Nielsen Norman GroupEvidence-Based User Experience Research, Training, and Consulting
The user's target was at the top of the page in 98-point font. But she failed to find it because the panel auto-rotated instead of staying still.
Decent computer screens with pixel densities of 220 PPI or more lead to new usability guidelines for on-screen typography.
Websites and mobile apps both frequently cram options into too-small parts of the screen, making items harder to understand.
Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable.
Users overlook features if the GUI elements (such as buttons and checkboxes) are too far away from the objects they act on.
Optimize Web pages for 1024x768, but use a liquid layout that stretches well for any resolution, from 800x600 to 1280x1024.
On average, sample sites evenly distributed valuable screen space between content, navigation, fluff, blank areas, and system overhead. Areas of user interest should occupy more than the current 39%.
Anything that is a great print design is likely to be a lousy web design. The big canvas size and controlled layout make print visually superior; Web interaction is more engaging.
Users' reactions to early design ideas for the Sun Microsystems' 1997 Web site demonstrate that users are becoming more web sophisticated, and prefer straightfoward access to content.
Because computers are no longer used exclusively for utilitarian tasks, we should use systematic methods to design products that are not just efficient but also attractive to users.
Icons for the Sun Microsystems' 1995 Web site design were designed and tested in several iterations, both independent of and in context with the full Web site design.
Useit.com, Jakob Nielsen's site from 1995-2012, had almost no graphics because fast download times are the number one criterion for Web usability.