most recent 30 from http://uxexchange.com 2010-03-13T23:01:05Z http://uxexchange.com/feeds http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://uxexchange.com/questions/1975/does-the-hover-effect-make-sense-in-desktop-software Christian 2010-03-09T19:04:40Z 2010-03-13T22:06:37Z

<p>Highlighting links on hovering is widely used in the web, but does it make sense on the desktop too? A friend is programming a calendar software and highlights each day in the date picker while hovering. I wondered if this was really necessary and couldn't find this behavior in iCal's picker.</p> <p><img src="http://bayimg.com/image/palmfaacb.jpg" alt="date picker"> iCals date picker. No hover effect. Only the selected date is highlighted.</p> <p>He argues that highlighting the button makes it easier to see which button you'll hit. Especially when you're near the border of two buttons.</p> <p>Why is the hover effect used so much on the web and so little on the desktop (at least on my Mac)?</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/2027/what-ux-deliverables-are-successful-in-an-agile-environment UXtina 2010-03-11T21:28:52Z 2010-03-13T21:55:01Z

<p>Our development process recently moved from waterfall to agile. We've adjusted to many things but are discovering difficulty with how we spend our time maintaining and managing our documentation and deliverables. I don't think we've transitioned our thinking in those areas.</p> <p>Case in point: As part of the waterfall design process, we used to produce wireframes, functional specifications, and then mockups that incorporated visual design/graphic elements. Now, we are still producing wireframes and functional specs because it is what the QA team and the software developers are used to working with. However, due to the iterative nature of agile, our designers spend the majority of their time updating wireframes and specs.</p> <p>Can we be successful without wireframes? Can we think about wireframes differently? What other documentation methods and deliverables have worked well for you and how did you use them effectively and efficiently? How do we help QA and the engineers transition?</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1993/how-do-and-or-should-you-measure-the-quality-of-ux-work Allan Caeg 2010-03-10T14:39:20Z 2010-03-13T21:42:39Z

<p>The title says it all. What are your key performance indicators when you do UX work? How do you think should the quality of UX work be judged?</p> <p>Guide questions:</p> <ul> <li>How do you measure the quality of your work? </li> <li>How do you think should it be measured? </li> <li>If your ideal way of measuring the quality of your work is different from how you do it, what hinders you from doing the ideal thing?</li> <li>If you do UX for a client, how does your client evaluate your work? Do you agree with it?</li> </ul>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1240/are-share-this-buttons-really-effective Allan Caeg 2010-01-06T01:28:10Z 2010-03-13T15:00:50Z

<p>On a lot of websites (especially blogs), we find 'share it' buttons like this --> <img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/v2/lg-share-en.gif" alt="alt text" />. </p> <p>Personally, I never used one. If I want to share something online, I copy the link and manually share it through SNS or IM. Other people claim that they use it, though.</p> <p>Overall, are 'share this' buttons really worth putting on websites? Yes, they usually consume only a small amount of screen space and bandwidth, but is it worth it? Aren't they just adding to visual noise?</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1982/what-software-do-you-use-for-creating-a-sitemap Pete Williams 2010-03-10T10:17:36Z 2010-03-13T14:59:18Z

<p>Hiya,</p> <p>Up to now, I've been using MindJet Manager Pro for creating our sitemaps, but am wondering if anyone can recommend anything better?</p> <p>And by sitemaps, I'm talking about the visual documentation of your IA, rather than the XML sitemap for bots, or the HTML one you might have on your site.</p> <p>And just to throw a bit of a spanner in the works - I'm on PC.</p> <p>Cheers</p> <p>Pete</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/2039/home-button-vs-logo-link Oliver Gitsham 2010-03-12T15:50:26Z 2010-03-13T14:57:31Z

