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Designing efficient web forms We had a chance to discuss forms for complex use-cases during UX Camp Europe. I'm grateful for the great insights given especially by Paweł, Oliver, and Maximilian who have experience with designing complex forms for various industries - whether it's government, medical or enterprise organizations. There's a ton of great sources on how to design forms well, but we tried to go beyond that and focus on expert users, everyday use of our systems, and complex use-cases. Read more

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What is designing for efficiency? There are a couple of ways to look at efficient design. Each of them considers a different aspect and when applied together, they can significantly speed up the work of our users. Read more

Designing for efficiency-keyboard shortcuts

There are many applications, websites, and digital media that strive to get your attention, allow you to be creative, and create a plausible experience. But more often than not, users don't really care about building a relationship with a piece of software, they just want to get their job done.

veghova.com

Designing for efficiency-keyboard shortcuts

Designing for timeliness

When doing user research, there are not too many complaints that are as universal as 'The system is simply slow, it's slowing me to do my job'. Often this issue is dismissed by saying there's nothing that can be done about that without significant engineering effort, complete rewriting the code or moving to a different technology.

veghova.com

Efficiency is the speed with which people do tasks after they have learned the interface. - NNGroup

Another resources

Efficiency in general

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use: The 7th Usability Heuristic Explained

I am not an accomplished cook. I can follow a recipe and get reasonably edible results, but it takes me a long time and a lot of concentration. If I don't prepare for cooking by reading through a full, detailed recipe, laying out all of the ingredients beforehand in groups that will be used together, and googling a few advanced techniques, I'll be left with a burned dinner.

www.nngroup.com

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use: The 7th Usability Heuristic Explained

Efficient UX Isn't Always the Best UX

Let me start by telling you a story. Once upon a time, a woman got lost in a forest. A beast kidnaps her. They eventually fall in love and live happily ever after. Heart wrenching isn't it? Ok, so maybe I missed a few parts of the Beauty and the Beast.

www.uxpin.com

Principle of Consistency and Standards in User Interface Design

Learn to design with consistency and standards in mind and understand the reasons why they're important to incorporate them into your work. Derived from Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich's Ten User Interface (UI) Guidelines, 'Consistency and Standards' are evident in many of the widely-used products created by some of the most successful companies.

www.interaction-design.org

Principle of Consistency and Standards in User Interface Design

Over-complicated? Over-simplified? The UX Efficient Frontier

We are not our users. We are even less our expert users. Depending on the audience, the designers' challenge is to find the sweet spot between the "not too simple" and "not too complicated". Let's call the UX Efficient Frontier to the rescue!

uxdesign.cc

Over-complicated? Over-simplified? The UX Efficient Frontier

Gestalt Theory for Efficient UX: Principle of Similarity.

Many designers can boast of having creative intuition and a sharp eye: they add as much passion and feeling into the layout of the future website or app as rational thinking and measurement. In lots of cases, that's not bragging but the real skill to see all the details together, to feel the possible pitfalls of the user flow, to find the original solutions not ruining usability.

uxplanet.org

Gestalt Theory for Efficient UX: Principle of Similarity.

Designing for expert users

Lessons from Designing for Advanced Users

Since the establishment of Societe Generale CIB's in-house design team 5 years ago, we've been pushing our design craft for advanced users and design for some of the most complex applications imaginable. This piece is part of a series exploring the use of design to rethink Corporate & Investment Banking services.

medium.com

Lessons from Designing for Advanced Users

Testing Expert Users

Alice Davey sent me this question: I've been to a couple of the courses including "Application design", which were very good. I am currently designing an XXX application which users will quickly become "expert" in as they will use it frequently.

www.nngroup.com

Accelerators

UI Copy: UX Guidelines for Command Names and Keyboard Shortcuts

Users want to be efficient with their time. Transparent command names and command shortcuts help users bridge the gulf of execution and are essential for a smooth, fast, and painless interaction. Though often overlooked, these textual elements enable users of all types, including those with disabilities, to move quickly through our digital products.

