or alike, functionality, the one with the best design wins. We can see this apparent in everyday life.

Myspace

Myspace was the most important social networking site in the world. Can you believe that at one time it surpassed Google as the most visited site in the US?

2008 comes along, and Facebook is the clear winner. Why? Obviously there are numerous reasons, however, user experience and design both played a big part. In 2006 Myspace signed a $900 million, three-year advertising deal with Google. Besides making a boat load of money, the end result of this deal was a Myspace that provided Google exclusive advertising. This resulted in a site that was less easy to use, and slower, compared to a site like Facebook. It impacted the overall design of the site and over user experience.

Myspace has worked on design improvements. From a god-awful design in the early days, they re-branded and re-focused in 2008, yet users still wouldn’t respond. Facebook offered a cleaner design and a better experience. Facebook won. What will be interesting to see is how a ‘new’ Myspace stands up against a Facebook that is beginning to show signs of weakness. Myspace will soon be rolling out a new user interface which looks much more cleaner than the current iteration of Facebook. Will good design win again?

Facebook

Speaking of Facebook…While it’s still a behemoth in the social networking space, reports are continuing to suggest that its starting to lose users. Facebook recently stated that they believe some of their younger users are reducing engagement and switching to other platforms such as Instagram (owned by Facebook).

Facebook initially drew users in thanks to a relatively simple interface. It also met and enhanced user experience at the time. It offered a great photo sharing experience, ways to connect easily with friends, as well as opportunities for entertainment.

View UI changes over the years.

Today, Instagram offers a much more streamlined process, enhances it, and provides a better user experience. While the younger demographic is being drawn more and more to images as a method of communication (eg: Tumblr, SnapChat and Pinterest), is there any wonder why users are spending less time on Facebook?

Gmail

There is a great article posted in 2008 from Techcrunch which shows the evolution of pre-launch gmail in screenshots. Look at these screenshots and ask yourself if it would be possible, in 2012, for Gmail to become the largest email service in the world with the old UI it once had. In 2011, Gmail released a UI facelift that provided a more minimalist look. One year later, they are the email service.

Besides obvious UI improvements, UX plays a big part.Gmail continues to innovate and offer a much stronger user experience than any of its competitors can match: Google Docs, Calendar, Gtalk, etc, it’s meets more what users want.

The design of Gmail surpases that of other platforms, it provides a much stronger user experience, and it wins.

Automobiles

Switching from the digital space to the offline, we can look at cars. Study after study show that when buyers are looking to purchasing a car, its factors such as ‘connectedness’ and gas-saving technologies that are making the difference these days. The amount of horsepower or other such specs isn’t a major factor. Meeting the experience of the users, presenting fantastic design, providing comfort and peace of mind is what matters now.

If specs were the true motivating factor, one could suggest that the US Auto Industry would have never had any challenges competing again Japanese firms. This wasn’t the case. Fuel efficiency, connectedness, and price all won over specs. Design won.

Design on its own doesn’t sell. We can see this in everyday life. Good design that supports its users, and provides a fulfilling experience, does win. We’ve listed a few examples here, what are yours? Let us know!

“Wow!”, “That’s amazing”, “I’d love to have it”, “Wish this was true” – That is the astonishment Hollywood movies present. It leaves us wondering, “will this really happen one day?” Hollywood is the leading hub for all kind of acts. It is a place where you meet world famous actors and actress, portraying their power of imagination. They do it so intuitively and will leave you wanting more and more of their fiction. The one area where fiction turns to reality is the technology introduced through films, and into our minds. Read more »

FireWorks’ Stroke feature gives the user three basic options: align to outside, align to center  and align to inside. On top of that you can use Photoshop Live Effects Stroke with those same basic options.  With simple rectangular shapes there is no visible difference but not all of them rendered equally elegant results when used on rectangular shapes with rounded corners.

Here is a small table that shows the difference:
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One of the four factors of user experience (UX) is content. It is the visual culmination of all the thinking, testing, coding, planning, and designing that goes into a site. Users can decide in a matter of seconds if all of your painstaking effort is worth it which makes engaging them all more important.  Here are four tips to create better user experience. Read more »

Designing a usable interface is about the skills of the designer as well as how they are able to teach the user how to interact with the site. Here are ten tips we have used to design user interfaces:
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No one goes into UX design saying, “Let’s make this is as complex as possible.” When it comes to design and usability, simplicity is beauty while complexity is corruption.  But what constitutes simplicity? Just because something has less does that make it simpler or more desirable? Not necessarily.

For one thing simplicity can be seen as less sophisticated. A great example is that of a blender. Most blenders have puree, chop, blend, liquefy based on the desired outcome. What if you found a blender that only had one button? Your first question would probably be “So where are the rest?”  In this case, simplicity is seen as lack of functionality.

Simplicity can also be interpreted as easy to use. Hitting a ball with an object like a bat, a racquet or even a club seems simple enough but it takes years of practice to use them both effectively as any professional player will attest.

As UX designers, we often see simplicity as the goal and complexity as a four-letter word. Taking away all of the extraneous elements helps the user focus and succeed but should simplicity be the objective of UX design?

Simplicity is the main component of UX design that is necessary to helping users achieve better results by dividing complex goals into simpler tasks.  Creating a positive user experience through this process is the ultimate goal of UX not simplicity.

Have an opinion about simplicity and UX design? Please, tell us what you think!

Adaptive design has sometimes been (mis)understood by designers to mean adding some features to a website or application that will allow users to customize the interface to suit their needs.  However, in order for the concept of inclusive adaptive design to really work, we need to understand more about what it isn’t. Read more »