3 Common Usability Flaws to Consider during User Interface Prototyping
Good user interface design ensures that visitors to your website do not leave it shortly after coming. How user friendly a website is usually determines its success. It is hard to imagine that a website with clumsy and complicated user interface design keeps its visitors for long. This is why usability should be the number one consideration during the entire development process, beginning with user interface prototyping. In this blog post I would like to point out the three most common usability flaws to consider during user interface prototyping.
Unclear or complex navigation is your first enemy. When a user comes to your website he has a particular purpose: find your phone number or buy a pair of sneakers. User interface prototyping is the right stage to consider how clear your navigation is. Are you using obvious labels? Is information broken into logical categories? These days many designers are obsessed with innovative navigation design concepts. It is advisable to get those tested during the user interface prototyping stage to avoid rework in the future.
Something that truly annoys me in many websites are horizontal scroll bars. You don’t have to be a usability expert or do any user interface prototyping to know it is a bad idea. Nevertheless, user interface prototyping would show you that mine is not an unusual opinion. Most importantly, many users do not bother to scroll so the information never reaches them. User interface prototyping can help you plan the amount of content that will be available on the website. Remember that in many cases less is better than more.
Lastly, I have to mention small or invisible click areas. If a user can’t instantly get where he wants to go he will probably not keep trying for very long. It is a rule in user interface design to make click areas prominent. They should be noticeable and they should be of an appropriate size for a user to click on them with his mouse on the first try. User interface prototyping and subsequent prototype testing can help you determine the right size of your user interface elements. Something else you might consider is that many users now browse the web on their mobile devices. Would the size of your links and buttons be appropriate for their screens?
Use common sense and bear these thoughts in mind during user interface prototyping.
January 25, 2012 No Comments
