usability - The Usabilla Blog

Form And Function Go Hand-In-Hand

on March 20, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

There have been plenty of discussions lately about usability. Still I notice that people get the usability confused with the actual look and feel of a website. A good website requires a lot from us as designers: Clean coding to make sure everything works and everything works fast; great usability to meet all expectations people have when visiting our site; and at the same time an exceptional user experience to differentiate us from competitors and to help us build a relationship with our users. Where do we start to design a website that meets all these requirements?

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Design

7 Content Foundations For Web Designers

on February 28, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 1 Comment

Web design is much more than just the appearance of a website. It also includes other aspects, such as the choice of content, your tone of voice, or how much fun users have on your site. In other words, the content of a website influences how we perceive the design. That’s why I consider these rather practical aspects content premises in web design. If you can’t convince people with your content, you will have a hard time to do so with your design. I put together a selection of seven tips that will help you build a solid foundation for your design.

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Design

Design Is Not Science: an Interview With Nate Bolt

on February 16, 2012 / by Anneke Schapelhouman / No Comments

Nate Bolt is the co-founder and president of Bolt | Peters, a research and design firm specializing in remote usability, user experience, and interaction design. Nate is both a researcher and a designer and he co-authored the book Remote Research.

Anneke had the opportunity to interview Nate for our readers. Here are some great insights into the future of remote research, web design ethics, and other challenges designers face on the Web.
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Design

Not Just Pretty: Balancing Emotion and Function

on January 10, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 2 Comments

In web design, getting the usability right used to be major goal. Now that most designers seem to master this goal, usability has become like a commodity: As basic requirement for a functional website, we find its presence throughout the Web. This shift of attention has created space in the field of web design and visual design has regained its central position. However, visual design in its new definition embraces more than just looking pretty. Don Norman split it into three levels; visceral design, behavioral design, and reflective design. Together the three can reveal the full power of visual design and guide you to a successful website.

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Design

The Paradox Of Technology And 5 Ways To Avoid It

on December 15, 2011 / by Sabina Idler / 3 Comments

Does our life become easier with every new invention on the market? I don’t think so. New technology presents us with great possibilities and limitations at the same time. Let’s have a look at this quote:

The same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use. This is the paradox of technology.

— Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (1988)

What Norman said about technology in 1988 is still valid today. Our economy, educational system and our social interactions have changed dramatically with available technologies. In order to stay competitive, products become more and more ingenious, their features adding up. The idea is to make our lives easier. But does it work?

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Design

An interview on the state of UX with Lou Rosenfeld

on December 8, 2011 / by Jurian Baas / No Comments

UX interview Lou Rosenfeld If you like to read about UX, you probably have at least one book that was written or published by Lou Rosenfeld. Aside from being a publisher, Lou is stil going strong as an independent information architecture consultant. We thought it would be interesting to hear his thoughts on the development of UX as a field, and see what he is up to in general.

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Demo UX Cases

How the leading Dutch news network was improved with user feedback

on November 15, 2011 / by Jurian Baas / No Comments

NU.nl, the biggest news network in the Netherlands, redesigned it’s website this year. The main objective of the redesign was to improve the overall user experience and retaining the clear presentation of content, which the website is known for. One specific goal was to direct more visitors from the homepage to the content that the news network offers on different topics. Annemarie Boon, usability specialist at Sanoma Media, used Usabilla in the process to achieve this goal. Thank you Annemarie, for being so kind to share your findings with us.

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Design

5 Quick Wins For Your Website’s User Experience

on October 27, 2011 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

You don’t have to be an expert in usability guidelines and research methods to improve the user experience on your website. Sure, there are countless methods and tools to measure, analyze, test, and improve the user experience. But a lot of these are tools for specialists, who have gotten down the basics. They already improved their design with a lot of quick and small wins.

Here is a list of things you can do yourself to improve the user experience (UX) on your website today.

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Demo UX Cases

The UX of 8 leading banking websites

on September 28, 2011 / by Jurian Baas / 2 Comments

Every day millions of people deal with their personal finances on the Internet. Banks have to tie a lot of systems together to make this possible, and simultaneously ensure that other information is easily accessible. There are a lot of details for banks to cover on a website: information about mortgages, credit cards, locations, insurances, loans, and much more.

Results for one of the tasks in our report

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Design

Different Ways To Approach User Centred Design

on September 27, 2011 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

User testing. Everyone knows it, everyone does it, or at least knows he should be doing it when creating user interfaces. Over time many different kinds of user testing, such as classic in-lab user testing, remote, or automated user testing, have evolved. They are all based on the same idea: user centred design. And they all have their advantages and their disadvantages. Let’s look into different approaches to user centred design and how the saying ‘many a little makes a mickle’ applies to automated remote user testing.

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