<p>Is a "home" button on the navigation required if there is a link to the homepage using the company's logo? </p> <p>Increasingly I have noticed more and more websites using the logo as a link to return to home instead of a clear Home button in the navigation but haven't found any good proof or research to suggest that this is best approach. </p> <p>Is there a best practice guidelines or some kind of criteria (e.g. advanced users vs beginners) that should aid in making this decision. </p> <p>Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. Thanks</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/2033/rotated-sideways-text-and-tabs Francis Rowland 2010-03-12T10:54:58Z 2010-03-12T16:59:05Z

<p>Hi everyone,</p> <p>A colleague and I were doing a review of a website this morning, and the site featured a kind of tab-style naivgation menu, but with the text turned 90-degrees to the left. In fact, this wasn't a space-saving feature, since the tabs and the text were big, and spanned the full width of the content area..</p> <p>Neither of us liked it very much... but that doesn't mean it's "bad design"!</p> <p>I've also seen this used in sliding accordion-style page features quite often.</p> <p>Personally, I am not a fan, but does anyone have any objective evidence of the pros and cons in terms of UX and usability? I haven't found any discussion about this here or on the IxDA forum, but I am sure that you'll have some thoughts, and I'd love to hear them.</p> <p>thanks, Francis</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/2022/user-interface-designer-or-interaction-designer paulseys 2010-03-11T16:30:44Z 2010-03-12T14:23:40Z

<p>I have my own opinions on this but I'm interested to see what the consensus of opinion is. We're currently scoping out a new job description within the UX team to better define roles and responsibilities. We see the need to have a designer focus on the defining and 'architecting'of a given solution. </p> <p>Activities would include but not limited to; wireframing, prototyping, basic IA work, usability testing, heuristic evaluations. They would work closely with Researchers (UX Practitioners) but would stop at the creation of 'visual' design concepts, although they would collaborate with these designers as well as with Frontend Developers. I'm keen to be as clear as possible with the title of the role but there is alot of fuzziness within our industry. </p> <p>There seems to be real confusion in what to call this role and I'm interested to see what you all think, should it be:</p> <ol> <li>User Interface Designer</li> <li>Interaction Designer</li> <li>UX Designer</li> <li>Something completely different! </li> </ol> <p>There's lots of debate on IxD on this matter and I've discussed this with a few other people but would love to see what the general consensus of opinion is. </p> <p>Thanks in advance! </p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1981/thoughts-on-html-prototyping-before-design Josef Dunne 2010-03-10T10:14:03Z 2010-03-12T06:29:11Z

<p>I am currently working on an HTML prototype using IxEdit (by the way it's a great tool) to add interactions. Thoughts on the process of:</p> <ol> <li>User flow-maps (Work flows)</li> <li>Sketching wire-frames of website on paper and reviewing</li> <li>Building HTML prototype with live interactions and actual content, to show how things will functions</li> <li>HTML prototype given to designer to make pretty as they see fit</li> <li>HTML prototype given to programmers to tie in the back-end. </li> </ol> <p>I find that this prototype is essential, since all that are part of the process, managers, project managers, content writers, designers, programmers, developers all get a chance to play with and edit it, yet can actually interact with it too, once it is complete it is just a case of passing it over to the designers and programmers and then throwing in a developer in the middle to bring it all together.</p> <p>Of course things still change, but the fully interactive HTML prototype acts as a specification for designer and back-end algorithm minded folk :) it practically defines everything as a "draft 1" say.</p> <p>Thoughts? </p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1996/what-is-your-opinion-when-recording-a-users-location Josef Dunne 2010-03-10T14:45:14Z 2010-03-12T06:19:43Z

<p>For example, I mean when a data item that a user is adding to a system has metadata attached to it, one of those pieces of metadata is location, for example a "property that the user is renting" the user will want to specify where that property is available for rent.</p> <p>I have seen various options:</p> <ul> <li>Free text field</li> <li>A collection of drop down menus (Country level > City Level > District Level > Street Level )</li> <li>A map which the user can zoom in and out of and then plot the location with a click of the mouse.</li> </ul> <p>Any thoughts on how best it is to retrieve location data from a user? I open this up to the floor :)</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/2008/quick-website-evaluation-checklist chchrist 2010-03-11T11:31:07Z 2010-03-11T16:13:50Z

