Hot answers tagged user-experience
20
Imagine this. I post a status update:
I finally finished our renovations!
Your comment is:
Great stuff! Congrats! I want to do
that too.
And then I changed my original post:
I just kicked old lady.
Would you still stand by your comment? :)
17
It is better to explain what the customer will get if you follow their requirements as they are written, and suggest that the requirements be rewritten to clarify the customer's true intent.
But generally speaking it is the Project Manager's job to interpret the requirements in a way that will adequately fulfill the customer's needs. It is pointless to ...
14
You should stop coding right now. I'm very serious.
If this site is to receive anything more than very simple "design love" such as colors or font sizes, any designer worth hiring is going to want to adjust not just the design, but first and foremost the usability. Great (or even good) user experiences is about more than matching colors and pretty pixels, ...
14
They have released a UI framework that supports ribbons -- it's just supported in MFC instead of .NET.
There's probably room for quite a bit of debate as to why they did things that way, but it is what they did anyway.
It looks like Metro-style apps will be supported much more universally -- not only C++, but also C#, VB, and Javascript are supported, if ...
13
I'd say neither.
Provide a form where they can report some feedback. Behind the scenes, this form can send you an email, create a github issue, or whatever you want it to do.
You can also provide the github link - an asterisk at the end of the page if the users want more information about the current status of the issues.
I don't think providing an email ...
11
This discussion always comes up due to one largely ignored fact: OpenID was never designed as login protocol. That's a later misattribution.
OpenID was conceived as homepage URL verification service. And for that it was workable. But due to lack of alternatives it was quickly repurposed as general login protocol. Some features were crafted on (simple reg, ...
11
The best solution in this case (and it is mentioned in the question) is simply to remove, or even better, to disable the UI elements that lead to "Access denied" actions. This way, the user will know that they can't do this action. Additionally, some hints can be displayed on these elements that to explain: "Disabled, because this action requires more ...
10
Take it iteratively. You're working directly with the users, right? So it should never really be a mess.
First do the search page. You and the users should keep in mind that they'll want to be able to do actions on the results. Do the users like it? OK, you've got your search.
Now add the "Change Password" (or whatever is next in priority). Oops, we ...
10
Animations can be an extremely important part of the user interface. They communicate or hint at things a user can do, guide the user through the application or help build up a well defined mental model of the application inside the user's head. Consider the classic iPod interface, where screens slid from side to side to signify the navigation through a ...
9
Users tend to stick with 1 or 2 passwords. If the app was hacked by another app, then having the user's password from your service might grant access to other more sensitive resources besides your food service. A better method may be to store some sort of long term authentication token on the phone than the password itself. That token could be tied to the ...
8
You're lucky. I often have to deal with self-called designers who don't understand basic design neither.
by mean they dont understand UX rules and other things like how user interact with the software
In other words, they are designers, not software designers or web designers. So they are not suited for their job. This means that you have three ways to ...
8
From user point of view, I would want to know whether whatever I am doing at given moment is going to fail as soon as possible. Which is why I suggest going for key-up validation. Few reasons for it:
gives user nice real-time interaction and security feel (system is watching whether you do what you're supposed to correctly)
helps user to focus at one task ...
8
I feel like I say this a lot. Agile does not mean you need to put blinders on to ignore the future and design yourselves into a corner. Agile is about how you deliver functionality, and has very little to do with how you design functionality.
In other words, it's okay to look as far into the future as you want when creating your design, as long as it ...
7
Agency (as you define it: being able to control your data in the way that you want to) is in direct conflict with another key goal of user experiences:
Integrity
With social media it is historical integrity. Another goal that can be thwarted by "more agency" is operational integrity.
Historical Integrity — This is Facebook, Twitter, even ...
7
You could use an application to draw mockups instead of writing code. Like Balsamiq Mockups or equivalent.
Using Mockups feels like drawing, but because it’s digital, you can tweak and rearrange easily. Teams can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting.
7
If the money values displayed are indeed dollar amounts, you should keep the $ displayed.
Not doing so makes the value ambiguous to those not in the US - they might think these are in their local currency.
If the values are indeed in local currency (whatever it may be), you should display the corresponding currency symbol (again to avoid ambiguity).
7
The best way would be to provide both. The more way the user can send you feedback, the more feedback you'll get.
As was said in a comment, most people won't know what git-hub is or how it works. Nothing prevent you to copy-past the mail received into github to keep a track of the issues.
6
I don't know either exactly what makes a language "agile", but Groovy let's you put something together quickly.
Depending on your style, quite a lot. You can leave out a lot of Java's boilerplate code, there are no checked exceptions etc.
Yes, without problems.
Mostly I love it, because I like to get things done quickly; I also like that it feels a lot like ...
6
Realistically, all the matters for the attacker is that you could use them. It doesn't matter if you actually do, because they still have to enumerate those possibilities, from the perspective of a brute force attack. Having a very long length is a better protection- and even better, you can find apps such as KeePass that will encrypt very long passcodes so ...
6
It's a Tradeoff
Anytime you add constraints to a password you make it weaker. Conditions reduce the number of possible passwords. You also adding commonality to all the passwords which may or may not be useful in cracking them.
That being said it also prevents people from choosing single character password, english word passwords, etc. These are much ...
6
Checked exceptions are a failed expriment in language design. They force you to have extremely leaky abstractions and dirty code. They should be avoided as much as possible.
As for your points:
1) Checked exceptions make the code dirty, and no less unpredictable because they show up everywhere.
2) How is a checked exception being shown to the user any ...
5
Yes...it IS your job to go back and get clarifications. We, as developers, need to be just as involved with gathering and understanding requirements as any BA or business user. If you suspect they want something different than what is on paper - talk to them.
Face to Face if possible - always better than email or IM. THEN - follow up with an email - ...
5
Start by bookmarking http://ux.stackexchange.com/
If you are concerned about UI design then start by creating some custom controls. Think of something that you think is not possible on one platform (like an awesome looking control on WinForms) and try to design it yourself. I've learned a lot this way. More you experience more you learn. I also recommend ...
5
I think one of the technical answers is that it's easier to have read only data at large scale.
It's easier to have data that can only be added, that way you never have to worry about who has an old copy of the data. If you have to worry about editing then you get into different modes of data replication and either need to block read access when you are ...
5
One tip I have often heard is to look at designs you like for inspiration. This is not isolated to just say desktop applications, but should extend to art, architecture, web, photography, products, etc.
This will help you build a sense for what good design is and will help you in ht long run design applications that are pleasing to the eye and user ...
5
Different historical background that now are unifying
I must say the reason is the historical background. Web pages was simple text documents at the beginning, with forms. Then more and more functionallity was added with scripting (JavaScript) and separation of semantics (HTML) and design (CSS).
GUI applications has always been applications with ...
5
I think this really depends on your target audience, and the license model under which your application is developed (i.e open source or closed source). I know your question mentions who your target audience is in this particular case, but in order to provide an answer that is useful to everyone I think this is best ignored for answers.
As a developer you ...
5
They do release some of these things.
Here's the Ribbon, usable in a .NET application.
And here's Metro, which you can program against using WPF/XAML or HTML/JavaScript.
Unfortunately,
Metro style app development in Visual Studio is supported only on Windows 8 Release Preview. Windows 7 is not supported.
5
Yes, pulling dynamic data via AJAX is a totally viable solution. Not sure if that pattern has a name or not, but I've done it before. Another option that is supported by some edge cache platforms (both hosted and otherwise) is ESI which works like SSI, but allows you set a custom TTL for page fragments. One thing to consider is whether you will have content ...
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