Usability

How Little Do Users Read?

"On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 06, 2008 | Permalink

Right-Justified Navigation Menus Impede Scannability

"Users scan lists by moving their eyes rapidly down the left edge. Menu items that are right-aligned make scanning more difficult." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 28, 2008 | Permalink

25 years in usability

"Since I started in 1983, the usability field has grown by 5,000%. It's a wonderful job — and still a promising career choice for new people." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 21, 2008 | Permalink

Four Bad Designs

"Bad content, bad links, bad navigation, bad category pages... which is worst for business? In these examples, bad content takes the prize for costing the company the most money." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 14, 2008 | Permalink

Middle-Aged Users' Declining Web Performance

"Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year — mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 30, 2008 | Permalink

Bridging the Designer–User Gap

"Depending on how representative designers are of the target audience, a project might need more or less user testing. Still, usability concerns never go away completely." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 17, 2008 | Permalink

Measuring satisfaction: Beyond the usability questionnaire

"Most usability tests culminate with a short questionnaire that asks the participant to rate, usually on a 5- or 7-point scale, various characteristics of the system. Experience shows that participants are reluctant to be critical of a system, no matter how difficult they found the tasks. This article describes a guided interview technique that overcomes this problem based on a word list of over 100 adjectives. We also include a spreadsheet to generate and randomise the word list." (David Travis - Userfocus)

Posted on March 03, 2008 | Permalink

Company Name First in Microcontent? Sometimes!

"Typically, you should deemphasize your company's name in links, but a new guideline recommends frontloading the name for search engine links under certain conditions." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 03, 2008 | Permalink

Usability versus Searchability: Is it an Either/Or Proposition?

"Last fall at Adobe Max we talked with Adaptive Path's Jesse James Garrett about how to build Rich Internet Applications utilizing technologies like AIR and Flex while simultaneously making them underestandable and coherent to end users. The issue isn't just making them intuitive, but educating the public on what their purposes are, how they can be used, and, most importantly, what they can and cannot actually do." (ScribeMedia.Org)

Posted on February 25, 2008 | Permalink

Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes

"Application usability is enhanced when users know how to operate the UI and it guides them through the workflow. Violating common guidelines prevents both." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 19, 2008 | Permalink

User Skills Improving, But Only Slightly

"Users now do basic operations with confidence and perform with skill on sites they use often. But when users try new sites, well-known usability problems still cause failures." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 04, 2008 | Permalink

Usability ROI Declining, But Still Strong

"The average business metrics improvement after a usability redesign is now 83%. This is substantially less than 6 years ago, but ROI remains high because usability is still cheap relative to gains." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 22, 2008 | Permalink

10 Best Intranets of 2008

"Consistent design and integrated IA are becoming standard on good intranets. This year's winners focused on productivity tools, employee self-service, access to knowledgeable people (as opposed to 'knowledge management'), and better-presented company news." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 07, 2008 | Permalink

Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous...

"AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 19, 2007 | Permalink

Five Usability Challenges of Web-Based Applications

"(...) designing for web apps is different than just designing a web site. It lives in a browser, it has complicated activities and edge conditions, and little things can have big implications, especially when they go awry. You need to know different things when designing for web apps than when designing for any other type of interaction." (Jared Spool - UIE)

Posted on December 05, 2007 | Permalink

Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy

"Information foraging shows how to calculate your content strategy's costs and benefits. A mixed diet that combines brief overviews and comprehensive coverage is often best." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 12, 2007 | Permalink

High-Cost Usability Sometimes Makes Sense

"Computing the net present value (NPV) lets you estimate the most profitable level of usability investment. For big projects, expensive usability can pay off." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 05, 2007 | Permalink

Generic Commands

"Applications can give users access to a richer feature set by using the same few commands to achieve many related functions." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 29, 2007 | Permalink

What if Jakob Nielsen had a blog?