<p>Hi all,</p> <p>I want to make a small checklist to evaluate my sites. I want to make SEO , usability and accessibility checks.</p> <p>Which are the most important checks I have to make?</p> <p>Thanks in advance</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/2011/best-practices-of-online-credit-debit-form-designs Leon 2010-03-11T12:49:50Z 2010-03-11T14:46:50Z

<p>Me and my team are considering changing the way in which users carry out credit/debit card transactions on our website.</p> <p>Currently if a user would want to purchase an item,they would have to choose the type of card they have, then fill out the relevant details in order for the card to be processed.</p> <p>What we are thinking of doing is to bring an overhaul to the design of the form, the new design would entail us displaying relevant information according to the card number inputted into a singular box.</p> <p>Once the card number has been inputted, according to the type of card it is, the irrelevant boxes like "start date" "issue number" would gray out. Only leaving the boxes that are relevant to the card.</p> <p>We thought that instead of just supplying a standard credit/debit form for every card transaction, the form would change accordingly to the card number in.</p> <p>What are people thoughts on this?</p> <p>Are there any ideas as to where this type of design has been utilised before?</p> <p>Are there any benefits or drawbacks of using this system or idea?</p> <p>All your thoughts would be valuable to me</p> <p>Regards </p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/838/how-do-you-internally-and-externally-present-a-site-map Allan Caeg 2009-11-19T06:15:36Z 2010-03-10T18:54:21Z

<p>How do you (internally and externally) present a site map? Is there a difference between an internal and external site map?</p> <p>Should it be in a form of a diagram or will bullet points do? Is there actually an advantage in presenting with a diagram?</p> <p>EDIT: </p> <p>I'm talking about <em>the</em> site map. As in <a href="http://www.apple.com/sitemap/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/sitemap/</a> . Externally, it is probably better to present something like Apple.com's. Internally, is it better to have a diagram (like a visual mind map)? It takes some time to do that. Instead of doing real UX work, the designer spends time working with Visio or a similar app.</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/932/currently-whats-the-smoothest-site-map-tool-out-there Allan Caeg 2009-11-27T03:26:45Z 2010-03-10T18:53:54Z

<p>We, UX guys, usually have to make site maps. The only tool for the task that I'm familiar with is MS Visio. That app makes a lot of diagrams and is also very flexible for making site maps. However, drawing boxes every single time, adding text, connecting them with lines, etc; could make the task too time-consuming. As UX designers, we should be spending most of our time by generating great UX ideas. We just can't afford to be too consumed by presenting those ideas.</p> <p>What's the smoothest site map maker out there? By the way, I'm not talking about a generator for an existing website. I'm talking about manually drawing a site map</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/797/representing-visually-the-reasoning-behind-the-sitemap George 2009-11-15T13:39:10Z 2010-03-10T18:52:22Z

<p>I was asked to represent VISUALLY the reasoning behind the sitemap. There is a whole documentation about the full UX study, but the client does not want to read TEXT, he wants to see a VISUAL representation of the reasoning of the sitemap. How is that possible? I am totally lost and clueless and have never faced such a request.</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/754/is-it-ideal-to-let-the-public-access-the-site-map Allan Caeg 2009-11-12T01:28:29Z 2010-03-10T18:51:43Z

<p>I've seen some websites where there's a link to the site map. To be honest, it could be very helpful if the map can be presented properly. On the other hand, the most usable websites I've seen don't have site maps. It's probably because they don't need to present a map to assure that people can find what they need. </p> <p>What can you say about this? Should we do away with site maps? Why do some websites present site maps while others don't? When do we present site maps to the audience? Does it depend on the type of audience, type of content, or both?</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1908/uxexchange-next-steps Matt Goddard 2010-03-02T21:52:30Z 2010-03-10T18:45:59Z

