![]() ![]() ![]() Remember the double-D rule: differences are difficult. If a command takes more than 10 seconds, put up an explicit progress bar, preferably as a percent-done indicator (unless you truly can't predict how much work is left until the operation is done).If a command takes between 2 and 10 seconds, show a wait animation such as a “spinner.”This type of progress indicator tells users to hold their horses and not click on anything else until the normal cursor returns.If you can't meet the recommended response-time limits, say so, and keep users informed about what's going on with a progress indicator: Users often think that the application is broken or they start clicking on other targets. Out to Lunch Without a Progress IndicatorĪ variant on lack of feedback is when a system fails to notify users that it's taking a long time to complete an action. Changing the buttons’ location and color is an extra, important signal in this feedback, as it reduces the likelihood that users will click the wrong button after editing if they aren’t paying attention and relying on muscle memory.This level of feedback clearly indicates what is happening with the system and how it’s responding to user input. Proper, clear feedback can convey to users the scope of the edit good feedback can be implemented in a variety of ways, from using a different background to identify the current editable area to changing the buttons associated with editing to clearly show their function In the edit mode, this application from adds a grey background to the table row that’s currently editable, changes the cells so that they look like form fields, and changes the Edit and Delete buttons to Update and Cancel ,with a different layout and look. It’s important that users have a clear understanding of what is currently editable, as applications will differ in the scope of the edit mode - for example, some applications will incorporate tables of data where a single cell or row is editable, others will make the entire table editable. One of the scenarios where feedback becomes important is when the application is put into an edit mode to modify existing information. Good feedback tells users a lot of things - for example, has the button they clicked been correctly interpreted by the system as a “click” and will the system now do something? What is currently selected or active? Tell users how their commands and actions have been interpreted.Īpps that keep quiet leave users guessing.One of the most basic guidelines for improving an application’s usability is to provide clear feedback: Let’s hope that when we write then next version of this article in another 11 years, most of these will be far less common. Here is our current list of the top 10 application-design mistakes that are both egregious and commonplace. All 10 of the original guidelines are still true, but 5 mistakes are (thankfully) less commonplace than they once were they were replaced by another 5 problems (#5, 7, 8, 9, and 10). Five of these issues (#1, 2, 3, 4, and 6) were also included in the original article -which goes to show how durable usability guidelines are. The more iterations, the better your application will be.ĭespite the domain-specific nature of most app usability problems, here are 10 common mistakes that we frequently see across industries. Design iteratively, and test each change with a small number of users.Prototype and test low-fidelity ideas to rough out the essential structure of your app and its features, without committing many resources towards ideas that you will revise or abandon as you learn from your users.Begin with task analysis and field studies to understand your users’ needs and workflows.Thus, our first recommendation is to do user research with your target audience: This was true 11 years ago, when the first version of this article was written, and remains so today. Making general recommendations about common application-design problems is difficult, because so many of the problems we observe are domain-specific. We spend a full day on this topic in our Application Design for Web and Desktop course, but we could easily spend a month to catalogue every type of problem we’ve encountered in our user-research studies. ![]() Building applications that have both the depth to support complicated tasks and the intuitiveness to make it clear how to get that work done is a tremendous challenge. Designing complex applications is a challenging undertaking. ![]()
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