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Not really, I'm not sure what I would even classify as "good UX info". There are things that work, and things that don't. Things that look good and things tha

Not really, I'm not sure what I would even classify as "good UX info". There are things that work, and things that don't. Things that look good and things that don't. Things that feel good and things that don't. Things that communicate themselves well and things that don't. UX is supposedly looking for the intersection of all of those axes but they're all very subjective. If you want to be good at UX, never ever ever go to sites like useit, you won't learn anything helpful, and you'll probably learn something harmful. You just need to get out there and experience what's available and think very hard about what's right and wrong with it. There are no rules, no laws, and the lessons you learn are difficult to translate to anything universal. The moment you start thinking about "85% of ipad users like blue buttons" or "People can only remember 7 things" you lose. Tomorrow's successful UI is going to break today's rules. EDIT: I should clarify, I don't mean to say that I don't peruse portfolio sites and have a number of blog subscriptions, but none of them I'd feel confident recommending. The quality of such sites varies widely over time so you kind of have to just let it all meld together and draw your own conclusions.

daleharvey 15y ago
I have never said this on hacker news but it definitely still follows the "to your face" rule, This is terrible terrible advice. A lot of neilsens advice certainly isnt universal, however the main thing to take away from neilsen is not the conclusions but the methodology in coming to those conclusions. UX is not voodoo, there are certainly parts of it that are more subjective than others however if 5 out of 10 people have a problem performing an actions in your app then you have a problem. Neilsen provides good methodologies for which you can start performing these tests yourself.
- efsavage 15y ago
  Not sure what the "to your face" rule is? His advice is almost _all_ conclusions phrased as if to be applied universally. Example, from the PDF: "If you have a lot of content (such as product information) to display, use a separate page rather than a modal view". That is not a friendly tip or even a very constrained piece of advice. It doesn't say "consider using" or "try", it says "use". If you think I'm being nitpicky you haven't been subjected to project owners sending you emails with quips like that, expecting you defend yourself against the laws set down by the experts. It may actually make sense in many cases, but there are certainly cases where it's not true. As for methodology, he offers very little insight and no new ideas. You can spend an hour reading Steve Krug's book and understand the mechanics of usability testing. The rest is common sense and experience. UX is not voodoo, it's an art. Usability is a holistic quality, not an aggregation like uptime or code coverage or conversion rates. It's pretty widely accepted that the Tivo is a hallmark of usability. Why? Can you answer that only in statistics? Can you then justify why you picked those particular statistics and why they determine "usability"? Are your results reproducible? I'm not saying you actually need to run through the full scientific method on usability, I'm just saying that running through only parts of it to sound fancy benefits nobody. You need to learn when things are just better, and you need to admit that it's ultimately an opinion, an idea, an artform.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    The "to your face" rule is "don't put anything in a comment you wouldn't say to a person's face".
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  This is the first comment that I have seen that I think really suffers from the lack of visible points because it is SO correct and is refuting what I agree is really bad advice but I don't think the GP should be voted into oblivion because he gave bad advice (but I really don't want to turn this into another of those threads ;). The only way to really know where the problems in your app are is by watching users use it wherever they actually use it. Without that, you will never know about the little cheat sheet they have to reference every single time they use your app because your "amazingly simple" navigation structure that you were positive made your app easier to use (an experience I've had). You can get some information about what questions to ask from statistical monitoring (why does this step take four times the amount of time of any other?) but you can't find the answers without real users.
  - efsavage 15y ago
    I'm assuming the bad advice is the bit about not reading sites like useit, rather than the "get out there and think" part. But I guess I see it as good advice that was communicated poorly, since I agree with your response here. Yes, you absolutely have to watch people use your site. You need to watch them use your competitor's sites. You need to watch them use sites that come up in conversations about your products. You do not need hundreds of people to make a difference. Get people off craigslist and other classifieds for $25 and have everyone that touches the product watch them use it (as video, after the fact). This input is hugely valuable. Metrics are also very important. If a button is on a page in three places, track which one they click. Measure response times, page flows, all that good stuff (although be wary of blindly conflating marketing success with usability). If these are the lessons you've learned from Neilsen, I can only say I'm surprised because I see his work as the opposite approach. Perhaps because I've seen him cited so often over the years by people who don't think they need to do this because they think Neilsen already answered that question. Nobody I know that actually embraces this kind of hands-on testing has any respect for his "studies". What I'm trying to say is don't try and distill universal rules from this narrowly-scoped input. Don't ask a small number of people about a small number of experiences that have no logical connection, and try to infer some wisdom from it that you can apply to another group of people in another experience that may not be at all similar. I've had a case where adding clearer text to a vaguely worded button killed performance. Others where making a button look considerably "worse" improved success dramatically. Sometimes you need to make the font bigger, or add an icon, or remove an icon, or have a popup, or add two pages to your wizard, or not even have a wizard, or whatever. Sometimes you need to do things the wrong way because you lose from inconsistency what you gained from local quality improvements. But usually just need to do things the way that makes sense to you, learn from your mistakes because you fully understand the context, and do it better next time.