<p>Hi there</p> <p>What do you want from UXExchange moving forward?</p> <p>I'm planning:</p> <ul> <li>Event listings</li> <li>Job board - a consideration here is that I don't want job listings to be a one way street. The employer will know how good you are because of your rep points. But how will we know how good they are. Let work on establishing a scale (Joel test) to rate potential employers.</li> </ul> <p>However, my vision for the site was to create a tool that would support us in our day to day work. We're getting there (thank you everyone) but what can we do to make the site even better?</p> <p>Any suggestions would be gratefully received.</p> <p>Also another quick point: I've been asked by some of the Chinese UX community for a language specific version of the site. Ryana Chen (from UI Garden) has been translating all the current Q&amp;A from the site (with full attribution and links to the original contributors) on <a href="http://cn.uxexchange.com" rel="nofollow">http://cn.uxexchange.com</a>, in addition to creating interest in the Chinese UX community.</p> <p>I hope no one minds and like me you see fantastic opportunity in creating a resource which will help to develop other fledgling UX communities.</p> <p>Matt</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1991/why-are-the-wireframe-tools-sketchy Adrian 2010-03-10T14:30:31Z 2010-03-10T15:16:16Z

<p>Do you like when your elements look as if they are drown by a little kid? I don't get it! </p> <p>I mean, on paper not all of us have the talent/skill to draw something close to engineering perfection, but on the computer everyone can draw a straight line. </p> <p>I'm referring Balsamiq especially, which is rather a success among fellow UX professionals. </p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/6/remote-hci-degree-courses Matt Goddard 2009-10-11T15:58:12Z 2010-03-10T14:42:04Z

<p>Does anyone know of any good distant learning HCI under graduate courses?</p> <p>Thanks,</p> <p>Matt</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1968/proper-sequence-of-usability-test-tasks Charis 2010-03-09T10:57:28Z 2010-03-10T14:23:17Z

<p>I would like to conduct a Usability test for an Applications' portal. I know about the separate tasks, the sessions set-up, the card-sorting, the screen capturing and most of the full Monty. I will have to perform everything in a single session (no question about that) with each test Use. I would like to hear from experienced people how they dealt with the sequence of all these different stuff in similar situations.</p> <p>Thank you in advance for all your input.</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1820/whats-the-ux-of-a-negative-vote Glen Lipka 2010-02-25T16:47:06Z 2010-03-10T02:18:17Z

<p>On UXExchange, I find that I react mildly happy to a positive vote, but I feel disproportionately bad with a negative vote. What are the UX lessons (if any) to take from this?</p> <p>My personal benchmark of voting:</p> <ol> <li>If I answer a question I vote up. (It was worth my spending a minute typing, it must be decent).</li> <li>If I read a comment most of the way through, I vote up. I paid attention, worth a point.</li> <li>If I read an answer and say, "That wasn't even an answer at all or is really bad advice...it has to be really bad, I vote down. </li> <li>If a question is spam or not appropriate (in my opinion) for the forum, I vote down.</li> <li>A great comment deserves a vote up too. No down vote for comment.</li> </ol> <p>Whenever I vote down, I leave a comment. Mainly because the system reminds me to, but also because I think <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3aThe_overuse_of_anonymity_at_Wikipedia_and_a_proposal" rel="nofollow">anonymity is a horrible thing on the web</a>. Gives everyone license to behave badly.</p> <p>So again, the question: The feature exists. Is it a good thing for the overall success of any community or does it really create more unhappiness than happiness?</p> <p>Also, what's your benchmark for voting?</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/191/can-i-create-dynamic-prototypes-with-balsamiq-mockup Matt Goddard 2009-10-15T12:36:21Z 2010-03-09T17:07:31Z

