Designing a user interface is an exercise in compromise. According to Mike Padilla, every design decision has its costs and benefits. Using a drop-down box in a form has the drawback of hiding the available choices from the users. Radio buttons reveal the choices, but might take up a disproportionate amount of screen real estate.

Every design has its deficiencies. But the presence of deficiencies doesn't make a design bad. What makes one design better than another is the net usability - the good minus the bad - and educated compromises are essential to creating the best interface possible.

Links:

• User Interface Design - Taking the Good with the Bad

Henrik Olsen - August 31, 2006

See also: The design process (14) 

"After forms, data tables are likely the next most ubiquitous interface element designers create when constructing Web applications. Users often need to add, edit, delete, search for, and browse through lists of people, places, or things within Web applications. As a result, the design of tables plays a crucial role in such an application's overall usefulness and usability."

Luke Wroblewski shows a number of interface design solutions that enable users to find their way through large data sets.

Links:

• Refining Data Tables

Henrik Olsen - August 29, 2006

See also: Web page design (26)  Tips and guidelines (72) 

Studies by UIE show that users have nothing against scrolling long web pages. But pages that appear as if there is nothing below the fold makes people think that there isn't anything to scroll for.

But according to Jared Spool, pages that seem to be cut off at the bottom of the browser window, showing only the top part of the content below the fold, communicate that there is more to see, and makes it more likely that people will scroll for the additional content.

Links:

• Utilizing the Cut-off Look to Encourage Users To Scroll

Henrik Olsen - August 14, 2006 - via Column Two

See also: Home pages (4)  Web page design (26) 

Here's an entertaining video featuring Seth Godin talking about all the bad designs that surround us and why bad designs exist. The talk is from the Gel 2006 conference.

Links:

• Seth Godin on broken designs

Henrik Olsen - August 13, 2006 - via goodexperinece.com

See also: Audio and video (11)  Fun music and videos (6)  Bad designs (8) 

A click stream study from 2005 show changes in the way we navigate the web. More forms are submitted, more pages are opened in new windows and, consequently, the use of the back button has decreased.

- Navigation by clicking links has decreased slightly from 45.7% to 43.5% in the past 11 years
- Opening new windows has jumped from 0.2% to 10.5%
- Form submission has increased from 4.4% in 1996 to 15.3%
- With the increase in new windows and form submissions, the use of the back button has dropped from 35.7% in 1994 to 14.3%
- 76.5% of all selected links were visible in the browser window at load time
- 23.1% of all links followed were below the visible area
- Most users didn't utilize their entire screen for their browser window (about 160 horizontal 170 vertical pixels were unused)

Links:

• Clickstream Study Reveals Dynamic Web

Henrik Olsen - August 09, 2006

See also: Research (96)  Navigation (50) 

According to Jakob Nielsen, web pages should use a liquid layout that stretches to the user's current window size. He recommends that we optimize page layouts for 1024x768 pixels, which is currently the most widely used screen size, but that we make sure it works for any resolution from 800x600 to 1280 x1024.

Pages should also work at smaller and bigger sizes. But a less-than-great design is an acceptable compromise. Fewer than half a percent have screen resolutions of 640x480 and users with large screens rarely maximize their browser window.

A liquid design should scale all the way down to the tiny screens found on mobile devices. But mobile services should be designed specifically for use on small screens.

Links:

• Screen Resolution and Page Layout

Henrik Olsen - August 07, 2006

See also: Tips and guidelines (72)  Web page design (26) 

Here's a 30 minute video presentation starring Jen Fitzpatrick, manager of the Google user experience team. She shares examples of how Google have improve the design of their products through user studies, log analysis, and feedback from customer support.

Links:

• The video The Science and Art of User Experience at Google.

Henrik Olsen - July 11, 2006 - via Putting People First

See also: Audio and video (11)  Cases and Examples (16) 

Jared Spool has brought up the good old question about whether links need to be underlined.

He doubts that users are less likely to find what they are looking for at sites where links aren't underlined. People will quickly learn how to spot non-standard links by waving their mouse around to see where the browser gives them "the finger."

But users are trained to click on underlined text. Eyetracking studies show that people dart from underlined text to underlined text in their initial exploration of a page.

If sites have some links underlined and others not, people get confused. Jared concludes:

"We think the visual design element of the underline is not required, but it is cruel to make users work extra hard because you can't decide."

Links:

• Do Links Need Underlines?

Henrik Olsen - July 06, 2006

See also: Tips and guidelines (72)  Links (14) 

Meet Mr. gray and boring pie chart PC who catch viruses and has to restart all the time, and Mac, the top-notch web-design movie podcast photo editor music maker.

Links:

• Fun Mac TV ads

Henrik Olsen - July 04, 2006

See also: Fun music and videos (6) 

UIE has published an interview with Luke Wroblewski, author of the book Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability. In the interview, Luke talks about how visual design can improve a site's usability.

"When properly applied, visual design is all about communication. The better at communicating we are, the easier it is for our users to use and appreciate the web sites we design."

"…you can use visual design to communicate key concepts to your users. By addressing the question "What is this?" we communicate usefulness. By addressing "How do I use it?" we communicate usability. By addressing "Why should I care?" we communicate desirability. Clearly this communication goes beyond mere styling and "looking good".

Links:

• Where Visual Design Meets Usability - An Interview with Luke Wroblewski , Part I
• Where Visual Design Meets Usability - An Interview with Luke Wroblewski , Part II
• Luke's book at Amazon.com
• Luke's book at Amazon.co.uk

Henrik Olsen - July 02, 2006

See also: Interviews (12)  Emotional design (5)  Visual design (16)