I attended the NN/g UX conference today. I don’t know if NN/g is reputated in the UX world. But it looks like it’s the only agency which provides UX certificates on the market. The course I attended today is the basic web page design. In my opinion, it’s really worth the money, especially because my company has sponsored the course fee :). The NN/g training and events website is https://www.nngroup.com/training/.

  • Terminology

It’s really fun to find out that UX people use different terms for css styles. It makes me feel UX people and web developers live in parallel universe, side by side at the same time but could never step into each other’s world.

> leading

UX people use leading to specify spaces between baselines, which us developers call it line-height.

> fold

UX people say fold, which is actually a screen size. Hence, 1 fold is one screen, 2 folds mean you have to scroll down to another screen.

> hamburger menu

I’m not sure if everyone knows the menu icon widely used on the mobile pages ☰ is called a hamborgor menu icon.

  • Font

Even though I have used sans-serif font for ages, but up until today I understand what’s the difference between it and serif font. Put it in simple words, serif font has feet but sans-serif font doesn’t. That’s why sans-serif font looks more clean and readable.

  • F-pattern

We read from top to the bottom, and left to the right. It’s called F-pattern. Because of it, it’s best to place the most important stuff on the top and left. It reminds even in a datagrid, we should place the more important columns at the left side of the row.

  • Simplicity

Use simple and familiar words to write your website. Don’t exceed 6th to 8th grade reading level. This website www.webpagefx.com/tools/read-able could help you test your webpage’s readability. I have tested my blog, it’s at grad 4.

  • Carousel

Carousel is fancy and eye-catching. However, it’s best for branding purpose. It’s not recommended to put important stuff, like a button on a carousel page. User tends to ignore that area because they may assume it’s only branding.

  • Color

I really like the instructor’s word Rainbow, describing how you feel when there are too many colors on the page. Restrcit the color usage to 5 at maximum. Another thing is color contrast. There is a good Google plugin Color Constrast Analyzer which could help you determine if your page’s contrast is enough.

  • Density

When there are too many stuff on a single page, it makes user feel heavy. Nobody bothers to read it. LESS is more.

  • Residual fixations

A residual fixation is an eye fixation left over from a previous action. Because of it, when user click a submit button, and some error returns, it’s best displaying the error message next to the submit button.

There are much more in the course. It’s a pity I only registered for one class this year. Next year, if the UX conference is held in Sydney too, I would like to attend more advanced classes like user interaction.