Most Popular
1500 questions
280
votes
24 answers
How can users be prevented from pouring water into the bean compartment of a coffee machine?
Typical coffee machines have two user-accessible compartments: one for water and one for coffee beans. Pouring water into the bean compartment kills most machines, the repairs cost a fortune.
Now here's an improvement (Schaerer Siena-2 if that…
sharptooth
- 5,897
- 5
- 28
- 24
267
votes
14 answers
What's wrong with USB sticks that you need 3 tries to plug them in correctly?
You've all probably experienced this at least once: trying multiple times to plug in a USB stick correctly, because somehow it isn't intuitive what side goes up. This is especially the case when the USB stick in question hasn't been yet used by the…
stackzebra
- 2,144
- 2
- 8
- 7
266
votes
26 answers
Save icon, is the floppy disk icon dead?
This Twitter post sparked me to ask the question:
totally! RT @damienguard: Dear UI
designers everywhere. Stop using
floppy disk icons for save. Too many
people have no idea what it is now.
So, is the floppy disk icon obsolete? Should it be…
rick schott
- 4,745
- 3
- 29
- 30
264
votes
16 answers
Why do washing machines have windows?
I'm curious why every front-loaded washing machine I've seen so far comes with a window, while other household machines, like dishwashers, don't.
From a design or UI/UX perspective, why would one want a user to be able to see their clothes while…
Marcel Otten
- 2,498
- 2
- 13
- 18
256
votes
16 answers
Why do people not notice our enormous, prominent, clear and contrasting purple banner?
I'm part of a MediaWiki site called D&D Wiki. Among others, one of our longstanding issues in the public eye was our failure to label clearly enough that certain pages are categorised 'Homebrew', as opposed to 'Official'.
Consequently, we pushed…
anon
249
votes
6 answers
Is there a name for this drop-down anti-pattern?
Recently I have seen a small UI issue in mouse-over drop-downs. Here is an example of such a drop-down (although Bloomberg is not the only offender):
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-09/yogurt-liquidity-and-listings
edit: Adding…
N. Quest
- 1,863
- 3
- 9
- 8
247
votes
41 answers
The must-read User Interface Book?
I'm looking for the Book that explains the essentials of user interface and user experience design.
I read Beautiful Visualization and Designing Interfaces from O'Reilly. I think they are very good but, I'm still looking for the one.
Please provide…
Juan de Dios
- 259
- 3
- 5
- 6
242
votes
15 answers
Why do most public toilet doors open inwards?
The design of most public restrooms greatly caters for the ability to wash hands after the use of the toilette, providing facilities like sinks - sometimes with touchless faucets - soap dispensers, hand driers, paper towels etc. All quite expensive…
daniel.sedlacek
- 4,289
- 4
- 23
- 32
231
votes
23 answers
How To Display Too Much Data
We're building a web-based platform where the main dashboard shows a table of data for users to view and analyze. As we're growing this tool, we seem to be adding more and more columns and are running out of horizontal space on smaller screen…
Jason
- 2,735
- 3
- 17
- 13
228
votes
10 answers
Do we “exit”, “quit” or "close" an application?
Do we “exit” an application, do we “quit” an application, do we “close” an application?
This is in relation to a desktop app. What is the most meaningful term to use?
JustinRob
- 2,544
- 3
- 20
- 19
218
votes
11 answers
Why do users click randomly and rapidly when an application hangs?
This question came to me when I witnessed a collegue's behaviour on an application freezing due to a large operation. And it's something I've certainly done myself.
An app freezes for more than a couple seconds and we start clicking at it.…
Kai
- 2,605
- 3
- 15
- 18
216
votes
13 answers
Why do many sites leave half of each webpage empty?
Why do many sites leave half of each webpage empty? Isn't this a waste of screen space?
One nice example of this is the Stack Exchange Network sites:
As you can see, there is a ton of whitespace left on both sides of each page.
Does the whitespace…
Tot Zam
- 5,885
- 7
- 19
- 33
210
votes
17 answers
Why does Google still use paging instead of progressive loading?
As a designer I believe "Page system" is less efficient than progressive loading inside a single page.
However it is still widely used on many websites including Google’s search results.
Maybe there is an important advantage of the pagination…
Renaud
- 7,613
- 4
- 28
- 37
206
votes
10 answers
Should a sentence ending with a URL terminate with a period?
Suppose my web service needs to send a password recovery e-mail message to the user. The message will contain a link (with some disposable token). Something like:
To reset your password please follow this link: http://example.com/recover/TOKEN
Now…
sharptooth
- 5,897
- 5
- 28
- 24
201
votes
2 answers
Why do movie posters use credit fonts that are hard to read?
Many contemporary movie posters typeset the credits in an extremely thin font:
Is this just out of convention or is there a particular reason for deliberately making the credits hard to read?
Heinzi
- 2,517
- 3
- 16
- 16