The Minute UX™ series: one-minute reads about website problems I’ve discovered in numerous UX audits. Adequate contrast is required for text readability. That applies to everyone—especially as we age—but more particularly for people with various levels of vision loss. For example, … Read more
The Minute UX™ series: one-minute reads about website problems I’ve discovered in numerous UX audits. Choosing the right words for website or app buttons is crucial. (I’ll save button visual design for another blog.) Vague or fanciful button text is remarkably … Read more
According to Smart Insights, the average click-through rate (CTR) for online display ads is about 0.1% (one click for every 1,000 ad impressions). That’s an average and in practice CTRs vary widely depending on the size and type of ad, the … Read more
Carousels are ubiquitous on websites, but they present unique design challenges. First, most people scroll right past them without seeing anything but the first image in the series. That can leave important content unseen. Second, while they often look great … Read more
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve been hearing about artificial intelligence constantly. From daily news stories to announcements from various software platforms, everyone’s saying something about how AI is either the greatest thing ever…or the end of civilization … Read more
There’s a well-known story about an experiment conducted by the Washington Post and world-famous violinist Joshua Bell. They decided to have Bell do some busking at the Washington D.C. Metro to see what kind of reaction he got. The story is somewhat … Read more
There has been a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (AI) the last few years. Will this year be the tipping point when AI starts making a serious impact on how marketing communications content is created? A lot of creative … Read more
There’s a reason “don’t reinvent the wheel” is truth. Despite many centuries of science, technology and innovation, mankind just hasn’t come up with anything that works better than a wheel. In web design there are also things that shouldn’t be … Read more
The headline for this post is drawn from my favorite UX book: Don’t Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web and Mobile Usability by Steve Krug. He writes, “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get … Read more
In real estate, it’s location, location, location. In UX, the location is mobile, mobile, mobile. Mobile devices account for over half of all visits to most websites. Chances are you are reading this post on your phone. Various sources now put web … Read more
We all have our go-to tools. Websites, platforms and applications we use to solve problems, perform tasks, acquire assets, streamline workflow and generally make our jobs easier. When I come across a helpful new tool, I’m always grateful. I thought … Read more
We spend a lot of time on our screens. Because of that, making text as readable as possible is extremely important for optimal user experience. This article gives easy-to-implement fixes for five common typographic problems seen on many websites: Line … Read more
So the other day in a meeting, a client said he wanted things to be simple. That’s music to my UX ears of course, because simple is almost always best. When the client said this, he used the well-known euphemism … Read more
If you’re building a website from scratch – or revamping an existing site – where do you begin? This post will help with the many questions that will need to be answered to create a great website. I believe the … Read more
To “optimize web images” means striving to achieve the optimum quality (best looking) and the optimum download speed (smallest file size) at the same time. This is challenging because best looking and smallest file size work directly against each other. Modern … Read more