Nielsen Norman GroupEvidence-Based User Experience Research, Training, and Consulting
The science of human-computer interaction (HCI) seeks to understand the constraints and paradigms that define how people use technology. Cognitive science provides detailed knowledge of how people perceive, understand, and remember information; HCI applies this knowledge to predict how people will react to interfaces, and how those interfaces can be optimized for humans. Many of the basic principles of HCI have a huge impact on usability, and a thorough grounding in these concepts can help designers bring an informed perspective to unique interface problems.
Feline users require special considerations, including larger tap target zones for paws, continual animation, and audible vocalization.
Users often leave Web pages in 10-20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people's attention for much longer because visit-durations follow a negative Weibull distribution.
People remember much more after reading if they retrieve information about the text from memory. Quizzes are one way websites can help users remember more.
What users believe they know about a UI strongly impacts how they use it. Mismatched mental models are common, especially with designs that try something new.
The 10 most general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are more in the nature of rules of thumb than specific usability guidelines.