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1500 questions
159
votes
19 answers
What is best practice for designing form error messages?
I've seen quite a lot of research on form design, but so far, I haven't come across any studies on error message design best practices. The only piece of advice seems to be that each error should clearly be associated with the invalid form field…
Virtuosi Media
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158
votes
12 answers
How Do I Avoid Users Becoming Numb to Warnings?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately because it's bitten me in the behind a few times.
Think of the Windows User Account Control in Windows Vista (and to a lesser extent Windows 7). The idea is that when something that can break your machine…
Michael Brown
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156
votes
5 answers
Avoiding the Hermann grid illusion
I'm a UX newbie and I'm trying to design a page of image thumbnails. I came up with this:
The trouble is that this layout creates the Hermann Grid illusion. When looking at the grid, most people see flickering black dots in the corners.
Can…
dB'
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156
votes
16 answers
Why should we ask the password twice during registration?
It would be easier to ask for a user's password only once during registration.
The problem: The user could make a mistake while typing the password once because of hiding letters.
The solution: The user could have a toggle button for showing or…
webvitaly
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155
votes
20 answers
Intuitive interface for Composing Boolean Logic?
I'm interested to know how people have, or would construct an interface which simplifies constructing logical boolean conditions? (Yes, it's a database query builder) In my mind a bad interface has them typing lots of AND, NOT IN, OR keywords etc.…
Edward Williams
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150
votes
17 answers
How to encourage honest user behavior in UI
My company creates solutions for waste management facilities. One particular piece of software is used on touch screens at the entrance of a facility. The municipiality runs the facility. We don't influence much how the facility is run.
The…
nitech
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150
votes
12 answers
Why is being "on hold" on the telephone not made less annoying?
I am on hold right now while calling my internet provider for a service question, and all I am hearing is some music and a voice saying "please be patient" every 30 seconds or so (for 30 minutes now).
It came to my mind that there is so much more a…
M. Winter
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147
votes
2 answers
What's the difference between a Modal, Popup, Popover and Lightbox?
I've seen many terms used to describe message boxes that notify and alert users or display information such as modal, popup, popover and lightbox.
What is the difference between these components?
When and for what type of text should each of these…
Tot Zam
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147
votes
14 answers
What are the negative and positive aspects of dark color scheme?
I am using Light-on-dark color scheme (dark background with light text) in my application.
My question is, what are the negative and positive aspects of this color scheme and why this color scheme is not widely used?
Navid
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143
votes
5 answers
Are you sure you want to answer this question?
We've all seen these types of warnings: "Are you sure you want to shut down Windows?"
I hear a lot of people frustratingly reply: "Yes, of course, otherwise I wouldn't have clicked it!"
These types of warning messages can be very annoying, but it…
Max de Mooij
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142
votes
17 answers
Is the folder structure dying?
In our digital world we have previously been forced to know the location of digital content. The obvious one being the local hard drive or a shared file server where sometimes extreme structures have emerged over time. Sometimes in a controlled…
Benny Skogberg
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142
votes
7 answers
What's the point of a delayed popup on a webpage?
It seems more and more common, when you enter a page and start reading it shows a popup after ~10 seconds. Personally I just leave the page immediately and look for the content somewhere else. I can't imagine anyone likes being interrupted by some…
Kevin
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141
votes
10 answers
My users keep naming things with special characters to thwart alphabetization
In my application, there's a long list of user-created objects in a master-detail setup. All we show in the master list is the name of the object, and the list is alphabetized. I've noticed that my users have been naming their objects starting with…
Nate Green
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139
votes
19 answers
Which way should be "on" for a switch?
Most of us use switches every day in various forms. And although there are sometimes general norms in countries as to which direction is "on", there is variation between countries.
So when developing a product with a switch in it, which direction…
JohnGB
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139
votes
14 answers
How big a deal is blocking copy-pasting on a website?
I'm working on a website on which the client wants to disable copy-paste.
It's not to do with security or passwords, but that the data on display is valuable if taken en masse (and almost no value if taken singly), though the user can only access…
David
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