Design - The Usabilla Blog

10 Tricks How Mascots Can Improve The User Experience

on July 24, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 1 Comment

The user experience of websites has become increasingly important, maybe even a major selling point. As a result we constantly try to find new ways how we can improve the experience for our visitors. Be it through an exceptional usability, a high degree of personality, or through interaction and engagement. There are many things you can do and as long as you focus on your visitors, and as that your existing and potential customers.

A great way to make sure you appeal to your target group are mascots. These little characters can make your website more personal, authentic, trustworthy, fun, and engaging. Let’s take a look at 10 examples of mascots on the Web and their role in improving the user experience.
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Design

A Guide To Design High Quality Infographics

on July 12, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 4 Comments

Infographics have become quite a popular way to present information. And it’s a good thing that they have. 90 percent of all information that we perceive and that gets transmitted to our brains is visual. Especially on the Web, where effective communication is essential, infographics can be a good choice to inform, engage, or even entertain your website visitors.

High quality infographics are 30 times more likely to be read than written content.

– Customer Magnetism

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Design

How To Design Cool Team Pages

on July 5, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 18 Comments

Just like everything else on the Web, team presentations have changed a lot over the last few years. They went from non existent to being very personal, funny, and engaging. Our expectations towards the user experience of a website grows rapidly. Not only do we want clear information, and easy to go through signup processes, we also want to know who is behind a website and why we should trust them.

From the early phases of the Web until only a little while ago, websites did not give their visitors the chance to meet their team. While basic contact information has been a common thing to offer for a while now, most of the time it was not clear who you would reach once you took the daring step to actually make contact.
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Design

6 Guidelines For Designing 404 Error Pages With A Positive Impact

on June 21, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 2 Comments

It goes without saying that the best way to go about errors is to avoid them. People neither have the time nor the nerves to deal with technical problems, while browsing your site with a certain goal in mind. So you should do everything in your power to avoid errors.

Yet, there is little you can do about the unexpected. No matter how hard you try, some users will run into a dead end at some point. It might or not be your fault, but you should be prepared for when it happens.

Customized 404 error pages have become the rule. We see them almost every time that we try to visit a broken or non-existing link. Webmasters have realized that classic 404 error messages can have a negative impact on the user experience. They are negatively phrased, boring and for most people too technical to truly understand. Customized error pages on the other hand can have a positive impact.
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Design

Top 10 Guidelines for Designing Better Landing Pages

on June 7, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 4 Comments

The current shift of focus away from the usability of a website towards its user experience can be quite challenging. Especially for those generations that were usability experts long before the emotional impact of the Internet was even an issue. Now Usability has become a commodity. Does that mean it’s less important? It certainly does not. We just have to learn to go a step further and make our websites functional, usable, and pleasurable.

Jakob Nielsen is one of the leading experts when it comes to usability. Over the years he has conducted countless studies, written very useful books, and contributed quite some knowledge to the world about how to make a website usable. However, he has not yet taken that extra step towards a great user experience.

The homepage is the most important page on most websites, and gets more page views than any other page.

According to Nielsen is a company’s homepage the “face to the world and the starting point for most user visits.” Reason enough to make the best of it, I think. In this article I’d like to take a look at Nielsen’s Top 10 Guidelines for Homepage Usability and how we can make pleasurable landing pages, without paying the price of good usability.
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Design

Not Just Pretty: Building Emotion Into Your Websites

on June 6, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

This article was originally and in full length published on Smashing Magazine. Please visit the original source for the entire text, including many visual examples.

Emotional design has become a powerful tool in creating exceptional user experiences for websites. However, emotions did not use to play such an important role on the Web. Actually, they did not use to play any role at all; rather, they were drowned by a flood of rational functionality and efficiency.

We were so busy trying to adapt to the World Wide Web as a new medium that we lost sight of its full potential. Instead of using the Internet on our terms, we adapted to its technical and, at first, impersonal nature. If it wasn’t for visionary contemporaries such as Don Norman or Aarron Walter, we might still be focusing on improving processes, neglecting the potential of emotional design.
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Design

Usability Has Become A Commodity

on May 29, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 4 Comments

Heretical or not, it is time to have more pleasure and enjoyment in life. Although the cognitive analyses of usability and function are important, so too is the affective analysis. Let the future of everyday things be ones that do their job, that are easy to use, and that provide enjoyment and pleasure.

– Don Norman

I couldn’t say it any better than Don Norman. There is no questions that the usability of a user interface (UI) will continue to be essential for the success of a product. Only due to technological progress and common usability standards, people will be more likely to notice its absence rather than its presence. Usability has become a commodity and is no longer a distinctive feature. Something less tangible has taken its place: The user experience.

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Design

Personalize Your Website And Gain Credibility

on April 26, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 2 Comments

Personality is one of the major factors to influence web credibility. We love the feeling to actually interact with a real person, rather than a machine. The design of a website and the personality that comes with it can trick us into this idea, even if we are very well aware that all we see is basically some code sent to us by a faraway server, interpreted by our web browser.

If you have any feature requests, you have an amazing idea [...], you need support, or just want to say “Hi”, please contact us.

Quotes like the one above can make a big difference when it comes to how trustworthy users perceive your website. The text shows that the people behind pulpfingers.com are not only truly interested in what their users have to say, also their tone of voice is very human and authentic.

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Design

How To Design Effective Navigation Menus

on March 29, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 2 Comments

Navigation menus are the key to finding what we are looking for on a website. Without a navigation menu that meets our expectations, a website will most likely not be effective. A website that is not effective will most likely not be successful. There are many different kind of websites that range from simple to extremely complex. In any case, a good design should focus on the users and their goals: Finding certain information as quickly as possible.

By glossing over a few examples I discovered, I will go over best practices that help you nail your navigation menu.

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Design

Why Designers Collect

on March 28, 2012 / by Jurian Baas / No Comments

How you go about educating yourself as a designer is a highly personal affair. But if you want to improve constantly, there are some things you can’t do without. Mostly, this means practicing an awful lot, and knowing how to take in all the stuff you see around you, and turn it into something that is original, beautiful and effective. I will explain how collecting design elements helps designers do these things, and improve their skills.

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