Day 81 - User Interface Learnability

A UI should be easy to use from the first time a customer interacts with it.  If the interface isn't approachable or if it's confusing, people will abandon it quickly. The amount of functionality presented to the user should be limited to precisely what the user requires to accomplish the task.

Day 80 - Return on Usability Investment

Why should the business care about ux research, usability and design?
Research at IBM shows that as a rule of thumb for every $1 dollar spent solving a problem in design, you save $10 dollars in development, and you save $100 dollars in post-release maintenance.

$1 : $10 : $100

Day 76 - System Usability System (SUS)

SUS is a series of ten questions. It's a quick and dirty usability scale to give your users once they've completed testing your service.  Users are asked to rate statements from 1-5 depending on how much they agree with them.

1. I think that I would like to use this system frequently.
2. I found the system unnecessarily complex.
3. I thought the system was easy to use.
4. I think I would need the support of a technical person to use this system.
5. I found the various functions in this system were well integrated.
6. I thought there was too much inconsistency in this system.
7. I would imagine that most people would learn to use this system very quickly.
8. I found the system very cumbersome to use.
9. I feel very confident using the system.
10. I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this system.

Day 55 - User Interviews - Questions to Ask

UX is about building something based on research not intuition.

You want to build something people want. But in research interviews, you generally don't want to ask what people want.  It could lead to wrong insights. You want to discover problems and find their root causes.

Better questions to ask in user interviews:

1. What are you trying to accomplish?  Try and find some context for what they want to get done. 
2. How do you currently do this?  Try and understand the series of steps they go through.
3. What could be better about how you do this?  Search for opportunities.

Day 49 - Web Design Tip - Above the Fold

"Above the fold" is originally a newspaper term describing the upper half of the front page where the most important stories and headlines of the day are located.

According to a Jakob Nielsen study on scrolling (in his book "Prioritizing Web Usability"), only 23% of the visitors in his study scrolled. Most people don't scroll down a page.

When designing your website, you generally should keep your primary call to action and succinct value proposition above the fold so users don't have to scroll down or work to find out what your site is basically about.

You only have a few seconds to pique and maintain someone's interest when they come to your site before they hit the back button and abandon the web page. Reduce this friction by showing them the value quickly the moment they hit the page and encourage them to take action.

Day 35 - Device Breakpoints and Screen Size Detection

With so many new different computing devices on the market,  there are no common screen sizes. Breakpoints are the point at which your site's content or layout breaks on a device and needs to be adjusted for clarity and usability.

By adding breakpoints and screen detection rules about width and styling in the code (media queries in the CSS) your site's layout and typography can adapt legibly to multiple devices and screen sizes.

Test your web apps and sites on as many different devices as you can get your hands on. When the layout isn't working at a particular width and needs to be adjusted, define your own breakpoints in the CSS and adapt the layout.

Breakpoint rules of thumb:

• Typically change styling of your documents so that it's best suited for the user using their device.
• Always be concerned with readability and font sizes.
• When designing for "mobile first" think "content first". It's the content and your design flow that defines the breakpoint, not the pixel width of the most popular device.
• Make your designs adaptive so that they're future friendly as widths are growing and changing.
• Horizontal scrolling is a bad idea.
• It's not probable that you can cover all device types, but try and design usable solutions for your customer segments.

Day 24 - Mobile UX Tips to Improve Usability

Follow these mobile design tips to improve usability for your mobile customers.

1. Innovate but don't reinvent the wheel.  Use mobile design patterns and models.
2. Keep context in mind. Mobile users are on the go.
3. Design for the immediacy of now.
4. Don't let interruptions get in the way of user experience. Make the app easy to disengage and easy for people to pick up where they left off.
5. Align with device conventions so as to not create confusion, e.g. don't user iPhone controls if the app is running on an Android device and vice-versa.
6. Ensure that your designs are tap and finger friendly.
7. Break larger tasks into smaller ones so that you don't overload the user.
8. Use in app analytics such as Google Analytics or Flurry to measure and improve the experience.

What are some other best practices?  List them out or add them in the comments below.

Day 9 - Usability - User Interview Tips

Understand more about your users by doing usability testing.  Used in User-Centered-Interaction-Design, usability research can help you evaluate a product's direction by giving you direct user feedback.

Here are some interviewing tips when conducting research with your users:

1. Get into your "research persona" and be professional so that the interview can feel friendly, casual, and conversational.
2. Smile (no explanation needed :)
3. Be neutral and encouraging. Don't be a grinch.*
4. Don't behave in judgmental or dismissive ways.
5. Ask open ended questions that start with who, what, when, where, why, and how. 
6. Ask follow up questions.
7. Don't pitch nor try and convince the user that your product is the bees knees.
8. Shut up and listen

*Never blame the user (although sometimes you feel like you want to!).