UX in the Real World: Form Frustration
Yesterday I filled out a very long application form. At the end I was asked to submit my billing address in a typical form: The City dropdown is required, but here’s the catch: it doesn’t have any values. So after…
Providing Sufficient Information In Validation Errors
Nearly all web usability experts agree that validation should happen in real-time, while the user is inputting data. But the technique doesn’t guarantee a pleasant user experience. Take this hypothetical project management app as an example. I can enter a…
Consistency & Validation Messages
Inconsistency is a great way to draw people’s attention to things that need extra attention. In things that don’t need extra attention, it’s confusing, because your mind tries to figure out why it’s different.
Better Help Experiences: A Conversation with Jimmy Breck-McKye
This is the second of two posts (the first is UX, Help, and Moments of Truth) based on a conversation with Jimmy Breck-McKye, a thoughtful user experience designer based in London. You can read more of his thoughts on designing user experiences at breck-mckye.com….
UX, Help, and Moments of Truth: A Conversation with Jimmy Breck-McKye
This is the first of two posts based on a comversation with Jimmy Breck-McKye, a thoughtful user experience designer based in London. You can read more of his thoughts on designing user experiences at breck-mckye.com. Who are you, and what do…
Think Awesome, Not Boring, for User Help
I complained in a prior post that the user interfaces for help have not kept pace with the huge improvements made to software interfaces, and while I picked on a lot of examples of boring help, I didn’t offer any…
Your Software Interface Has Changed In The Last Ten Years-Why Hasn’t Your User Help?
I’ve been on a mission to collect examples of amazing user help for the past six months. When I started this effort I assumed that I would find a lot of terrible examples, and 10-20 great examples. But I found…
Use the Delete Key to Make a Better Product
I love building new features. My favorite part of a project is the brainstorming at the beginning: the optimism that our solution will be fast, intuitive, and make the user awesome at doing the task at hand. I love to…
Hi, I'm Jen, host of Software Smitten and the creator of