Question

Research and describe

1. Usability Best Practices * Describe and define usability and usability best practices in web and mobile design. post must be at least 200 words

Answer 1

Mobile usability isn’t just shrinking a website to fit various devices. It’s all about paying mindful attention to the ways people use mobile devices and understanding that the mobile experience is as unique as the user.

Usability design for mobile devices is as much about the way it feels as the way it looks and behaves. People use their fingers—or more specifically and more often, their thumbs—to interact with the screen, rather than the traditional desktop usage of a mouse and keyboard. This means mobile design is a much more tactile experience than desktop/PC. Users feel it as much as they see it.

Following usability practices:

• One action-one screen: The smartphone screen is small, by most merits, and even a few additional items can overwhelm the user with too much information. Therefore, you should avoid placing all possible actions and functions on one screen, and split them into several steps instead.
• Navigation must be simple: even the coolest features and best content will be useless if the user cannot find them. Therefore, navigation should be simple and intuitive. Use easily-recognizable elements so that the user can go from one screen to another or go back without problems.

• Seamless user experience: today, users rarely use only one device. A person can use your application on a smartphone, then switch to a tablet or a PC and vice versa. That is why one of the most important characteristics of a good mobile design is to provide a quality seamless experience for the end user, regardless of the device.

• Attention to typography: The text on the screen should be easy-to-read without the need for additional magnification. In addition to the size of the font itself, the text readability is affected by a slight increase in the letter-to-letter and inter-line spacing. So we have to take care of this.

• Color and background as functional elements: The background between the interface elements and the rest of the content can be successfully used to draw attention to the important content on the screen. skillful use of white space can really improve mobile design. It is an active, not a passive element of design.

• Avoid clutter and overload: do not overload users with excessive functionality and irrelevant information, especially if it is not absolutely necessary. “Good” is not when there are many functions, but when there are only those that are absolutely needed. By complicating the interface, you create a mess that affects the user experience. The key to success is simplicity.

• Context-oriented design: personalization is not just about content. It is also about various design elements. All people are different, some have poor eyesight and need to increase the font, others prefers a dark interface instead of a light one, someone likes animation, while another would like to turn it off.

Here, we listed the best practices of mobile design. After all, one of the main virtues of a good application is not only its utility, but also its usability.

Usability Research:

In 2013, Steven hoober(UX Designer and president of 4ourth mobile) conducted extensive research on how people hold and use their phones and wrote about his findings in the article.

In 2017, he wrote a three-part series to update his initial findings, point out new key learning, and emphatically plead with designers to stop referencing his oldest work as the standard. He says that one illustration in particular(one hand-first order), continues to make the rounds as the standard for how users hold their phones, but it is not correct as the only standard.

For web:

Writing content for web users has its challenges. chief among them is the ease with which your content is read and understood by your visitors. when your content is highly readable, your audience is able to quickly digest the information you share with them — a worthy goal to have for your website, whether you run a blog, an e-store or your company's domain.

Following web practices:

• Keep content as concise as possible:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

  • Get to the point as quickly as possible.

  • Cut out unnecessary information.

  • Use easy-to-understand, shorter, common words and phrases.

  • Avoid long paragraphs and sentences.

• Use headings to break up long Articles:

  • ​​​​​​​Before writing a post, consider organizing your thoughts in logical chunks by first outlining what you'll write.

  • Use simple and concise headings.

  • Use keyword-rich headings to aid skimming, as well as those that use their browser's search feature.

• Help readers scan your webpages quickly:

  • Make the first two words count, because users tend to read the first few words of headings, titles and links when they're scanning a webpage.

  • Front-load keywords in webpage titles, headings and links by using the passive voice as an effective writing device.

  • Use the inverted pyramid writing style to place important information at the top of your articles.

• Use bulleted lists and text formatting(Like I uses for your answer):

  • Consider breaking up a paragraph into bulleted points.

  • Highlight important information in bold and italics

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