Website Tools and Applications with Flash DESIGN GUIDELINES BASED ON USER TESTING OF 46 FLASH TOOLS By Hoa Loranger, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen Additional research by: Rolf Molich Kara Pernice 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD. FREMONT, CA 94539-7498 USA WWW.NNGROUP.COM Copyright © Nielsen Norman Group, All Rights Reserved. To get your own copy, download from: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/website-tools-and-applications-flash/ About This Free Report This report is a gift for our loyal audience of UX enthusiasts. Thank you for your support over the years. We hope this information will aid your efforts to improve user experiences for everyone. The research for this report was done in 2013, but the majority of the advice may still be applicable today, because people and principles of good design change much more slowly than computer technology does. We sometimes make older report editions available to our audience at no cost, because they still provide interesting insights. 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Instead, we encourage you to distribute the following link to the report’s page on our website to allow people to decide whether to download it themselves: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/website-tools-and-applications-flash/ REPORT AUTHORS Hoa Loranger, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD. FREMONT, CA 94539-7498 USA WWW.NNGROUP.COM Copyright Notice Please do not post this document to the internet or to publicly available file-sharing services. This report is free, but it is still copyrighted information that may be updated from time to time, so please don’t distribute this file or host it elsewhere. Even when people post documents with a private URL to share only with a few colleagues or clients, search engines often index the copy anyway. Indexing means that thousands of people will find the secret copy through searches. 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD. FREMONT, CA 94539-7498 USA WWW.NNGROUP.COM Table of Contents Executive Summary .......................................................................................... 5 Success Rates ........................................................................................ 5 Web-Based Applications are Ephemeral Applications ..................................... 6 Navigating to Flash Applications ................................................................ 7 Object-Oriented GUI Design ..................................................................... 9 A New Generation of Design Guidelines ...................................................... 9 Research Overview ........................................................................................ 12 Procedure ............................................................................................ 12 Designs Studied ................................................................................... 13 Summary of Findings ...................................................................................... 18 Feature Success Rates .......................................................................... 18 Task Success Rates .............................................................................. 20 Top Causes of Failure ............................................................................ 20 Interpreting Success Rates ..................................................................... 23 Guidelines for Designing with Flash .................................................................... 27 User-Centered Design ........................................................................... 27 Usable design ..................................................................................... 27 Workflow ............................................................................................. 27 Content ............................................................................................... 27 Navigation ........................................................................................... 27 Feedback ........................................................................................... 28 Attracting Visitors ................................................................................. 28 Make applications compelling ................................................................. 28 Quality Assurance ................................................................................ 28 Object-Oriented control .......................................................................... 28 Drag and drop ...................................................................................... 28 creating objects .................................................................................. 28 Resizing objects .................................................................................. 28 Rotating objects .................................................................................... 29 Presentation ........................................................................................ 29 Motion ................................................................................................ 29 Sound ............................................................................................... 29 Colors and fonts ................................................................................... 29 NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 2 Scrolling .............................................................................................. 29 Graphics and Photographs...................................................................... 29 Implementation Nuts and Bolts ............................................................... 30 Browsers............................................................................................ 30 Installation and Load Time ..................................................................... 30 Saving and Printing ............................................................................... 30 Hovering, clicking, and tabbing behavior .................................................. 30 User assistance ................................................................................... 30 help .................................................................................................... 30 Instructions ......................................................................................... 31 Tutorials .............................................................................................. 31 Error Recovery ..................................................................................... 31 Application Specifics .............................................................................. 31 Maps ................................................................................................. 31 Registration ......................................................................................... 31 International considerations ................................................................... 32 Accessibility Guidelines .......................................................................... 32 Discussion and Examples for Flash Design Guidelines ............................................ 33 User-Centered Design ........................................................................... 33 Design Usability.................................................................................... 33 Workflow ............................................................................................. 33 Content ............................................................................................... 62 Navigation ........................................................................................... 68 Feedback ........................................................................................... 78 Attracting Visitors ................................................................................. 85 Make Applications Compelling ................................................................. 85 Quality Assurance ................................................................................ 91 Object-Oriented Control ......................................................................... 95 Drag and Drop ..................................................................................... 95 Creating Objects ................................................................................... 99 Resizing Objects ................................................................................ 104 Rotating Objects ................................................................................. 105 Presentation ...................................................................................... 108 Motion .............................................................................................