The (unofficial) blog that Jakob Nielsen might have written if he actually had a blog (which he hasn't) - "Some have criticised Jakob Nielsen for having an ugly site and people have wondered if useit.com would benefit from a design makeover. Well I have got tired of waiting for Jakob to start a blog version of useit.com so I decided to build it myself." (Chris McEvoy)

Posted on October 29, 2007 | Permalink

The Limitations of Server Log Files for Usability Analysis

"Server log files are inappropriate for gathering usability data. They are meant to provide server administrators with data about the behavior of the server, not the behavior of the user." (Karl Groves - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on October 25, 2007 | Permalink

Multiple-User Simultaneous Testing (MUST)

"Testing 5-10 users at once lets you conduct large-scale usability testing and still meet your deadlines." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 15, 2007 | Permalink

Intranet Usability Shows Huge Advances

"Measured usability improved by 44% compared to our last large-scale intranet study. The new research identified 5 times the previous number of intranet design guidelines." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 09, 2007 | Permalink

Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill?

"Introductory text on Web pages is usually too long, so users skip it. But short intros can increase usability by explaining the remaining content's purpose." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 01, 2007 | Permalink

Usability - Not as we know it!

"YouTube has been the Internet success story of 2006. However, when subjected to conventional usability evaluation it appears to fail miserably. With this and other social Web services, the purpose of the user is fun, uncertainty, engagement and self-expression. Web2.0 has turned the passive 'user' into an active producer of content and shaper of the ultimate user experience. This more playful, more participative, often joyful use of technology appears to conflict with conventional usability, but we argue that a deeper 'usability' emerges that respects the user's purposes whether acting as homo ludens." (Paula Alexandra Silva & Alan Dix - People and Computers XXI)

Posted on September 18, 2007 | Permalink

Tabs, Used Right

"13 design guidelines for tab controls are all followed by Yahoo Finance, but usability suffers somewhat due to AJAX overkill and difficult customization." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 17, 2007 | Permalink

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings

"Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 21, 2007 | Permalink

Defeated By a Dialog Box

"Interaction techniques that deviate from common GUI standards can create usability catastrophes that make applications impossible to use." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 23, 2007 | Permalink

Write Articles, Not Blog Postings

"To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 09, 2007 | Permalink

Should Designers and Developers Do Usability?

"Having a specialized usability person is best, but smaller design teams can still benefit when designers do their own user testing and other usability work." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 25, 2007 | Permalink

Change vs. Stability in Web Usability Guidelines

"A remarkable 80% of findings from the Web usability studies in the 1990s continue to hold today." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 11, 2007 | Permalink

A Great Leap Forward: The Birth of the Usability Profession (1988-1993)

"My concern is that by embracing new ideas, we will limit our view of our early days as being restricted in scope and naïve in conception. Before that happens, or perhaps, to prevent it, I would like to describe my personal version of our beginnings as a profession and argue that we should be celebrating them, not disparaging them even as we see their limits." (Joe Dumas - UPA Journal of Usability Studies)

Posted on May 30, 2007 | Permalink

The Myth of the Genius Designer

"Having a good designer doesn't eliminate the need for a systematic usability process. Risk reduction and quality improvement both require user testing and other usability methods." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 30, 2007 | Permalink

Thin slicing: Inside or outside the world of user experience?

"(...) research showing that users make quick judgments on very little information and how this affects the design of the online experience." (HFI UI Design Newsletter)

Posted on May 25, 2007 | Permalink

Command Lines

"Application commands can be presented as buttons or as links, which offer more room for explanation. For primary commands, however, buttons are still best." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 14, 2007 | Permalink

Location is Irrelevant for Usability Studies

"You get the same insights regardless of where you conduct user testing, so there's no reason to test in multiple cities. When a city is dominated by your own industry, however, you should definitely test elsewhere." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 30, 2007 | Permalink

Show Numbers as Numerals

"It's better to use '23' than 'twenty-three' to catch users' eyes when they scan Web pages for facts, according to eyetracking data." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 19, 2007 | Permalink

Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful

"Breadcrumbs use a single line of text to show a page's location in the site hierarchy. While secondary, this navigation technique is increasingly beneficial to users." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 10, 2007 | Permalink

Does User Annoyance Matter?

"Making users suffer a drop-down menu to enter state abbreviations is one of many small annoyances that add up to a less efficient, less pleasant user experience. It's worth fixing as many of these usability irritants as you can." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 26, 2007 | Permalink

10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities

"Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 10, 2007 | Permalink

Do Government Agencies and Non-Profits Get ROI From Usability

"Although the gains don't fall into traditional profit columns, there are clear arguments for improving usability of non-commercial websites and intranets. In one example, a state agency could get an ROI of 22.000% by fixing a basic usability problem." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 12, 2007 | Permalink

Feng-GUI: Feng Shui for Graphic User Interfaces

"Find out how people View your website or image and which areas are getting most of the attention. The ViewFinder Heatmap service, simulates human visual attention and creates an attention heatmap."

