UX being one of the many parts that important in success of any web-application. However lets take two extremes of UI designs: Hunch and Craigslist. While some people would say Craigslist is not a comparable example in terms of UI to Hunch, I would request them to reconsider. Specially if you read this article from Harvard Business Review you will begin to have second thoughts.
While we are at it, I would recommend Beautiful Data and Don’t Make me think. Specially read chapter 2 from Beautiful Data book. It gives a case study on how a consulting company improved responses to survey by controlling different aspect of UI. Following are some of lessons that I think are important for end developers to know
- Make first good impression
- Keep it simple
- State explicit agenda/motive for given task
- Use social proof while collecting data
- Use cleaner text, and distinguish elements of interaction
- Show progress i.e. give user a visual clue of how long would the task last
- Lazy/Delayed tasks for keeping users engaged
- Make room for advanced/power users
To be honest Craigslist fails at 1,4,5. But I think they do play on their strengths for the remaining elements.
