Ethical social research online
The trust engineers I enjoyed this recent episode of Radiolab, which looked how the internet has given social scientists an unprecedented ability to conduct social experiments, which then helps us improve our designs,…
Search by tag: user experience
Why is the user important?
As we may have mentioned a few times already, the digital communications team is committed to a user centred approach to our work: whether that be research, design, content or build. We have placed users at the heart…
Hamburger menus perform poorly
Why we banished the hamburger menu from our iPhone app The hamburger menu is one of the oldest icons in the history of graphical user interfaces. It was included in the Xerox Star, one of the first ever graphical user…
The importance of typography
How we read Good typography is an underrated element of the user experience. Good typography makes content easier to read, which is why we have rules about how the text is laid out on the page. It’s up to us to keep…
Why simplicity improves the user experience for all
The myth of the sophisticated user Our goal as designers is to make things as easy as possible for the user. When we set out to simplify content and convert jargon terms into plain English, we are sometimes told that…
Don’t break the user experience
Breaking web design conventions = breaking the user experience The esteemed Nielsen Norman Group has turned its attention towards the controversial redesign of the Bucknell University website. The redesign is high in…
Why audience-based navigation does not necessarily work
‘Hey, you there’: the trouble with audience-based navigation Gov.uk shared something very interesting about their experience with audience-based labels in their webpages. They found that people do not always identify…
Improving user experience and fostering change
This is the second of a series of reflections on this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop. Read an introduction and the other posts. Following Ross Ferguson’s inspiring talk, further food for thought was…
Why we must augment focus groups
UX myth #21: People can tell you what they want I have written and spoken before about the fact that we cannot always take users’ word for it when they tell us what they want from a website. What people say they want…
Online marketers and user experience
4 things online marketers should know about user experience (UX) We found the final point about download times interesting. I know that this is a proverbial tough pill to swallow: perceived speed is more important to…