Interaction Design Patterns

Age vs Date of Birth in sign up form
Hi all, The site we're doing is a contest users enter and submit photos. It requires users to be over 18, or if they are between 14 - 17 they have to go through a consent flow. I got a question from a designer about what would be better in terms of UX for the sign up form - asking the user...

Specs for usability lab
Hi, all, I've been tasked with getting together specs for a usability lab that one of my clients is building. I'm thinking a standard three- stage lab with a relatively large participant room for group testing, if that ever comes up. But I don't have specifics yet. Has anyone out there done this before? Any advice?

Browse or Search
Hello, I am working on a digital music site and today our team got into a debate regarding the functionality of 'Browsing Artist - Alphabetically' on the Homepage. Although our Search functionality is pretty tight with predictive drop- down with first 3 characters and refreshes as the user types in, we were thinking if Browse Artist by Alphabetical order can give that value in discovering new...

FAQ Search Tool
Hello everybody, I am doing some research into FAQ search tools 'best practice' and am struggling to find research material that covers this. Does anybody know of any research that covers presenting FAQ's alternatively by category and most popular and establishes which method is more effective and in what situations this is the case? Also would be great if anybody has any personal experiences and...

Search interface design and usability
I have to do a presentation (at very short notice for a job interview) on improvements to a search interface for clinical data. Does anybody know of any useful resources that focus on the design and usability of search interfaces. Thanks

Sparkline filtering
Any good examples out there of sparkline filtering? I pitched this concept to Delta 4 years ago and it did not go anywhere. I had yet to see it until this morning looking for a new refrigerator on the LG site. http://www.lge.com/ us/ appliances/ refrigerators/ index.jsp Anyone else out there see examples of this?

The Perpetual Scrolling Web Pages
I've been noticing more and more Ajax powered pages where at the end of the normal page end a call is made to fetch more content and is added to the bottom of the page, in essence making the page longer on the fly. A good example of this is on http://www.haystack.com Twitter and Facebook do something similar but a button or link...

Password Masking and Chroma-Hash
An experiment from Mattt Thompson in how to visualize the input of masked password fields: http://mattt.github.com/ Chroma- Hash/ Some explanation taken from his blog: Chroma- Hash displays an ambient color representation of the input as it is being typed. Use Case 1: Login Check If your password normally is represented as “ red, purple, orange ” , and after you ’ ve finished typing you...

Q: Persistent header bar from FB and LinkedIn
I've noticed that if you click on an external link in Facebook or LinkedIn (and other sites) it sometimes loads the new site in a frame below a header bar that's branded for the originating site. What I'm wondering is: 1. Is there a name for this technique? 2. How are they usually coded? 3. How do people feel about these headers? Are...

Displaying Lengthy Lists
Hi all, I'm working on the design of a site that includes a very long list of services offered by our department. Rather than just list everything, I'd like to do something abbreviated, but the idea of a drop- down menu isn't very appealing (it seems *too* abbreviated). Are there any design patterns for long lists that I might...

toggle on / off design pattern
Greetings Can anyone point me in the direction of a useable design pattern for an on / off toggle switch to be used online ie using JS / html / css rather than flash? I'm working on an application that currently uses colour coding to indicate whether an option is active or not. This works in the real world i.e. the...

Usability of Buttons versus Links for Navigation
Hello Everyone, I am wondering if using buttons or navigational elements that look like buttons(for e.g BACK link) are intuitive? Let me give you guys some context here: I am working on designing a knowledge base interface where a user can look for articles and click on a particular link to read that article. In the article page on the top I had a...

Quality standard of interaction design
For most proceeding projects in our organization, we all meet the same problem - - how to evaluate the quality of interaction design results of a specific web- based service. Are there any standards existing in this field? Or we have to do many usability testing to any interaction modules in any iteration procedures? Actually, the quality evaluation request is from...

Usability of accordions - an example
Here's a nice example: http://www.biocompare.com/ Mary Keitelman > Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 00:57:18 +0530 > From: hello at conetrees.com > To: kpklecha at gmail.com > CC: discuss at ixda.org > Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Usability of accordions > > The best way to go forward would be to get a good...

Experimental Commenting System on my Blog
I recently went about messing around with jQuery to produce a simple proof of concept of what can be done to enhance discussions on blogs. This could be applicable in other discussion forums as well. I borrowed a few ideas from others. Credit is given where due. You can check it out here: http://donttrustthisguy.com/ 2009/ 01/...

3D Navigation
Hi All, I'm looking for examples of 3D navigation where a user can move free form within visual objects or data, particularly in the area of search or within a use case of finding specific information. (I think this is a poor interface for this type of scenario btw, looking to talk a client out of it.) Two...

"People are Used to it"
This phrase has become the mantra of amature interaction designers and of the electronic product industry in general. It is the road block in the way of new and better ways to control our systems. It even prevents logical enhancements to our otherwise well- designed products. Take the new philips HDTVs. At least the one I have has put a lot...

