UX Myths

Simplicity is key to great and innovative product design. But simplicity (reduction of complexity) is way often confused with minimalist style (reduction of elements). In fact, simple looking, mi...

https://uxmyths.com/post/115783813605

When thinking of mobile users, many have a stereotypical image of people on the go, people with the attention span of a goat and suffering from Mobile User Attention Deficit Disorder . But are ...

https://uxmyths.com/post/99302792550

The Apple iPod instantly turned the MP3 player market upside down, right? Amazon changed the book selling business like a shot, didn’t it? Well, in fact they didn’t. No matter how it may seem...

https://uxmyths.com/post/4956005041

Many think that user experience design is confined to sketching the interfaces. However, UX design is a much broader process that - ideally - starts at the strategy level and affects the whole li...

https://uxmyths.com/post/3897350094

When it comes to evaluating the usability of an interface, user testing is often considered unnecessary if an expert has already reviewed it. Since people rarely behave the way you expect, an exp...

https://uxmyths.com/post/3086989914

People don’t make purely rational decisions based on careful analysis of cost and expected utility, despite what classical economics taught us. Research findings confirm that our decisions are...

https://uxmyths.com/post/2607991907

White space or “negative space”, referring to the empty space between and around elements of a design or page layout, is often overlooked and neglected. Although many may consider it a wast...

https://uxmyths.com/post/2059998441

Designing for the user experience has a lot more to it than making a product usable. Usability allows people to easily accomplish their goals. UX design covers more than that, it’s about giving...

https://uxmyths.com/post/1533970267

When it comes to collecting feedback from users, usability tests and focus groups are often confused although their goals are completely different. Focus groups assess what users say: a number ...

https://uxmyths.com/post/1319999199

There are usability practitioners who completely dismiss the importance of aesthetics, often citing unattractive but popular websites such as Craigslist. However, aesthetics do have a function....

https://uxmyths.com/post/1161244116

Even if a product was designed to fulfill specific and known user needs, customers don’t always use it the way and for the purpose the product was originally intended. In many cases, users do...

https://uxmyths.com/post/1048425031

Limiting the number of menu tabs or the number of items in a dropdown list to the George Miller’s magic number 7 is a false constraint. Miller’s original theory argues that people can keep n...

https://uxmyths.com/post/931925744

Many organizations still believe usability testing is a luxury that requires an expensively equipped lab and takes weeks to conduct. In fact, usability tests can be both fast and relatively che...

https://uxmyths.com/post/831431504

Many organizations still rely on asking people what changes they’d like to see in their website or service, neglecting historical research failures like the New Coke or the Aeron chair. When ...

https://uxmyths.com/post/746610684

Although Amazon (or Apple, Google you name it) has features that are both excellent and well-proven, they won’t necessarily work for others. Let’s take their widely used customer reviews fo...

https://uxmyths.com/post/718217318

Many designers create wireframes and comps with “lorem ipsum ” filler text. Using dummy text often results in an aesthetically pleasing but unrealistic design. What’s worse, it creates the ...

https://uxmyths.com/post/718187422

Usability experts, including Jakob Nielsen, have long argued that your homepage is the most valuable real estate of your website. As a result, lots of web designers and developers still spend mos...

https://uxmyths.com/post/717779908

Note, this post was written quite a few years ago when Flash was still a thing. You know, like floppy disks and audio cassettes. In the earlier years of the internet, many web designers preferr...

https://uxmyths.com/post/717781129

On a website, people usually scan for trigger words first and only use the search function when they’re unable to find a good enough navigational link. This holds true for most websites, though...

https://uxmyths.com/post/717755413

In an ideal world, users would scan through your entire page to find the very piece of information they’re looking for, but research shows this is not the case. Usability tests prove that peopl...

https://uxmyths.com/post/717722982