<p>After reading some of the recommendations in <a href="http:///questions/9/how-would-you-test-a-dynamic-paper-prototype" rel="nofollow">How would you test a “dynamic” paper prototype?</a> I've started to play with Balsamiq mockups but i don't think i get it.</p> <p>Does Balsamiq export to a prototype (or do i need <a href="http://www.napkee.com/" rel="nofollow">Napkee</a> for that?)</p> <p>If so how do you set states on panels? </p> <p>For example: i'm mocking up a complex form which will use progressive disclosure. If you answer yes to a question i want another question to appear.</p> <p>Can i do this?</p> <p>Matt</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1962/when-does-statistical-significance-matter Philip Morton 2010-03-08T18:07:14Z 2010-03-09T12:59:40Z

<p>When does the statistical significance of a usability test matter?</p> <p>I ask because in <a href="http://boagworld.com/podcast/202" rel="nofollow">a recent Boagworld podcast</a>, Steve Krug talks about how he recommends testing with only three users. When asked if that's statistically significant, he says no and goes on to explain that, to paraphrase, it doesn't really matter because some issues will cause everyone to fall at certain steps.</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1801/are-there-any-free-screen-readers-out-there Gavin Harris 2010-02-24T17:04:57Z 2010-03-09T12:03:45Z

<p>I'd like our developers to start using screen readers as part of our development process but due to a limited budget I am only able to use free tools that preferably have no installation requirement. Any recommendations? Much appreciated.</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1874/how-do-i-overcome-these-challenges-and-get-a-job-in-this-field Mashhoor 2010-03-01T13:26:41Z 2010-03-08T22:15:32Z

<p>Hi,</p> <p>Although I know (and practice) a plenty of stuff in the UX/usability field, I'd still love to get a formal job and work with a team of professionals to really boost my experience.</p> <p>Someone could suggest that I should just go to a jobs site and look there, but I'm in a totally different position than most of the people here. Here are the challenges I'm facing:</p> <ol> <li>I live in a developing country where we don't have a single job dedicated for UX or usability. So I can't gain any real experience while I'm here. I need an overseas job.</li> <li>I have an Associate Degree (like higher diploma) in Computer Science. Almost all of the vacancies I've seen require a Bachelor degree or equivalent experience (see #1. And what's equivalent experience anyway?</li> <li>All of the work I've done so far is for Arabic web sites, and potential employers often ask for real work samples, not just mock-ups to illustrate my skills and the way I solve problems. And I can't work with non-Arabs since they seem to prefer to work with someone living in the same country/city.</li> </ol> <p>Any idea how to overcome these challenges and get a UX job? I wouldn't even mind working for a couple of months as an intern or something.</p> <p>Your input is much appreciated :)</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1957/how-can-i-produce-an-insightful-quick-n-dirty-usability-report Mashhoor 2010-03-08T14:20:36Z 2010-03-08T18:33:09Z

<p>Hi,</p> <p>I was asked by the company I work at to make a usability report in a few days that shows the state of the current site under the following limitations:</p> <ul> <li>I don't have any budget or gifts to give to the participants.</li> <li>I can't do proper surveying/screening since I don't have the time/money/support needed for that.</li> </ul> <p>Yet I still need to produce a report that will point us to the right direction.</p> <p>I'll be able to get much more time and support to produce a report with fairly accurate results after this initial report, it just needs to be good enough and not mislead later on. Or, in other words, I need to convince the management (with data and stats to benchmark the progress, as they asked for) that we should invest some time in improving our site's usability. Observations are not enough in this case.</p> <p>How you would go about doing that?</p> <p>Appreciate your input.</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1353/are-print-links-needed-on-a-website Zoltán Gócza 2010-01-14T21:08:05Z 2010-03-08T03:51:50Z

<p>What do you think, does a website for a general audience need a "print" link or will the users know how to print the page for themselves (using the browser controls)? </p> <p>Some background:</p> <ul> <li>It's not a content heavy website, so printing won't be a primary usecase. </li> <li>The design has a quite heavy background that can make people stop and think before printing the page, therefore having the print option may also give the right signal to the customers that the page can be printed properly.</li> </ul>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1877/the-usability-of-lightbox-uis Alastair J 2010-03-01T15:00:56Z 2010-03-07T21:13:14Z