Is Auto-Scrolling Good?
It's been a classic design principle that any scrollable view should auto- scroll when an object is dragged outside or close to boundary of the view. Here's what Alan Cooper wrote in his " About Face " book: " Auto- scroll is a very important adjunct to drag- and- drop. Wherever the drop target can possibly be scrolled offscreen, the program needs to...

Type or select?
We're asking for the user's birhtday in our profile editor, and are currently discussing if we should use a) dropdowns for day, month and year b) text fields for day, month and year c) one free text field The advantages as we see it for b and c are - the user is in typing mode, and in most cases a dropdown would mean switching from...

Multi-select on the web
Hi All, Imagine you have a web page that displays 100 thumbnails of 100px by 100px pictures. Futhermore, let's say the user is a non- technical person in their thirties. What is the best way to enable the described user to choose the majority of the thumbnails excluding certain ones? For example, let's say the user wanted to select 95 of...

Designing Search forms - Search button placement
Hi All I don ’ t think placement of action button for search form with 2 or more search parameters has been discussed in the group yet. Everyone in the group would have sometime worked to design search forms for intranets or websites that have 2 or more search parameters. I find a lot of research on registration forms but not on search forms. Luke...

Best left-nav ever
I love this [http://www.mondex.org/ ] left- nav. One to chalk- up for screen grabbing opportunities to demonstrate worst- case- scenarios. Anyone care to share any other website howlers? (in a vain attempt to add some levity to this list for the first time in weeks). J.

Shoppingcart vs shoppingbasket
Hello all, I have short question. Do any of you know of any good argumentation for when to use a 'shopping cart' and when to use a 'shopping basked' (both image and/ or term) in an e- commerce website. I myself would think that the choice would depend on whether you expect people to buy a lot (cart) or few (basket) things from your store.

changing images and color schemes on refresh
I'm designing a top- level product landing page for an e- commerce site. The design consists of a main banner image with marketing messaging spanning the full width of the page, with 4 content boxes aligned horizontally under the main banner image with equal spacing in between each so that they cover the same width as the main banner image (similar to Apple's...

What's the right default font size for a website?
Is there any research on font sizes? Yes, you should build your site so users can change the size, but in reality many who would benefit from doing so don't know that you can, even if you provide the tools. You need to start with an appropriate default. What should that default be? * Nick Gassman - Usability and...

Why are password fields asterisked on join-up forms?
Jake, I'm not understanding your comment... *You should never EVER input your password into a field that isn't asterisked. This goes way beyond " someone peering over your shoulder " .* I've been experimenting with this on a new site and from what my developer colleagues have told me, using type=password is only a front end mask, it doesn't enforce any kind of encryption....

Siteseeing: What happens in Vegas...
...becomes a kiosk confessional where you can tell the world what was supposed to stay in Vegas. Sadly, the concept is undermined by a distinct lack of juicy confessions (example: " Having the time of our lives! " ) and a weirdly clunky interface. Here's what I'm wondering: I think this would be more fun if they ...

UI patterns - sort by more than one column
Hi All, Can someone point me to UI patterns or examples of interfaces that allow the user to sort the date by more than one column or more than one variable (i.e. sort by name and time) Thanks, Oliver

Contextual awareness on mobile apps
I've been watching the growth of contextual awareness in mobile apps recently.... There are several GPS, positionally aware apps... but I wonder where else this contextual awareness can go? What else do people want to know about their social networks beyond location awareness? Events and shared interests are well traveled... In general, the...

list ordering
Hey Guys, I'm looking for interesting examples of list ordering patterns (drag and drop, etc.). Thanks! Sarah

When is a hyperlink NOT?
Call me old school. Call me a dinosaur wandering the earth right before the meteor hit and turned my sorry butt to ash, but I still think a hyperlink should be a hyperlink. Further, I think a contextual link embedded in content with a anchored link a proper noun should go to that place. The Washington Post disagrees. Someone there, (cerntainly no one on...

Register vs. Sing-Up vs. Join Us
Hi, I'm developing a new website for a client. The website, like many other websites, requires users to SignUp or Reigster in the website to use many features. Now I'm wondering how to call lables and urls for the membership area. Which URL is better for registration/ sign- up/ adding new user? / members/ reg / members/ register / members/ new / members/ sign- up / users/ reg / users/...

"Confirm password" field - Superfluous?
I have a design for a new user registration form in which I am proposing to not use a " Confirm password " field and would like your feedback on this decision. The form will have 4 fields, all of which are required: 1: User name (This will be supplied to the user prior to their using this form) 2: Password 3: ...

Should external links really open in the same window?
Hi folks, The conventional wisdom is that a link should not open a new window, even if it's a link to another site. Neilsen listed this as number 9 in the top 10 design mistakes. But an unofficial survey around our office found that most people prefer links to new sites to open up in new windows/ tabs. They said that...