UX

While friction in UX is typically something you want to minimize, adding friction can improve the user experience and contribute to good design in many situations. Researchers at UCL define positive friction as friction that “can disrupt mindless automatic interactions, prompting moments of reflection and more mindful interaction.” Sounds like a mouthful? Don’t worry; we’ll lay it all out for you.What Is Friction?Friction refers to points during an interaction that makes it more difficult for a user to complete a task or achieve a goal, generally leading to a poor user experience. This means users go through additional steps and wait times that are considered unnecessary or disruptive. Ever...

I’ll bet you are using browser extensions right now. Some of them are extremely popular and useful, like ad blockers, password managers, and PDF viewers. These extensions (or “add-ons”) are not limited to those purposes — you can do a lot more with them! In this article, I will give you an introduct..

Every year, at this time, blogs like this one like to try and predict what’s going to happen in the year ahead. It’s a way of drawing a line under the archive and starting afresh. A rejuvenation that, as humans, we find life-affirming. Ten years ago, I would have had high confidence in these predic..

There’s no denying it: WordPress rules. The CMS has so many plugins, ranging from custom forms to more complex usability features. Even better is that most of them are totally free. If you run a site on WordPress, then you probably know about their many related post plugins. They automatically pull..

All released in the past year or so year, each of these free web-based apps offers a time-saving solution to many of the web design tasks you will need to perform from time to time. Without ever having to install anything, all you have to do is bookmark and save them for that day when they will be c..

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories..

The year has come to a close and it’s time again for our end-of-year wrapup. The most important message is this: thank you. (thankyouthankyou) Thanks for stopping by and reading this site. If you didn’t, I’d be out of a job around here, and I quite like this job so I owe it all to you. Like a famil..

Ahmad Shadeed nails it again with “Defensive CSS.” The idea is that you should write CSS to be ready for issues caused by dynamic content. More items than you thought would be there? No problem, the area can expand or scroll. Title too long? No problem, it either wraps or truncates, and won’t bump..

Do you have a psychology degree, or are you in the process of getting one? Then, user experience (UX) design might be the career choice that no one told you about. Many people believe that psychology graduates’ only choices are to become therapists, HR specialists or researchers. While these career options can also be exciting, maybe they are not the best fit for you. If you’re looking for a career path that combines science and art, UX might be what you really want. Meet Luigi Cotini, an Italian psychologist who moved to UX:“When I was attending university, 99% of my classmates wanted to become psychotherapists or land a job in HR; those were things that I certainly took into considera...

Many people believe that UX design is all about creating slick, engaging images and top-notch user flows. While those things have their merits, UX designers do much more than that. UX writing is an essential skill in developing an app or solving a UX problem for a client. UX writing is when we craf..