Tag Archives: user experience

Quickly Develop, Test and Validate Ideas: Our First Experiences With Design Sprints

When developing new products and services, situations can arise in which the team feels insecure: In which direction should we develop? Shall we take route A or route B? How much potential lies in each different idea? What does the market really need? This uncertainty about the development path in one of our product teams has led to a design sprint.

Five Second Tests: Measure Content Usability and Get a First Impression in Five Seconds

A usability test, that only takes five seconds? Admittedly, it is almost too good to be true. The reservation against Five Second Tests, a specific form of remote usability testing, is great by and large. Experts traditionally place a lot of value on a clean methodology and clean results. Skepticism toward a new and simpler method is understandable. The attractiveness of Five Second Tests lies undisputedly in its simplicity. Through a link, participants are referred to a page on which they are shown a screenshot of a web site for exactly five seconds. Following, they have to answer questions to this page. Finished.

Why Mailto Links Should Be Avoided On Websites

Numerous internet surfers probably know the following process: you’re surfing a website and you find a link with an e-mail-address. You click on the link, which begins your odyssey-like journey through the depths of your computer. Why? Because the link leads to the whirring of your hard drive, as the mail-client installed on your computer stirs to action (or, possibly, asks to be set up) and all sorts of additional windows begin to pop open on your screen. Even though you had just been comfortably surfing through the web, now you have to master strong currents as you fight off towering waves.

The next website is only a click away

What before was true for the video recorder is unfortunately again true for many current websites: users have difficulties in completing tasks and reaching their goals. How to use those formerly expensive video recorders was just something the user had to learn, for better or for worse; after all, the piece of equipment was paid for. But the next website – and therefore the next provider of comparable services – is only a click away.