daleharvey 15y ago

I have never said this on hacker news but it definitely still follows the "to your face" rule, This is terrible terrible advice. A lot of neilsens advice certainly isnt universal, however the main thing to take away from neilsen is not the conclusions but the methodology in coming to those conclusions. UX is not voodoo, there are certainly parts of it that are more subjective than others however if 5 out of 10 people have a problem performing an actions in your app then you have a problem. Neilsen provides good methodologies for which you can start performing these tests yourself.

efsavage 15y ago
Not sure what the "to your face" rule is? His advice is almost _all_ conclusions phrased as if to be applied universally. Example, from the PDF: "If you have a lot of content (such as product information) to display, use a separate page rather than a modal view". That is not a friendly tip or even a very constrained piece of advice. It doesn't say "consider using" or "try", it says "use". If you think I'm being nitpicky you haven't been subjected to project owners sending you emails with quips like that, expecting you defend yourself against the laws set down by the experts. It may actually make sense in many cases, but there are certainly cases where it's not true. As for methodology, he offers very little insight and no new ideas. You can spend an hour reading Steve Krug's book and understand the mechanics of usability testing. The rest is common sense and experience. UX is not voodoo, it's an art. Usability is a holistic quality, not an aggregation like uptime or code coverage or conversion rates. It's pretty widely accepted that the Tivo is a hallmark of usability. Why? Can you answer that only in statistics? Can you then justify why you picked those particular statistics and why they determine "usability"? Are your results reproducible? I'm not saying you actually need to run through the full scientific method on usability, I'm just saying that running through only parts of it to sound fancy benefits nobody. You need to learn when things are just better, and you need to admit that it's ultimately an opinion, an idea, an artform.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  The "to your face" rule is "don't put anything in a comment you wouldn't say to a person's face".
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
This is the first comment that I have seen that I think really suffers from the lack of visible points because it is SO correct and is refuting what I agree is really bad advice but I don't think the GP should be voted into oblivion because he gave bad advice (but I really don't want to turn this into another of those threads ;). The only way to really know where the problems in your app are is by watching users use it wherever they actually use it. Without that, you will never know about the little cheat sheet they have to reference every single time they use your app because your "amazingly simple" navigation structure that you were positive made your app easier to use (an experience I've had). You can get some information about what questions to ask from statistical monitoring (why does this step take four times the amount of time of any other?) but you can't find the answers without real users.
- efsavage 15y ago
  I'm assuming the bad advice is the bit about not reading sites like useit, rather than the "get out there and think" part. But I guess I see it as good advice that was communicated poorly, since I agree with your response here. Yes, you absolutely have to watch people use your site. You need to watch them use your competitor's sites. You need to watch them use sites that come up in conversations about your products. You do not need hundreds of people to make a difference. Get people off craigslist and other classifieds for $25 and have everyone that touches the product watch them use it (as video, after the fact). This input is hugely valuable. Metrics are also very important. If a button is on a page in three places, track which one they click. Measure response times, page flows, all that good stuff (although be wary of blindly conflating marketing success with usability). If these are the lessons you've learned from Neilsen, I can only say I'm surprised because I see his work as the opposite approach. Perhaps because I've seen him cited so often over the years by people who don't think they need to do this because they think Neilsen already answered that question. Nobody I know that actually embraces this kind of hands-on testing has any respect for his "studies". What I'm trying to say is don't try and distill universal rules from this narrowly-scoped input. Don't ask a small number of people about a small number of experiences that have no logical connection, and try to infer some wisdom from it that you can apply to another group of people in another experience that may not be at all similar. I've had a case where adding clearer text to a vaguely worded button killed performance. Others where making a button look considerably "worse" improved success dramatically. Sometimes you need to make the font bigger, or add an icon, or remove an icon, or have a popup, or add two pages to your wizard, or not even have a wizard, or whatever. Sometimes you need to do things the wrong way because you lose from inconsistency what you gained from local quality improvements. But usually just need to do things the way that makes sense to you, learn from your mistakes because you fully understand the context, and do it better next time.