By now you have probably seen the infamous card that Steve Harvey used he when he announced the wrong person won Miss Universe.
A lot of people are having fun at the expense of Harvey, but some have pointed out that the card that was used was poorly designed and that is the real reason that Harvey goofed in front of a worldwide audience. I’m in the camp that says the card was poorly designed.
Disclaimer: I’m passionate about user-centered design for the web and apps, which means the details of design that prevent human error gets me excited. You’ve been warned.
Google Analytics is usually thought of as a marketing tool rather than a user experience tool. Last I checked, Googling “Google Analytics Marketing” returns about 65.7 million results, but “Google Analytics UX” returns only 2.2 million results. Regardless, I think it’s an underrated tool for UX research and this post is meant to give you an overview on how to use Google Analytics for UX research.
Google Analytics is good at answering how or what questions and not so good at answering why questions. Google Analytics is what you turn to when you want to find out where users are dropping off an important flow; what users are having trouble finding on your site; what errors are causing the most headaches. We’ll get into all that and more.
Microcopy, instructional copy, and labels. Little bits of information are making or breaking the user experience of your website or application. Microcopy is there to explain what a setting does, aid users filling out a form, and explain complex interactions. Well-written microcopy guides users, and poorly written microcopy confuses and frustrates them.
Microcopy can be the achilles heel of an otherwise excellent design.
Here are 9 ways that you could be failing your users with thoughtless microcopy:
The hamburger icon is a popular icon used by designers to represent a hidden navigation menu that will appear when the user clicks on the icon.
Many designers believe that the icon has achieved universal status and that users understand what the icon represents. Many large websites and brands rely on it from Google to Starbucks.
I believe the icon is far from being universally recognized. If we must use the icon we need to take some additional steps to make it more clear to the user where the hidden menu is located.