www.nngroup.com

UI Copy: UX Guidelines for Command Names and Keyboard Shortcuts

Accelerators Allow Experts to Increase Efficiency

In user-interface design, we often focus on first-time users. In the typical usability-testing scenario, we recruit participants who have never seen the tested interface before and ask them to use it to complete certain tasks. But, in many cases, the system will be used again and again.

www.nngroup.com

Accelerators Allow Experts to Increase Efficiency

Efficiency vs. learnability

Learnability vs Efficiency in User Interface Design (Video)

Summary: Two of the most fundamental usability metrics are learnability (the user's ability to use a new design they have not seen before) and efficiency (the speed with which people do tasks after they have learned the interface). You must have javascript and cookies enabled in order to display videos.

www.nngroup.com

Learnability vs Efficiency in User Interface Design (Video)

How to Measure Learnability of a User Interface

Learnability is one of the five quality components of usability (the others being efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction). Testing learnability is especially valuable for complex applications and systems that users access frequently, though knowing how quickly users can acclimate to your interface is valuable for even objectively simple systems. Learnability considers how easy it is for users to accomplish a task the first time they encounter the interface and how many repetitions it takes for them to become efficient at that task.

www.nngroup.com

How to Measure Learnability of a User Interface

Efficient forms

Designing Efficient Web Forms: On Structure, Inputs, Labels And Actions - Smashing Magazine

Someone who uses your app or website has a particular goal. Often, the one thing standing between the user and their goal is a form. Forms remain **one of the most important types of interactions** for users on the web and in apps.

www.smashingmagazine.com

Designing Efficient Web Forms: On Structure, Inputs, Labels And Actions - Smashing Magazine

Guidelines for awesome web form design

Ten helpful guidelines for user-friendly website form design - design online forms that won't have users running away. Forms may not be the most exciting part of web design, but they sure are important. After all, forms help users send information to sites or apps in order to achieve their end goal.

www.justinmind.com

Web form UX: Best practices for designing efficient web forms | Bit Zesty | London UK

Good forms create great experiences. Today, online forms are a key touchpoint between the user and an organisation. Many of us use forms every day - registering on a website, buying something online, or completing an application form. In this blog post I'll discuss some...

bitzesty.com

Web form UX: Best practices for designing efficient web forms | Bit Zesty | London UK

Offer Help. Then Listen.

My wife recently logged into our joint credit card account and it prompted her to fill out her own personal profile information; however, most of the form fields were pre-filled with my info. She was confused as to whether she should change any of it, thinking this action may change something about my profile.

blog.prototypr.io

Standard Practices for Designing Most Efficient Web Forms: On Structure, Input Fields, Labels and Action Buttons

Any of the web users who access your website has a specific goal. There is one common thing between the user and their goal is a form. Forms are one of the significant types of interactions for the users on the web as well as in the applications.

www.bacancytechnology.com

Standard Practices for Designing Most Efficient Web Forms: On Structure, Input Fields, Labels and Action Buttons

How to design better web forms and decrease form abandonment

A web form is any area on the site where you enter information. That is, when you sign-in or sign-up, make an order, enter payment data, leave feedback, get in contact, etc. Oh, and when you Google something, you use a web form as well.

uxdesign.cc

How to design better web forms and decrease form abandonment

Best practice for date-of-birth form fields

Following one of our geekier team debates, I recently did a deep-dive into the most usable UX and UI design pattern for a date-of-birth form field and was really surprised to find that existing research and best practice is not, apparently, reflected in the UI toolkits put forward by Material Design or iOS 14.

blog.prototypr.io

Best practice for date-of-birth form fields

Keyboard shortcuts

J, K, or How to choose keyboard shortcuts for web applications

Now web apps have become true working environments for many activities (including writing diplomas). Productivity and speed are a business necessity, not buzz words. Some keyboard shortcuts web apps inherit from the desktop software. But can we blindly copy them? Shortcuts accelerate common actions and are mostly used by experts.

