Universal Principles of UX

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Match the real world.

Whenever we have to come up with a new interface for a project, we always start by thinking about how people would interact with it in the real world. That way it feels familiar and people immediately know what to do. It’s also why we delete things by dragging it to the trash, group documents into folders, and use the compass, flashlight, calculator, and clock on our phones without any instruction.

During the concepting phase of USA Today, rather than looking at other newspaper websites for inspiration, we closely examined the actual physical newspaper and talked about what our behavior is like when reading newspapers. People don’t tend to read the newspaper from start to finish like a book. Most of us will scan the ...