<p><strong><a href="http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/" rel="nofollow">Lightbox UIs</a></strong> are becoming a lot more prevalent in mainstream web-design. You know the drill -- click on a link, the background fades darker, and up pops a UI for interacting with an object, making a change, viewing a picture gallery etc.</p> <p>They do make it very obvious what is going on, and where the user's focus is to be at any one point in the experience. However, they often don't allow the user to open images or perform that task in a new browser tab, for example, which can frustrate many.</p> <p>There seems to be a bit of a resistance by some well known web software developers:</p> <ul> <li><p><strong><a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1149-modal-overlays-beyond-the-dialog-box" rel="nofollow">Modal Overlays</a></strong></p></li> <li><p><strong><a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/592-been-lightboxed-lately" rel="nofollow">Have you been lightboxed lately?</a></strong> (discussion particularly interesting).</p></li> <li><p>Nielsen: about half way down, under <strong><a href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/application-design.html" rel="nofollow">"Modal Dialog Boxes: Yes or No?"</a></strong></p></li> </ul> <p>So, has anyone done any user testing/usability tests with lightbox UIs, and how did they perform? What are the pitfalls? Where do they do well? Where do they do poorly?</p> <hr> <p>Edit: I saw an interesting use of a lightbox the other day, shopping for car insurance. I thought it worked quite well -- you select additional options on the page for adding things like breakdown cover to the base policy, click update, and the lightbox faded in and showed the progress of the update. Neat, direct, obvious what was happening.</p> <p><img src="http://files.me.com/alij/e4wa2g" alt="alt text"></p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1950/logged-in-ui-vs-persistent-nav snipe 2010-03-07T16:48:26Z 2010-03-07T20:27:46Z

<p>I'm working on a project for my company right now that includes a fairly large "My account" type of section. The original sitemap has "Login/Account" in a less prominent, smaller top nav on the right, above the site's normal main top nav with category representations, but I am trying to make the argument to include "My Account" in that main top-level nav. So my questions for you are:</p> <ul> <li><p>would you advocate putting it in its own link in the main top nav? (This section is large enough to have its own sub-nav.)</p></li> <li><p>would you leave the label as "My Account" even when the user is not logged in/ When they click on it, they would be prompted with a login box. I generally advocate not changing the labels on top-level navigation and prefer consistency, but I'm interested in your thoughts.</p></li> <li><p>would you ever consider only adding it to the topnav if the user is logged in? This is by far my least favorite option. I don't like surprising users with nav elements they didn't know would show up in the top level nav after taking an action. Am I just being a control freak?</p></li> </ul> <p>The second option is by far my favorite, but I can't tell if I'm just too close to this to be objective anymore.</p> <p><strong>Update with more info:</strong> The smaller top nav would be the equaivelent of the [username] | log out | faq | about nav here in UXE, while what I am calling the man top-level nav would be like the Questions | Tags | Users type of nav here. The site I am working on is not a Q&amp;A though, and the account center let's you handle preferences and view updates in the forums (your subscriptions), as well as handling favorites, and some additional stuff that isn't just related to the public profile.</p>

http://uxexchange.com/questions/1944/what-are-the-common-misconceptions-myths-you-face-in-your-client-work Zoltán Gócza 2010-03-05T21:50:37Z 2010-03-07T18:37:45Z

<p>In your experience, what common misconceptions do clients have regarding web design and UX? Like caring too much <a href="http://blog.clicktale.com/2007/12/04/clicktale-scrolling-research-report-v20-part-2-visitor-attention-and-web-page-exposure/" rel="nofollow">about the fold</a>, madly sticking to <a href="http://www.uie.com/articles/three_click_rule/" rel="nofollow">the 3-click rule</a>.</p> <p>Btw, there's a good list on Carsonified: <a href="http://carsonified.com/blog/design/top-10-ux-myths/" rel="nofollow">The top 10 ux myths</a>.</p>