Posted on February 09, 2007 | Permalink

Wishlists, Gift Certificates, and Gift Giving in E-Commerce

"Although gift features leverage the online medium and draw new users to a site, they also introduce many usability pitfalls. Among them are poorly designed email notifications, which many users simply ignore." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 29, 2007 | Permalink

10 Best Intranets of 2007

"This year's winners emphasized an editorial approach to news on the homepage. They also took a pragmatic approach to many hyped 'Web 2.0' techniques. While page design is getting more standardized, there's no agreement on CMS or technology platforms for good intranet design." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 15, 2007 | Permalink

Usability in China: Encore

"Our objectives were simple yet bold: The leaders of the China chapter wanted to raise the profile of usability engineering and user-centered design in China and create the biggest usability conference in the region. We also wanted an event that the China usability industry could call its own. We figured that the best way to do this was to target people who are passionate about integrating usability into their products and give them a chance to meet, network, and attend talks and tutorials by leaders in user experience." (Daniel Szuc and Paul J. Sherman - UXmatters)

Posted on January 10, 2007 | Permalink

Fast, Cheap, and Good: Yes, You Can Have It All

"The sooner you complete a usability study, the higher its impact on the design process. Slower methods should be deferred to an annual usability checkup." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 02, 2007 | Permalink

Usability in the Movies: Top 10 Bloopers

"User interfaces in film are more exciting than they are realistic, and heroes have far too easy a time using foreign systems." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 18, 2006 | Permalink

Progressive Disclosure

"Progressive disclosure defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 04, 2006 | Permalink

Digital Divide: The Three Stages

"The Internet can be an empowering tool that lets people find good deals, manage vendors, and control their finances and investments. But it can just as easily be an alienating environment where people are cheated. Members of the Internet elite don't realize the extent to which less-skilled users are left out of many of the advancements they cheer and enjoy. Ultimately, I'm extremely optimistic about the economic divide, which is vanishing rapidly in industrialized countries. The usability divide will take longer to close, but at least we know how to handle it -- it's simply a matter of deciding to do so. I'm very pessimistic about the empowerment divide, however, which I expect will only grow more severe in the future." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 20, 2006 | Permalink

Making Life Easy

"As more examples are posted to this website we'll be encouraging visitors to cast their votes for what they think are worthy inductees to the Usability Hall of Shame and the Usability Hall of Fame. On 14 November, World Usability Day, we'll be announcing the first ever inductees!" (About MLE) - courtesy of bloug

Posted on November 09, 2006 | Permalink

Creating a Universal Usability Agenda

"How do you keep usability, accessibility, and user experience requirements on track while developing standards? It is part of the very nature of standards to focus on details—and in the process, to sometimes lose sight of the real goals. This is especially true when a standards-making process goes on for a long time, a situation is highly political, or most people are focused on technology issues. For over two years, I’ve worked in just such a situation as part of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) creating federal standards for voting systems in the United States." (Whitney Quesenbery - UXmatters)

Posted on November 07, 2006 | Permalink

100 Million Websites

"The early Web's explosive growth rate has slowed, but even the mature Web is still expanding and recently crossed the 100 M websites mark." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 06, 2006 | Permalink

Creating Usability and Sociability in Online Social Spaces

"Creating successful online social spaces requires attention to usability and sociability. Online social interaction involves individuals interacting with the technology (i.e., usability) and with each other via the technology (i.e., sociability). Attending to issues such as how users create and send messages, and communicate non-verbal cues are examples of usability design; attending to moderation, facilitation, politeness, leadership, and social support online are examples of sociability design. Both are needed for thriving social interaction online." (Jenny Preece - Oxford Internet Institute)

Posted on October 29, 2006 | Permalink

Productivity and Screen Size

"A study of the benefits of big monitors fails on two accounts: it didn't test realistic tasks, and it didn't test realistic use. Productivity is a key argument for workplace usability, but you must measure it carefully." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 24, 2006 | Permalink

