Category Archives: Usability

How to build a visual hierarchy to express relationships between page elements

The underlying structure of a page’s layout can be understood as a visual hierarchy, where some visual elements on the page are subordinate to others. The visual hierarchy helps guide the user’s eye through the page, and aids users in … Continue reading

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Psychology for UX Design, Usability, User Experience Design, Visual Design | 1 Comment

Interaction design and usability for data persistence and transactions

Most applications deal with data that needs to be stored persistently — that is, saved — so that it can be accessed later. A “persistence concept” orĀ “transaction concept” is an explanation, at the user-interface level, of how this works in … Continue reading

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Usability, User Experience Design, Visual Design | 1 Comment

Designing navigation and wayfinding in software applications and websites

To make your application or website easy to use, you need to make it easy for users to navigate. That means that users have to be able to understand: where they currently are, where they can go, and how to … Continue reading

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Designing your application’s interaction concept

Your application’s interaction concept is a basic summary or description of the fundamental way the user interface works. It describes the general way that users interact with the application to complete their tasks. Because usability problems tend to emerge when … Continue reading

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What characteristics contribute to a negative user experience?

There are many things that can cause users frustration and annoyance with software. In the previous post, we discussed some “do’s” for creating a positive user experience. Let’s now consider some “don’ts” that can create a negative user experience. Some … Continue reading

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What characteristics contribute to a positive user experience?

As designers, we’d like to know what things contribute to a positive user experience, and what things contribute to a negative user experience, so we can work on building the former into our products and avoiding the latter. In other … Continue reading

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