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Ask HN: What are some of your UX hacks?

16 points by wushupork ↗ HN
I'm not a designer by training and have no formal education in art or cognitive psychology, human factors, usability, or ergonomics but I often find myself tasked with coming up with the user experience for an application.

What are some UX hacks that you have, especially for people who have no formal training like myself who want to create a great experience for their website or mobile app.

19 comments

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stevenj
Clarity of purpose. Focus on functionality.

My favorite sites get this right: Hacker News, Facebook, Google, Craigslist, Techmeme, Berkshire Hathaway, Dropbox, Espn (though I can't stand its automatic video play function).

Imo, many areas of design (e.g. graphic design) screw up functionality.

"Design is how it works."

wushupork
That's good advice. Simplicity is often hard to achieve though with conflicting requirements to make it useful enough.
abbasmehdi
Just saw the Berkshire Hathaway site for the first time, and thought "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!??" I don't think I've ever thought in caps lock, but this time I did. This is a company with the highest-priced stock in the world (just below $200k a piece!), and the laundromat across the street from my place has a fancier site.

This is an amazing eye opener! Thanks!

P.S. I know the site does not seek to gain the firm credibility and if WB started BH today he wouldn't start with a site like this.

egiva
I don't think that oversimplifying design into these basic terms like "graphic design", "functionality", or "Berkshire Hathaway", really helps everyone realize just how important design is to a web-based business. The internet came about really late in Berkshire's business cycle, so having a successful website isn't important to their success.

If you're business is just getting started, and especially if you're a web-based business, then you should pay special attention to design, and realize that "graphic design" is just a smaller part of what design really means. If your customers realize that a website is nothing more than a graphical interface that helps the user exchange information with a database, then your business is sunk. Design not only facilitates that obvious customer-db interaction, but imbues your product with emotive qualities that make it sexy and desirable.

People devote their lives to understanding these topics (see: Steve Jobs), but here's a good link to get started: http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-design-in...

enborra
Make it predictable - don't surprise a user by making ui fancier than it needs to be. Buttons for psychological 'triggering' actions (submit a form, start a process, fire a missile) and links for navigation between sets of information, etc. Reeducating users on how standard widgets work differently in your app kills the mood.
petervandijck
1. Remove stuff until it hurts (links, words, buttons, ...). Designing mobile first helps with that.

2. Don't make me think.

kerryfalk
I don't think I can up-vote this enough. #1 is key. I personally find it to be an iterative process but just keep removing things until it feels clean. Not drab and useless but clean and as though things aren't competing for your attention anymore.
wushupork
I agree, that is great advice. #2 is good advice as well
petervandijck
Yes, it's totally iterative. And it's hard: I even find it hard after 10 years of this, it still takes me a while to keep removing stuff.
kerryfalk
Definitely. I've been employing a trick recently that has been working well. Hide everything that isn't vital until the user needs it. Things like message times or delete buttons, hide them until mouseOver. Helps to make clean interfaces that allow you to design the key functional UX while not eliminating important functionality.
wushupork
How have people been responding to such interfaces?
kerryfalk
Positively so far. Like with removing things it's easy to go too far and I'm trying to strike a balance between what to show and what to hide. I haven't mastered it yet but I'm liking the direction it's going.
chc
If you have no training and want to create a great experience, the best advice is to get some training.

Can you imagine somebody walking into a symphony hall and saying, "OK, guys, I don't really know much about music, but I want to create a masterpiece. How do I do it?" What do you think the answer would be?

It's nice to imagine that areas outside your expertise can be conquered with just a few helpful tips and some elbow grease, but it's unlikely to yield anything above "mediocre." Whether a poor or uninspiring experience is good enough for you is a personal choice. But don't fool yourself about what you're creating. If you want to create something great, you need to get really good.

petervandijck
What do you think the answer would be? -> The Sex Pistols, pretty much. Not so bad.

Training is overrated, so is talent. Practice with feedback is what really matters. The feedback part is what's hard to find. The Sex Pistols got a lot of feedback.

chc
I have I feeling you're playing a No True Scotsman with this talk on "official" training. There are many good ways of training that could not remotely be described as "official." Which "really, really good experiences" were created by first-timers with no relevant experience or learning?

For example, the Sex Pistols had been doing their thing for years before they hit it big.

klaut
actually, Sex Pistols was more of a marketing project of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood :)
petervandijck
Training isn't the same as experience or learning. If you meant that you should have said that.
wushupork
This goes back to the 10,000 hours of practice. There really is no substitute for sheer experience. What would Tim Ferris have to say about this though? How can we hack this?
pkamb
Get the concrete stuff right:

-Links should be underlined, and a different color. No exceptions.

-Get button padding right. (make the entire button clickable, not just the text).

-Pick the right verbs for buttons. ("Submit" "Delete" "Copy" etc... not "OK")

-Web-form Usability: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/shopping_cart

-Do simple, task-based usability testing on real users.

-Etc.