As renowned designer and author Steve Krug writes in his book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, products, including websites and applications, should be obvious, self-explanatory, and easy to use. Users should not have to rely on instructions to help them interact with them.
If you are one of those designers who keeps telling yourself, “The user will figure it out by reading the instructions,” rest assured that your project is doomed to failure. The only thing you need to know about instructions is that no one reads them. The conclusion? Instructions should be eliminated as a phenomenon.
UX mistake #1: Being too confident in the conceptual model of your product
There is nothing wrong with conceptual models (models created in the designer’s mind) as such. Problems arise when the designer becomes egocentric and obsessed with their model to such an extent that they stake everything on it, ignoring users in the process.
Mental models are models in the user’s mind that shape their understanding of what a product should be. The success of a website or application depends on how well you combine the designer’s model and the user’s model.
UX mistake #2: obsession with eye-tracking data
If you believe that eye-tracking gives you accurate information about how people perceive your design, you should consider the following.
Of course, any doubt disrupts the status quo, given that you probably rely on heat maps and eye-tracking maps when designing and placing objects on your website. And, admittedly, the software used to study them can be really useful. However, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages when it comes to eye-tracking research data.
First, the data from such experiments tells you what people looked at. But it doesn’t tell you whether they really paid close attention to a particular piece of content or just glanced at it briefly. Another nuance is that eye tracking only measures central vision. According to research by Larson and Loschki, peripheral vision is just as important in tracking eye movement.
Watch this YouTube video demonstrating a selective attention test, and you’ll understand why implementing UX design based on eye tracking data can be the weak link in your website or app. The task facing the viewer is to notice the number of passes made by the team in white jerseys. If you follow the ball closely, you will be able to count all the passes, but you will barely notice everything else happening in the scene, let alone describe it in detail.
UX mistake #3: Pop-ups
Let’s face it: pop-ups are a serious problem. Marketers love them. This is partly due to their proven reputation as an excellent lead generation tool. What’s more, when it comes to increasing blog subscriptions and lead volume, pop-ups are the best bet.
On August 23, 2016, Google issued a mild warning that pages with pop-ups (or intrusive interstitial ads) could affect a site’s ranking. This announcement was directly aimed at resources that visually hide their content behind such ads.
Now there is other news: Google apparently wants to tighten control. According to an update from January 10, 2017, websites containing pop-ups and lightboxes for collecting email addresses will be penalized. Google did not do this by accident. The purpose of the update is to improve mobile search performance, as it will make it easier to access content without having to look at intrusive ads.
UX mistake #4: Collecting feedback too soon
You have just launched a landing page or app. Congratulations! Is everything already set up to send messages to new users asking for feedback? No! Stop right now! We always say that it’s important to collect user feedback, but there’s a time and place for everything.
Collecting feedback too quickly can backfire. You’ll attract more negative reviews than positive ones.
Ideally, you should wait a day or two before sending out a mailing to users if you want objective feedback. Sending a feedback request when people are still in the process of learning can be annoying.
UX mistake #5: choosing only ideal users for testing
Planning to attract only a certain type of user to test your website or app? We recommend revising your strategy.
Steve Krug, information architecture specialist and author of Don’t Make Me Think and Rocket Science Made Easy: “1. Even experts are often just beginners in practice. They just work with things at a higher level. 2. Avoid designs created exclusively for the target audience. If you do so, your texts will be filled with complex terminology, making the site incomprehensible to amateurs. 3. Experts do not object to explanations of phenomena in super-understandable language.”
Still, there are two cases in which you need to define your target audience very clearly. First, when you are testing only a specific type of user, such as women — in such cases, you should focus only on them. Second, when you are testing specific groups with unique interests and requirements. Suppose you are setting up a personnel management application. In this case, at least in the early stages of testing, you will need to test several junior employees, senior employees, managers, and so on.
UX mistake #6: Long forms
Nowadays, short forms are popular on websites because they encourage more active user participation. However, keep in mind that some websites need long forms. Certain business niches, such as insurance, rely on long forms to help filter out unqualified leads.
You can try chunking if long forms are a must for your site. Chunking is the practice of grouping relevant information to simplify the process of processing and memorizing it. You can break the information down into several stages and several pages.
Conclusion
Make your products more user-friendly. They should be obvious, self-explanatory, and require no explanation. If necessary, enlist the support of leading web design companies to help you distinguish good UX from bad. Also, don’t just test on experienced users and don’t get hung up on eye tracking… And yes, remember: we work in the online world, where search engines are gods. So following their recommendations is the best principle to follow.
