What are tooltip design best practices?

Deep dive

To ensure tooltips actually enhance the usability and accessibility of an enterprise app, you can follow tooltip design best practices.

1. Keep tooltips concise 

Ideally, aim for around 20 characters per line to ensure readability and avoid distracting from the main content. Most importantly, keep it concise and avoid overwhelming users with unnecessary information.

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2. Don’t state what’s already visible 

Tooltip text should add meaningful content, providing insights beyond what's visible. Following tooltip UX best practices, avoid redundant information and focus on clarity and usefulness.

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3. Ensure appropriate tooltip placement

Strategically position tooltips close to their associated elements without blocking them, ensuring they enhance rather than hinder usability. 

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4. Support both mouse and keyboard hover

To ensure accessibility tooltip best practices, it’s important to make your tooltips work well with both mouse and keyboard interactions.

Here is an example of how ClickUp realized this opportunity:

5. Use tooltip arrows

Incorporating arrows can help users associate tooltips with relevant elements, which is particularly beneficial in dense interfaces and aligns with tooltip best practices.

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6. Use contrast background

Maintain high contrast between tooltips and the background, ensuring text is easily readable and accessible, especially to users with visual impairments.

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❓Questions designers should ask themselves

By asking the right questions, designers can question their decisions, find areas to improve, make sure nothing is overlooked, and reduce mistakes, leading to better, more thoughtful designs.

• Is this tooltip essential for understanding the UI?

• Does it provide information not obvious in the interface?

• Can the design be improved to eliminate the need for a tooltip?

⚠️ Common mistakes to avoid

Learning from your mistakes is important, but many problems can indeed be predicted and avoided. Based on Cieden's collective expertise, we're sharing the most common ones.

• Avoid too many tooltips, as they can clutter the interface.

• Do not rely on them to explain unclear design.

• Ensure accessibility to users with disabilities.

• Test tooltips with real users to ensure they are effective.

💡 Methodologies 

These methodologies will make your job easier and more effective. 

• Lean UX: Lean UX focuses on rapid experimentation and iteration. By applying Lean UX principles, you can efficiently test whether tooltips enhance the user experience. Start with a basic version, gather user feedback, and refine design iteratively. 

• User Story Mapping: This technique involves outlining the user's journey through your product to identify where additional guidance is necessary. By mapping out user interactions, you can pinpoint moments where tooltips could improve understanding and streamline the experience. 

• A/B testing: A/B testing allows you to compare different tooltip designs and placements. By evaluating these variations, you can determine which designs best enhance user interaction and comprehension without disrupting their workflow. 

🛠️ Useful tools 

These tools will make your job easier and more effective.

• UserTesting: Get feedback on tooltip use and explore better alternatives for various software applications.

• Hotjar: Analyze how users interact with your tooltips to discover areas for improvement and explore better design alternatives across different software applications.

🤝 Credits

Our content combines the knowledge of Cieden’s designers with insights from industry influencers. Big thanks to all the influencers for sharing awesome content!

• Tooltips in UI Design by Nick Babich

• Tooltip Guidelines by Alita Joyce

📚 Keep exploring 

Never stop growing. Explore resources thoughtfully handpicked by Cieden’s designers.

• 5 mistakes to avoid while designing tooltips by Galaxy Weblinks

• Tooltip by Global Family Service