Social Aspects of UI Design

Question 1

Which of the following design patterns is related to improving social interaction of a digital system?

a. Forgiving formats
b. Movable pieces
c. Starred reviews

Answer 1

c. Starred reviews

Question 2

What is a leader board?

Answer 2

Containing a list of rankings representing performance in a particular category or overall standings helps to show users exactly how they are performing in relation to others.

Question 3

What are some potential problems with leader boards?

Answer 3

1. Users might find ways around investing time and effort to reach the top, using sneaky measures and devaluing the meaningfulness of the leader board
2. Leader boards can be inappropriate to use in certain cases when encouraging a competitive atmosphere can harm a small group of users
   3.

Question 4

Which of the following options would be a useful addition to a leader board?

a. A detailed profile for each user
b. A colorful and cheerful background
c. A filter to see scores of select users

Answer 4

c. A filter to see scores of select users

Question 5

What type of filter option would be useful for a leader board in a platform where people can advertise crafting workshops they provide?

a. Fastest-selling workshop
b. Most expensive workshop
c. Most popular workshop

Answer 5

c. Most popular workshop

Question 6

What can result from complicated, convoluted, or long-winded messages?

Answer 6

It can confuse the user, slow them down, lead them to make mistakes, and ultimately lead them to abandon a task, an element within your design, or the whole design altogether.

Question 7

What do you need to pay attention to when implementing language in your designs?

Answer 7

1. Understandability
2. Tone-of-voice
3. Person perspective
4. International differences

Question 8

Of the following types of language, which one would you use when trying to replicate language from user’s real-world experiences?

a. Direct and formal
b. Precise and formal
c. Direct and conversational

Answer 8

c. Direct and conversational

Question 9

When you are trying to give users the impression they have sole access to their personal details, which of the following terms would you use to define their account?

a. Your Profile
b. My Profile
c. The Profile

Answer 9

b. My Profile

Question 10

How does the starred reviews design pattern help users?

Answer 10

It helps users to compare items very quickly and skim through the collection of available items without having to dive deeply into the review texts.

Question 11

Why choose a starred review design pattern?

Answer 11

1. Starred reviews provide a highly visual and instantly digestible way of conveying how previous users rate a product or service.
2. A starred review rating system allows people to leave quick reviews to show how they feel about a product or service.
3. Being prepared to show users what others have made of things you have for sale by providing a transparent review system increases the perceived trustworthiness of your website.

Question 12

What are the 4 best practices to implement starred reviews?

Answer 12

1. Determine the system. Use a 5-star system. It is usually sufficient to convey the overall buyer experience and conserves precious space on the page.
2. Place them in the most prominent position within the region reserved for reviews. (typically, above the reviews). As star ratings represent the most instant means of conveying the average buyer experience.
3. Clearly distinguish the stars from the rest of the display so the user’s eye is instantly drawn to this informative yet concise review system.
4. Include a number average next to the stars to help the user immediately determine the overall score awarded from all reviewers. Also, show how many reviews are available as an indication of the trustworthiness of the overall score. If a product is rated with a one-star average, it is more likely to be a bad purchase when 88 users left a review than when one user did.

Question 13

What are the potential problems with starred reviews?

Answer 13

• reviewers can review the wrong aspect of their experience (e.g., for a one-star review: “I got the wrong DVD delivered – so not impressed!”)
• they inadvertently (perhaps even drunkenly) select one star to mean they absolutely love what they bought.

safeguards:
—users should never be able to leave a no-star review (after all, five stars left blank might well still mean five stars to some mindsets!). A third peril is sabotage, where a person has an axe to grind with a company or a sick sense of ‘fun’. Luckily, real users tend not to do this; at any rate, companies like Amazon show if a reviewer is a real customer by indicating the review is based on a verified purchase.

Question 14

Why would a ten-star review system be less appropriate than a five-star system?

Answer 14

Because of the space, it would take on the user interface

Question 15

What is the imported connections design pattern?

Answer 15

A function that allows users to import contacts from one application into another.

Question 16

Instead of describing what steps to take to import connections into a system in an extensive online user manual, the imported connections design pattern can be combined with another useful pattern to increase ease of use. Which?

a. A footer
b. A search box
c. A wizard

Answer 16

c. A wizard

Question 17

What are the 3 best practices to implement imported connections?