Minimal-Feedback Hints for Remembering Passwords

"Passwords are a widely used mechanism for user authentication and are thus critical to the security of many systems. To provide effective security, passwords should be known to the password holder but remain unknown to everybody else. While personal information and real words are relatively easy for a user to remember, they make weak passwords from a security point of view because vulnerable to informed guessing and dictionary attacks." (Morten Hertzum - uiGarden)

Posted on October 15, 2006 | Permalink

Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute

"In most online systems, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 09, 2006 | Permalink

On the Meta-Usability of User Interface Standards

"Interface standards provide context-specific guidance for implementing a system based on the task goals and functions within it. A solid standard provides guidance at two levels. At the level of look and feel, it ensures consistency throughout the application or site. To be meaningful in usability terms, the standard also must provide guidance to support a consistent experience at the functional level." (Kath Straub - uiGarden.net)

Posted on September 17, 2006 | Permalink

Hear From 2005 Event Leaders

"Hear from World Usability Day 2005 event leaders the impact their programs had on their community and what's on tap for 2006! Everyone was asked to introduce themselves, tell us about their World Usability Day event in 2005, the impact it had on their community and what their plans are for 2006." (UPA World Usability Day - Nov. 14, 2006) - courtesy of keithinstone

Posted on September 17, 2006 | Permalink

User Testing is Not Entertainment

"Don't run your studies for the benefit of the people in the observation room. Test to discover the truth about the design, even when user tasks are boring to watch." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 11, 2006 | Permalink

Data Visualization of Web Stats: Logarithmic Charts and the Drooping Tail

"Using a linear diagram to plot data from website traffic logs can lead you to overlook important conclusions. Sometimes advanced visualizations are worth the effort." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 20, 2006 | Permalink

Screen Resolution and Page Layout

"Optimize Web pages for 1024x768, but use a liquid layout that stretches well for any resolution, from 800x600 to 1280x1024." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 01, 2006 | Permalink

Traffic Log Patterns

"The relative popularity of a site's pages, the number of visitors referred by other sites, and the traffic from search queries continue to follow a Zipf distribution." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 10, 2006 | Permalink

Quantitative Studies: How Many Users to Test?

"When collecting usability metrics, testing 20 users typically offers a reasonably tight confidence interval." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 26, 2006 | Permalink

UPA 2006:  Usability Through Storytelling

"Post-conference page with links to speaker slides and resources." (The Usability Professionals' Association)

Posted on June 19, 2006 | Permalink

Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion

"Newsletter usability has increased since our last study, but the competition for users' attention has also grown with the ever-increasing glut of information." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 12, 2006 | Permalink

B2B Usability

"User testing shows that business-to-business websites have substantially lower usability than mainstream consumer sites. If they want to convert more prospects into leads, B2B sites should follow more guidelines and make it easier for prospects to research their offerings." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 30, 2006 | Permalink

Chinese Banks Homepage Usability

"This study assesses the usability of homepages of three leading Chinese retail banks from a user’s perspective. For comparison, three western banks are selected, one each a leading retail bank from Australia, the UK, and the USA." (Ming Zhao - Apogee) - courtesy of danielszuc

Posted on May 27, 2006 | Permalink

Usability Body of Knowledge

"The Usability Body of Knowledge (BoK) project is dedicated to creating a living reference that represents the collective knowledge of the usability profession. Preliminary work has started, but there is more to do. This website introduces the subject areas that will eventually be included in the Usability Body of Knowledge and a preview of what to come." (About Usability BoK)

Posted on May 19, 2006 | Permalink

Salary Trends for Usability Professionals

"Over the last several years, entry-level salaries have dropped, while pay for experienced usability staff has been more stable." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 08, 2006 | Permalink

Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 5-8

"An organization that reaches the managed usability stage still has far to go to reach usability nirvana. Attaining these higher maturity levels requires many years of effort." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 01, 2006 | Permalink

Dimensions of Usability: Defining the Conversation, Driving the Process

"Have you ever wondered if your colleagues or clients really understand usability? Too often, standards or guidelines substitute for really engaging our business, technical and design colleagues in a discussion of what usability means. By looking at usability from five dimensions, we can create a consensus around usability goals and use that definition to provide the basis for planning user centered design activities." (Whitney Quesenbery - uigarden)