sashika.medium.com

J, K, or How to choose keyboard shortcuts for web applications

Keyboard Shortcuts Creation

From a new year I started a new position as UX Designer. One of my first UX tasks was not an easy one - to create a Keyboard Shortcuts for our company's Cloud Applications. I didn't know exactly how to proceed, so I found few articles at first to get some basic information and to look how others solved this task.

blog.prototypr.io

The Big List of 111+ Keyboard Shortcuts For The Most-Used Online Tools

Isaac Newton discovered gravity. I discovered what a four-finger swipe does on my Macbook. The discoveries will not go down the same in history, but I have to admit: I was pretty stoked to find mine. Little epiphanies like these are hugely satisfying when I'm trying to squeeze just a little more time out of each and every day.

buffer.com

The Big List of 111+ Keyboard Shortcuts For The Most-Used Online Tools

Keyboard shortcuts, enumerated

Find all keyboard shortcuts and tips and more about technology on DefKey.com!

defkey.com

Command-based graphical interfaces

CLUI: Building a Graphical Command Line

"Command line interfaces. Once that was all we had. Then they disappeared, replaced by what we thought was a great advance: GUIs. GUIs were - and still are - valuable, but they fail to scale to the demands of today's systems. So now command line interfaces are back again, hiding under the name of search.

blog.repl.it

Command Palette Interfaces

The command palette seems to be making a resurgence. I couldn't be happier. It's one of my favorite UI patterns. Command palettes allow you to create a friendly and fast way to interact with your interface. They are more user friendly than traditional command line interfaces, but offer many of the same ergonomic advantages.

philipcdavis.com

Every App Should Have a Power Bar

Power bars are beginning to appear a lot more frequently in all kinds of apps over the last few years. I've found them in the slideshow tool Pitch, a calendar app called Cron, more complex tools like Visual Studio Code, issue tracker Linear, and even in Adobe Photoshop as well as an array of other places.

debugger.medium.com

The History of Command Palettes: How Typing Commands Became The Norm Again

It took little under a decade for the headline feature developer Jon Skinner added to Sublime Text's second version to become one of the defining features of this decade's software. "Goto Anything" is how it started, a search pane to jump to other files.

capiche.com

The History of Command Palettes: How Typing Commands Became The Norm Again

Courses

Designing for Productivity in the User eXperience

This course is course number D15.2 from a comprehensive online curriculum on User eXperience (UX) currently under development by top experts in the field through The Online User eXperience Institute (OUXI). COURSE CONTENT This is an in-depth course on a particular aspect of designing for the User eXperience.

www.udemy.com

Designing for Productivity in the User eXperience

Designing Complex Apps for Specialized Domains

Learn the design process for creating and evaluating applications for advanced decision making, complicated workflows, and complex domains Defining complex applications and complex work Common characteristics of complex applications Sources of complexity Complex app user types Comparing workflows for simple use vs.

www.nngroup.com

Designing Complex Apps for Specialized Domains

Books

Designing and Engineering Time

Came looking for research on how users of computers perceive time. Got some of that, could've gotten more, could've gotten less. Overall, satisfied, but not raving about it. Alright, what did I learn? Of course, time is extremely subjective.

www.goodreads.com

Designing Agentive Technology

This is a really good book, especially the first two parts. Chris gives us all some fine frameworks to design with AI and provides great examples. The last part of the book somehow doesn't feel as tight, delving too much into philosophy and ethics. It is necessary, but could be shorter with that part.

www.goodreads.com

Our review: The book is great in describing what is an agentive technology (a technology that does the job for you). It compares it to assistive technology (technology that helps you do the job) and it mentions their advantages and limits. Also great in describing the principles for designing a successful agent. An experienced designer would probably figure it all out - sooner or later. However, having them well described in one place is really helpful. In the beginning, it might seem that agentive technology can be anything and everything, but it gets much clearer throughout the book. The last part didn't resonate too much with me. It discusses philosophical and ethical questions regarding agentive technology in a very broad sense. I would much more appreciate discussing everyday problems of agents, like security and privacy. I'd be interested in real examples and possible solutions.

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What is designing for efficiency?

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Designing efficient web forms

Curated by Gabriela Veghova with some help from Honza Toman