UXmatters has published 44 articles on the topic User Assistance Design.
UX writing involves designing copy for user-interface (UI) elements that users employ in interacting with applications. This copy includes labels for menu items, commands, buttons, and form controls; error-message text, alert text, and other instructional text.
To ensure a good user experience, it is essential to design user-interface text to be accessible to users with different abilities, regardless of how users navigate the software—whether using speech, keyboard, or mouse device—or if users have color-deficient vision. UX writing must serve all types of users and help them interact with a user interface successfully. In this article, we’ll provide some guidelines for effective UX writing. Read More
Social networking Web sites are gaining increasing prominence on the Internet landscape, with millions of users around the world connecting to their friends and making new ones, participating in online communities, and posting comments. Social networking leads to the creation of social capital, primarily taking the form of user-generated content (UGC). User engagement and the democratization of content drive the popularity of social networking Web sites. In looking at the social networking model closely, we have observed that it is a collaborative and dynamic model, in which the consumers of content are also its creators and owners.
Society and technology have played equally crucial roles in providing a platform for user-generated content. The social networking phenomenon has ushered in a shift in mindset that, in turn, has driven people to become actively engaged in generating their own content and sharing it with an international audience on the Web, in contrast to the earlier trend of passively viewing content that others had created. Previously, people viewed the Web mostly as a place of anonymity, but times have changed. People now perceive the Web as a more personal space where they can connect with thousands of other people who have similar interests and share their photographs, videos, and writeups with them. One of today’s most frequently referenced Web sites, Wikipedia champions the cause of user-generated content. As users’ contributions add more value to the Web site, it attracts more users, creating a virtuous cycle. Read More
Picture this: You’ve just signed up a new customer, and they’re excited to get going. Everything seems great on paper—until their questions start rolling in.
“How does this feature work?”
“Why can’t I customize my dashboard?”
“Why won’t this integration connect properly?”
Despite the best efforts of your support agents and Customer Success team, confusion about your product might be too much for your customers. Without proper guidance, they could become frustrated and eventually decide to leave. This scenario is all too common. Over 90% of customers believe that companies could do a better job of onboarding, and a UserPilot survey shows that only 24.5% of users adopt a core feature, while the rest abandon it because they don’t immediately understand how to derive value from it. Read More