10 UX tips for Cogapp's Informati

1. World Usability Day
10 usability tips from the real world
November 8th 2012
Chris How - Information Architect

2. 1/10 usability tips from the real world
Usability starts, continues and ends with understanding the motivations and behaviours of your audience.
Test early and often with the right people.
Image: iStockphoto.com

3. 2/10 usability tips from the real world
Devise navigation around the tasks and journeys the user wants to take.
You can't force people to take the paths you have constructed.

4. 3/10 usability tips from the real world
Too many options causes people anxiety and stops them from making a choice.
Discover and focus on the top tasks of your audience, remove distractions and prioritise features.
Image: Flickr.com Robin Kearney

5. 4/10 usability tips from the real world
Great design considers where and how people use a product and makes it easy to do so in context.
Uncover context by getting out of the lab and start observing and testing in the field.

6. 5/10 usability tips from the real world
Social proof, popularity and scarcity are powerful ways to create desire in people.
Understanding people’s behaviour leads to better designed experiences.

7. 6/10 usability tips from the real world
Make it obvious what controls do and place them in sight and easy reach of the user.
Giving this light switch a large button and a label doesn’t address the underlying usability issues.

8. 7/10 usability tips from the real world
Information is easier to find if it is organised around the way your audience think about it and refer to it.
Houses in Venice are numbered in the order they were built making it hard to be a postman.
Image: Flickr.com Michael Dawes

9. 8/10 usability tips from the real world
Where you come across a product and what it looks like determines how you interact with it.
The poor design and placement for this station’s intercom for mobility support has led it to be an ash tray.

10. 9/10 usability tips from the real world
Usability supports the actions people want to take and focusses on achieving these goals.
Facilitating the intended playing of boules would be better than saying what you can’t do.

11. 10/10 usability tips from the real world
Usability is more than making it work, it is about introducing delight in designs.
A design that gets strangers talking in a lift comes from an understanding of human behaviour.

12. Our mission
To help organisations develop new products and services
connecting people with engaging digital content: the bigger
and more challenging, the better.
Cogapp, 21-33 Dyke Road, Brighton, BN1 3FE
Telephone +44 (0)1273 821600
Email office@cogapp.com
cogapp.com