- Accidental Creative
- Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites
- Art of Non-Conformity
- Art of Readable Code
- Back to the User: Creating User-Focused Web Sites
- Beginning PHP6, Apache, MySQL Web Development
- Books to Read
- Bored and Brilliant
- Born For This
- Complete E-Commerce Book
- Content Inc
- Core PHP Programming
- CSS3: Pushing the Limits
- Dealing with Difficult People
- Defensive Design for the Web
- Deliver First Class Web sites
- Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty
- Designing Web Interfaces
- Designing Web sites that Work: Usability for the Web
- Designing with Progressive Enhancement
- Developing Large Web Applications
- Eat That Frog
- Economics of Software Quality
- Elements of User Experience
- Epic Content Marketing
- Extending Bootstrap
- Flexible Web Design
- Flexible Web Layouts
- Happiness At Work
- Inmates Are Running the Asylum
- jQuery Pocket Reference
- Letting Go of the Words
- Making Every Meeting Matter
- Manage Your Day to Day
- Marketing to Millenials
- Monster Loyalty
- More Eric Meye on CSS
- Official Ubuntu Book
- Organized Home
- Perennial Seller
- PHP In a NutShell
- PHP Refactoring
- PHP5 CMS Framework Development
- PHP6 and MySQL Bible
- Privacy Policy
- Responsive Web Design
- Responsive Web Design with HTML and CSS3
- Rules of Thumb
- Saleable Software
- Securing PHP Web Applications
- Simple and Usable Web, Mobile and Interaction Design
- Smart Organizing
- Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web sites
- The Life-changing Magic of Tidying up
- This Is Marketing
- UI and UX and Design
- Web site Usability
- Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide
- Web Word Wizardy
- Well Designed
- Work for Money, Design for Love
- Blogs
- Checklists I Have Collected or Created
- Crafts To Do
- Database and Data Relations Checklist
- Ecommerce Website Checklist
- My Front End UI Checklist
- New Client Needs Analysis
- Newsletters I Read
- Puzzles
- Style Guides
- User Review Questions
- Web Designer's SEO Checklist
- Web site Review
- Website Code Checklist
- Website Final Approval Form
- Writing Content For Your Website
- Writing Styleguide
- Writing Tips
- Complete Book of Potatoes
- Creating Custom Soil Mixes for Healthy, Happy Plants
- Edible Forest Garden
- Garden Design
- Gardening Tips and Tricks
- Gardens and History
- Herbs
- Houseplants
- Light Candle Levels
- My Garden
- My Garden To Plant
- Organic Fertilizers
- Organic Gardening in Alberta
- Plant Nurseries
- Plant Suggestions
- Planting Tips and Ideas
- Root Cellaring
- Things I Planted in My Yard
- Way We Garden Now
- 101 Organic Gardening Hacks
- Beautiful No-Mow Lawns
- Beginner's Guide to Heirloom Vegetables
- Best of Lois Hole
- Eradicate Invasive Plants
- Gardening Books to Read
- Gardens West
- Grow Organic
- Grow Your own Herbs
- Guerilla Gardening
- Heirloom Life Gardener
- Indoor Gardening: The Organic Way
- Real Gardens Grow Natives
- Seed Underground
- Small plot, high yield gardening
- Thrifty Gardening from the Ground Up
- Vegetables
- Veggie Garden Remix
- Weeds
- What Grows Here
- Activities for Kids
- Baking & Cooking Tips
- Bertrand Russell
- Can I Get that on Sale?
