top of page

100 UX Design Pro Tips


100 UX Design Pro Tips from a User Experience Master

Best practices from Andrew Kucheriavy whom became the 9th person in the world to earn the prestigious Master of UX Certification from Nielsen Norman Group – the world’s authority on UX design. Here are his some of the best practices he shared.

Flow

1. Think of the website as a yellow brick road: move users seamlessly from one section to the next by understanding user personas’ goals and needs

2. Users are more likely to notice items near the top of the page, in order of their

importance

3. Consistent and easy-to-use web interfaces help users concentrate on the content and move through it

4. Avoid creating dead end pages on websites. They cause confusion and create additional work for users

5. Use common website patterns and interfaces; don’t make users learn something new

Scrolling

6. Users will scroll down the webpage as long as it is clear that additional, relevant information is below the fold

7. Your website should always provide a strong visual indication of the direction of scrolling and whether more content is available

8. The longer the website page, the less likely someone is to scroll down to the bottom

9. Running webpages are nice because scrolling is faster than clicking – just don’t make the pages too long

Contrast & Color

10. Design for color blind users. Convert your designs to grayscale to ensure all users can read important info

11. Don’t use the color blue for any text on websites other than links

12. Be aware of the contrast on mobile websites. Screen glare can render your website unusable

13. Reserve one color for CTAs on your website and don’t use it for anything else

14. Warm, bright colors come forward and cold, dark colors stay in the background

Loading

15. Make sure website users can complete their primary goal quickly and easily

16. What matters the most to users is that your website feels fast (even if it is just their perception)

17. Perception of website speed is based on load time, load behavior, waiting times and smoothness of animations

18. Show a skeleton of the website’s elements to communicate the layout when it is loading

19. Website text should load before images so users can start reading before the rest of the site loads

20. Delays longer than several seconds will often make users leave the website

Mobile

21. Mobile interface elements are hard to tap accurately if they are small or close together

22. The minimum size for a touch target on mobiles should be 1cm x 1cm with proper

padding

23. Someone using a pinky finger on your mobile website or app means that the interface targets are too small

24. When holding a tablet, the sides and bottom of the screen are most easily reached with the thumb

25. Don’t require vertical swiping for anything other than normal webpage scrolling

26. Don’t use double-taps on mobile devices. Make sure users can interact with a single touch

27. Determine whether users will use devices with one hand or two when designing mobile layouts

28. Always have an obvious way to access the navigation menu on your website

29. If your website hierarchy is greater than 3-4 levels deep, it’s time to redesign

30. Consider using sticky menus, especially on longer webpages or when quick access is needed

31. Good website navigation is not in the way, it disappears into the background

32. Make your navigation consistent; it shouldn’t change throughout the website

33. Make navigation labels specific, no more than 2-3 words and start with the most information carrying word

34. Let users know where they are on the website by using breadcrumbs

35. Mobile navigation: Show the most frequently used options and hide the others under a hamburger menu

36. Hamburger menus on desktops are less noticeable, less familiar, increase interaction cost and diminish information scent

37. For secondary navigation on mobiles, use category landing pages, submenus or in-page menus

38. Menu dropdowns should be vertical, not horizontal hover; it is much harder to scroll horizontally

39. Megamenus should be narrower than the page so it is easy to “click out” of them

40. If using megamenus, organize links into groups and distinguish between clickable and non-clickable items

41. Don’t hide login or search features inside website menus

Forms

42. Align form labels and fields in a single vertical line to allow for fast scanning

43. Field labels should be outside the text field, not inside, so users do not lose track of them

44. Split up sections with separators to make long web forms more user-friendly

45. Put form errors next to the error-causing fields on all web forms

46. Error messages should be helpful, usable, concise and easy to understand

47. Show all error-causing fields at once, next to each problematic field so mobile users don’t miss the warning

Links

48. Links on websites must stand out – use blue text and/or underlining to indicate

hyperlinks

49. Links should always look like links

50. A user shouldn’t have to click on a link to figure out where it leads. The link text should tell them

51. Don’t use blue text or underlining for non-linked elements in websites or apps

52. A reference to a full URL anywhere on a website should always link to that page

53. Certain elements, such as product images or reviews, are always expected to be

clickable

54. Use a different color for visited links on websites to reduce users’ memory load

Buttons

55. Buttons on websites must look clickable and have enough space for users to click or tap comfortably

56. Frequent actions on websites or apps should be large buttons, placed in easily reachable zones

57. Background colors, borders and action-oriented labels on a website signal to users that an element is clickable

58. For flat designs, make sure that action buttons are done in a contrasting color with an action-oriented label

59. A website should have a visual cue that a button click was successful within 0.1 seconds of the interaction

60. Buttons that change or delete data on mobiles should require more effort to tap to prevent accidental tapping

Search

61. Unless you have a very small website with little content, always have a search field

62. The search field should always look like a text box on a desktop. The search icon is OK to use for mobile

63. Make the search field easy to find. Users typically look for it in the top right corner

64. When looking for search on websites, users typically look for a “little box to type in”

65. Search fields on websites should be wide enough to see the entire search query

Carousels

66. Avoid carousels: each new slide erases the memory of the previous slide. Users can focus on only one thing at a time

67. Dots on carousels are difficult to see on mobile websites. Use images peeking from the left and right instead