Tags: ux

What I’ve learned about motor impairment

James gives—if you’ll pardon the pun— hands-on advice on making sites that consider motor impairment:

• Don’t assume keyboard access is all you need
• • Auto complete/Autofill
• • Show me my password
• Allow for fine motor control issues
• • Don’t autoplay videos
• • Avoid hover-only controls
• • Infinite scrolling considerations
• Be mindful of touch
• • Avoid small hit targets
• • Provide alternate controls for touch gestures

Far from being a niche concern, visitors with some form of motor impairment likely make up a significant percentage of your users. I would encourage you to test your website or application with your less dominant hand. Is it still easy to use?

Videos in “UX London” on Vimeo

The videos from UX London 2017 are available for your viewing pleasure.

Designing The Perfect Slider – Smashing Magazine

If you thought Vitaly’s roundup of date pickers was in-depth, wait ‘till you get a load of this exhaustive examination of slider controls.

It pairs nicely with this link.

Jeremy Keith on resilient web design - UX Chat

In which I have a conversation with a polar bear.

Very well-mannered species …I’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Reflections on Two Years of Indieweb

Alex Kearney looks back on two years of owning her own data.

With a fully functional site up and running, I focused on my own needs and developed features to support how I wanted to use my site. In hind-sight, that’s probably the most indie thing I could’ve done, and how I should’ve started my indieweb adventure.

This really resonates with me.

One of the motivating features for joining the indieweb was the ability to keep and curate the content I create over time.

Terrific post!

Here’s to two more years.

Despicable Design — When “Going Evil” is the Perfect Technique

I really like this “evil” design exercise that Jared has documented on Ev’s blog.

I broke them up into small groups of three, spreading each role across separate groups. I then asked each person to grab a sheet of paper and make their own list of ways they imagined the product’s user experience could be made worse.

You’re Offline | Max Böck - Frontend Web Developer

This looks like a sensible way to detect if the user is offline, and provide appropriate feedback, like making certain links or forms inactive.

URLs are UI - Scott Hanselman

So many folks spend time on their CSS and their UX/UI but still come up with URLs that are at best, comically long, and at worst, user hostile.

Designing The Perfect Date And Time Picker – Smashing Magazine

Vitaly’s been bitten with date-picker fever. Here’s his deep, deep, deep dive into one interface element.

UX London 2017 - YouTube

If you’ve never been to UX London, this short video communicates the flavour of the event nicely.

Inclusive Design Principles

I’ve added these to my collection of design principles:

• Provide comparable experience
• Consider situation
• Be consistent
• Give control
• Offer choice
• Prioritise content
• Add value

Worst volume sliders possible – Designer News

Truly awful interfaces …made real.

Christina Xu: Convenient Friction: Observations on Chinese UX in Practice on Vimeo

This was my favourite talk from this year’s Interaction conference—packed full of insights, and delivered superbly.

It prompted so many thoughts, I found myself asking a question during the Q&A.

IF Data Permissions Catalogue

A collection of interface patterns for granting or denying permissions.

Flags are not languages – A blog about designing global user experiences: beyond language, location & culture.

It’s a bit finger-pointy but this blog should be useful for anyone working on internationalisation.

This blog has two general aims: to show the fundamental flaws in using flags to represent languages and how to create good experiences when dealing with multilingual and multi-regional content.

Improve Your Billing Form’s UX In One Day – Smashing Magazine

A few straightforward steps for improving the usability of credit card forms. The later steps involve JavaScript but the first step uses nothing more than straight-up HTML.

Let’s Make the World We Want To Live In | Big Medium

Josh gives a thorough roundup of the Interaction ‘17 event he co-chaired.

“I think I’ve distilled what this conference is all about,” Jeremy Keith quipped to me during one of the breaks. “It’s about how we’ll save the world through some nightmarish combination of virtual reality, chatbots, and self-driving cars.”

Accessibility and Performance | MarcySutton.com

When I heard about Universal JavaScript apps (a.k.a. isomorphic JavaScript), despite the “framework hotness”, I saw real value for accessibility and performance together. With this technique, a JavaScript app is rendered as a complete HTML payload from the server using Node.js, which is then upgraded as client resources download and execute. All of a sudden your Angular app could be usable a lot sooner, even without browser JS. Bells started going off in my head: “this could help accessible user experience, too!”

Most of the web really sucks if you have a slow connection

Just like many people develop with an average connection speed in mind, many people have a fixed view of who a user is. Maybe they think there are customers with a lot of money with fast connections and customers who won’t spend money on slow connections. That is, very roughly speaking, perhaps true on average, but sites don’t operate on average, they operate in particular domains.

The ‘Credit Card Number’ Field Must Allow and Auto-Format Spaces (80% Don’t) - Articles - Baymard Institute

A deep dive into formatting credit card numbers with spaces in online forms.