- Cleaning Tips and Tricks
- Colour Palettes I Like
- Compound Time
- Cooking Tips
- Crafts
- Crafts for Kids
- Household Tips
- Inspiration
- Interesting
- Interior Design
- Latin Phrases
- Laundry Tips
- Learn Something New
- Links, Information, and Cool Videos - Stuff for My Kids
- My Miscellany
- Organizing
- Quotes
- Reading List
- Renovations
- Silly Sites
- Things that Make Me Laugh
- Videos to Watch
- YouTube Hacks
- Accessibility
- CSS Frameworks
- CSS Reading List
- CSS Sticky Footer
- htaccess files
- HTML Tips and Tricks
- Javascript (and jQuery)
- Landing Page Tips
- Making Better Websites
- More Information on CSS
- MySQL and Databases
- Navigation
- Responsive Design
- Robots.txt File
- Security and Secure Websites
- SVG Images
- Web Design and Development
- Web Design Tools
- Web Error Codes
- Website Testing Checklist
- Writing for the Web
- Writing Ideas for your website
- Animations and Interactions
- Being a Better Designer
- Bootstrap Resources
- Color in Web Design
- Colour
- CSS Preprocessors: Sass and Less
- CSS Tips Tricks
- Design Systems
- Designing User Interfaces
- Font & Typographical Inspiration
- Fonts, Typography, Letters & Symbols
- Icons
- Logo Designs
- Photoshop Tips and Tricks
- Sketch
- UX and UI and Design Reading List
- Web Forms
- Customers chose basic improvements over value-added extras.
- Avoid speculating about what the customers might or might not do.
- Adding features doesn’t always make the user’s experience simpler. Often it can lead to more frustration.
- Sometimes you may be able to come up with an alternative solution that meets customers’ real needs (such as letting them switch between mobile applications quickly). But don’t be afraid to ignore requests to add more to your product.
- Mainstream users don’t like the burden of setting options and preferences.
- Use white space or subtle background tints to divide up the page rather than lines. Why? Because lines sit in the foreground, so you pay more attention to them than tints or white space that sits in the background.
- Use the minimum possible emphasis. Don’t make something bold, large and red, if simply making it bold will do.
- Avoid thick dark lines where fine,light lines will do.
- Limit the levels of information. If you have more that two or three levels of information on a page you may be confusing the user. For instance, limit the number, sizes, and weights of fonts. Try to keep to just two or three levels in total, eg. a headline, subheading, and body text.
- Limit the variation in size of elements.
- Limit the variation in the shape of the elements.
Removing words
- it makes what’s important stand out
- It reduces the effort it takes to interpret a screen
- It makes people more confident that they’ve understood what’s there
- Organize into bite sized chunks.
- Mapping users’ behavior will help you see how to organize your software.
- Good categories have hard-edged distinctions.
- Make important things big.
- Put similar things close together.
Set the Scene
Consider adding “Welcome to secure checkout” to make the transition to checkout smoother.
Tell a Story
Users expect the sequence to unfold like a story, find out what that story is, and follow it. One online order form I tested started by asking users to enter their name and address. The owner explained that if there was a problem at a later stage, the company would still be able to contact the customer. But customers hated it.
When the sequence followed a simple story (“What do you want? Now where should I send it?”), the conversion rate increased.Speak the users’ language. Processes tend to exist because the user has to conform to a bureaucratic process (like a passport application) or a technical procedure (like setting up a modem) and bureaucracy and technology breed jargon. For insiders, jargon is compact and specifc. For novices, one unfamiliar word of jargon is more complex than an entire familiar sentence.
Reveal information in bite-sized chunks
If the chunks are too big, users feel the form is too complex. If the form is divided into lots of tiny nibbles, users feel the form is ineffcient and tedious. Each chunk should be complete and self-contained (for instance, don’t divide the address across two screens).
Hiding works as long as no one has to seek too long.
Today’s mobile devices are great for recording what users see and hear, and where they go. But entering large amounts of text is uncomfortable. When the user is directing and the computer guiding, the experience feels simpler.
If the data needs to be processed by a computer (for instance, if the tasks need to be sorted into date order) then the data needs to be structured. But often the computer can recognize and structure the data in the users’ notes.
Computers often make users uncomfortable because they control and direct users’ behavior. Simple experiences require trust.
Spending time understanding the problem leads to better, simpler solutions.
The really great person will keep on going and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works .
Steve Jobs
Simple and Usable Web, Mobile and Interaction Design
by Giles Colborne
Pearson Education | September 16, 2010 | Trade Paperback
These are notes I made after reading this book. See more book notes
Just to let you know, this page was last updated Friday, Mar 05 21