What's the best layout for a blog front page? To show full articles or to show summaries of the latest post?

According to research done by Jakob Nielsen, using summaries works best with blogs that people don't visit every day. They are better at drawing readers in as they offer a broader selection of subjects and increases the likelihood that they will find something that interests them.

Links:

• Corporate Blogs: Front Page Structure 

Henrik Olsen - August 10, 2010

See also: Web page design (39)  Text (24)  Home pages (9) 

Jakob Nielsen has conducted a preliminary usability study of the Apple iPad. His findings "revived memories of Web designs from 1993":

- Because of the apps' print media aesthetic users don't know where they can click, which options exist and trigger unexpected actions by mistake

- Common actions are difficult to learn since each application has a completely different way of doing similar things

- The user interface suffers from being a scaled-up iPhone. For example, people tend to ignore or forget about the tab bar at the bottom of the screen

- People want more freedom and control than swiping for the next page when reading

- Screen elements tend to be too small for people to be able to touch them

Links:

• iPad Usability: First Findings From User Testing 
• Free report: Usability of iPad Apps and Websites 

Henrik Olsen - May 11, 2010

Watching over 800 user test sessions, cxpartners report to have seen the page fold as a barrier to users on only 3 occations. In addition, eye tracking studies commonly show a strong hotspot over the scrollbar, indicating that people expect to have to scroll.

Cxpartners gives the following advise on how to deal with the fold:

- Don't cram everything above the fold. Use whitespace and imagery to encourage scrolling.

- Don't use stark, horizontal lines as they discourage scrolling

- Avoid the use of in-page scroll bars - the browser scrollbar is an indicator of the amount of content on the page

Links:

• The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing 

Henrik Olsen - January 10, 2010

See also: Web page design (39) 

According to Jared Spool, research by his company UIE shows that well-done navigation and content graphics help users. Ornamental graphics, on the other side, doesn't prove to benefit the user experinece. In their research, they can't find any evidence that they help users trust a site or make it seem more professional or friendly. On the contratry, ornamental graphics can be distracting and annoying to users.

Jared recommends that teams focus on delivering helpful navigation and content graphics and resist the temptation for ornamental graphics.

Links:

• Deciding When Graphics Will Help (and When They Won't) 

Henrik Olsen - December 06, 2009

See also: Visual design (19) 

To better understand the usability of inline validation in forms - that is, forms that provide real-time feedback as people fill in answers - Luke Wroblewski set up a usability test comparing different types of form feedback.

Though the participants were confused when simple questions, such as a person's name, were marked "correct", he found that they were faster, more successful, less error-prone, and more satisfied when they used a form with inline validation.

Also, giving feedback after the particpants finished typing - rather than while they were typing - helped the participants complete the forms more quickly.

Links:

• Inline Validation in Web Forms 

Henrik Olsen - September 07, 2009

See also: Forms (30) 

To find out how to design user-friendly forms, cxpartner have tested four registrations forms at Yahoo! Mail, Googlemail, Hotmail and eBay.

Here are their recommendations based on the study:
- Use a simple vertical layout and vertical aligned labels where possible
- If vertical aligned labels are not possible, use bold left-aligned labels
- When more than one field is placed on a line, ensure that they are designed to look like a single piece of information
- Emphasize the headers if you want users to read them
- If optional fields are needed, make them clear instead of using asterisks for mandatory fields
- Use single field for numbers or postcodes, allow input in various forms
- Let users focus on their task and avoid distractions
- Use real time feedback carefully
- If possible, place tips at the side of the relevant fields
- Provide users with a progress indicator showing them the steps involved to complete the form

Links:

• Web form design guidelines: an eyetracking study 

Henrik Olsen - June 02, 2009

See also: Forms (30)  Tips and guidelines (93) 

According to Jakob Nielsen, web usability has taken hold in recent years. His tests show that success rates have increased 15% from 2004 to 2009. But people still can find their way around websites. From 2004 to 2009, user failures cased by bad information architecture has only decreased by 4%.

Links:

• IA Task Failures Remain Costly 

Henrik Olsen - April 20, 2009

See also: Navigation (63)  Information architecture (15) 

Jakob Nielsen has conducted a large-scale usability test that shows that non-profit organizations lose out donations because their fail answer donor's questions about what the organization stand for are and how they use donations.

Key findings:
- 47% of the usability problems were about people having problems with finding critical information
- 53% were content issues, including unclear or missing information and confusing terms
- On 17% of the sites, the test participant couldn't find where to make a donation
- The participants had few problems in completing the actual donations

Links:

• Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities 

Henrik Olsen - March 30, 2009

See also: Navigation (63)  Text (24) 

A usability study by Jakob Nielsen shows that people using websites on their mobile phones suffer from old-time usability issues, such as slow download time, bloated pages, and difficulties using the browsers.

To improve usability of mobile web browsing, Jakob Nielsen recommends that big and rich sites provide different websites tailored to each type of mobile device on the market. Sites that need to serve mobile devices but can't afford building many different versions should supplement the main site with a single scaled-back mobile-optimized design, recognizing that it will serve high-end phones poorly.

The study reveals that people have problems with all kinds of mobile devices. Even the iPhone isn't perfect, though it is, as Jakob says, "the first mobile Internet device worth criticizing."

Links:

• Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998 

Henrik Olsen - February 17, 2009

See also: Download time (5)  Browsers (3) 

Bill Westerman from Create With Context has posted a slide deck covering their research on iPhone usability.

In their research, they found that "take-up of interactions - even when these were consistent across applications - was often quite slow. And even 'expert' users were not aware of the ins-and-outs of every interaction - for example, our 'expert' participants didn't know the two-finger single tap to zoom out on Google Maps."

In the slide deck, Bill Westerman walks through their findings and gives eight rules of thumb for designing better iPhone apps.

Links:

• The slide deck at Slideshare 
• PDF version of the presentation 

Henrik Olsen - November 12, 2008

See also: Usability testing (68)  Tips and guidelines (93)