Answer 17

1. Make sure that users know about the facility of importing existing connections when they first begin using your mail client, service, website, or application. This can be part of a user manual, a step-by-step installation guide, or a one-time pop-up. Imparting this information to users allows them to import their contacts immediately, or, at the very least, it informs them of this capacity for a later time.
2. The system should relieve the users of having to search for their contacts; simply provide the users with a command button that will search the contact list from another application, or guide the users through the process by using a wizard.
3. Ensure the users have the means of accessing the ‘import contacts’ function from their main dashboard or menu options, so they can execute this operation at any time they want without having to go through a lengthy, drawn-out process.

Question 18

What is the most effective way to ensure that users know about the option of importing their connections from other applications?

a. Describing it in an online user manual
b. Giving a pop-up alert at first use
c. Mentioning it in the welcome email

Answer 18

b. Giving a pop-up alert at first use

Question 19

What does the sign-in reminder or prompt, in combination with the direct means of logging in to the website or application help minimize?

Answer 19

It helps minimize the amount of time and effort the users must invest before they are able to resume their intended activity. (e.g., posting a comment within a forum).

Question 20

What are the 4 best practices to implement sign-in reminders?

Answer 20

1. At all the various points of the user interface where the users can input information, include a reminder when they attempt to do so before they have signed in.
2. Within the sign-in reminder, provide the facility to sign in there and then.
3. Once the users have signed in, ensure that they are returned to their previous point.
4. As the sign-in reminder appears when the users have attempted to engage without having signed in, make sure the data they had previously entered is preserved when they return to their previous page.

Question 21

A sign-in reminder should usually be accompanied by…?

a. A back button
b. The sign-in facility
c. Navigation tabs

Answer 21

b. The sign-in facility

Question 22

Why would you need to implement an additional alert on top of the sign-in reminder, when the actual sign-in functionality takes the users away from their original location?

Answer 22

Because it allows them to decide to abort the action and stay where they are

Question 23

Which of these is the best way to implement a sign-in reminder?

Answer 23

Use a pop-up reminder or in-page overlay

Question 24

What are the best practices to implement update alerts?

Answer 24

1. Condense each individual update into a small piece of information, without sacrificing the meaning of the event. For example, someone might have uploaded a photo from a recent visit to the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City and have tagged a number of people. While the users who know this traveler might be interested to know all of this information, they only need to know what type of activity has taken place, so they can investigate further if they wish to do so.
2. The updates should be a snapshot of the activities from the user’s friends and family, rather than an exhaustive catalogue of all the events ever to have taken place. Therefore, starting the updates from a certain time is the best idea, such as updates from the day or week the user has signed in.
3. The updates should ideally contain inline links that navigate the user directly to the related contents, saving that user from having to wade through the people’s accounts. Generally, you should ensure the user can go to the event itself within the other user’s timeline and can click through to the other person’s account. For example, the user’s profile image might appear at the head of the update, which the user can click – diverting him or her straight to that person’s account.
4. Ensure the update alert is eye-catching, without dominating the whole screen. In order to draw the user’s attention to the alert, the background is usually ‘greyed-out’, but still visible, which gives the appearance of a figure/ground distinction, so the updates seem more prominent within the display.
5. While updates might be interesting to users, users must be able to close the update panel quickly. Once the panel is closed, allow the user to resume his/her original activities immediately.

Question 25

Why does an update alert have links to other regions in the application or website?

Answer 25

Because the updates are small snippets of the entire activity

Question 26

How can short update alerts help users?

Answer 26

It is a highly visible and effective means of informing users of important and personally relevant changes.

We can also use these updates—also referred to as vitality or activity streams—on all pages of a website or application, and we can engineer the content according to the user’s current position. Therefore, we can use update alerts to inform users of general changes (i.e., those that relate to the overall user experience) or of context-specific changes, such as bulletins showing users what status updates their friends have made whenever they log in to their personal homepages.

Question 27

Why include and update alert design patterns?

Answer 27

Update alerts provide our users with interesting and important information immediately, saving them from expending the time and effort in actively seeking these out. For example, a social media site tends to provide update alerts consisting of the activity of a user’s friends (e.g., status updates, news stories, new pictures, and new connections).

If users were to go and find this information ‘manually’, it would take much longer and mean their having to go from profile to profile and scrolling through each different user’s contents. That’s a huge chunk of inconvenience to handle when time and battery levels are at a premium. So, this is our cue for entering the user experience with our best solution.