Posted on April 26, 2006 | Permalink

Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 1-4

"As their usability approach matures, organizations typically progress through the same sequence of stages, from initial hostility to widespread reliance on user research." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 24, 2006 | Permalink

Show Prices for Common Scenarios

"B2B sites often have overly complex pricing structures or can't show prices at all. To help prospects with early research, list representative cases and their prices." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 10, 2006 | Permalink

Hyped Web Stories Are Irrelevant

"The fads and big deals that get the press coverage are not important for running a workhorse website. To serve your customers, it's far better to emphasize simplicity and quality than to chase buzzwords." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 03, 2006 | Permalink

More Alike Than We Think

"Would we be able to create one site for all enquirers, or would we have to create specialized sites to meet the needs of different user groups? What happens when a site has to appeal to a wide range of people? How do you sort out their different usability requirements? Will they conflict, and if so, how do you prioritize them?" (Whitney Quesenbery - UXmatters)

Posted on March 20, 2006 | Permalink

Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First

"Offering clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 20, 2006 | Permalink

The truth about Google's so-called 'simplicity'

"The truth about Google? It isn’t simple. (...) I am sick and tired of hearing people praise its clean, elegant look." (Donald A. Norman - uiGarden.net)

Posted on March 09, 2006 | Permalink

Trust and Blame

"The more we rely on our electronic devices, the more we are trusting them to be there when we need them and to safeguard our information and our privacy." (Whitney Quesenbery - UXmatters)

Posted on February 21, 2006 | Permalink

Avoid Within-Page Links

"In the Web, users have a clear mental model for a hypertext link: it should bring up a new page. Within-page links violate this model and thus cause confusion." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 21, 2006 | Permalink

Users Interleave Sites and Genres

"When working on business problems, users flitter among sites, alternating visits to different service genres. No single website defines the user experience on its own." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 06, 2006 | Permalink

Get Out of Your Lab, and Into Their Lives

"The proliferation of usability labs is a sign of success for the field of user-centered design. Whether it's a low-rent lab comprised of a couple adjacent conference rooms, a video camera, and a television, or a fully decked-out space with remote-control cameras, two-way mirrors, an observation room, and bowls of M&Ms — more and more companies are investing in such set-ups. Conducting user tests in labs is probably the most common means of getting user input on projects." (Peter Merholz - Adaptive Path)

Posted on February 04, 2006 | Permalink

Design and Usability for Emerging Telephony

"Designing a product for the future is not a simple question of making two-way technology go faster, last longer, weigh less, or do more. It's about understanding how devices tap into people's lives, about how, when, and why we use technology in the ways we do. Design is a tool that helps to envisage our desires as consumers, our expectations as users, and our impulses as human beings. These deep emotional enablers are the ones that tell us how to bring together chips, screens, and microprocessors." (B.J. Fogg et al. - O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference)

Posted on February 03, 2006 | Permalink

Are websites judged in the blink of an eye?

"People can get a strong impression of your website within one twentieth of a second, according to a new study. But it may not be a lasting impression." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted on January 29, 2006 | Permalink

Improve the usability of search-results pages

"Product search is the cornerstone of many Web applications. A user's ability to select what he or she is looking for among millions of search results can make or break the user experience. A cluttered search-results page that is missing the essential filtering and sorting controls squanders customer loyalty and bankrupts sales revenue." (Greg Nudelman - JavaWorld) - courtesy of webword

Posted on January 27, 2006 | Permalink

Ten Best Intranets of 2006

"This year, we saw increased use of multimedia, e-learning, internal blogs, and mobile access. Winning companies also encouraged consistent design by emphasizing training for content contributors." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 23, 2006 | Permalink

Search Engines as Leeches on the Web

"Engines extract too much of the Web's value, leaving too little for the websites that actually create the content. Liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites and software vendors." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 09, 2006 | Permalink

Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist

"Remember, the more control users have over their experience, the happier they will be using your website." (Brian Crescimanno - A List Apart)

Posted on December 20, 2005 | Permalink

One Billion Internet Users

"The Internet is growing at an annualized rate of 18% and now has one billion users. A second billion users will follow in the next ten years, bringing a dramatic change in worldwide usability needs." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 19, 2005 | Permalink

Why Ajax Sucks (Most of the Time)

"Judging from the email I receive, the most controversial statement I have made in my Alertbox columns so far was to make 'the use of Ajax' one of the mistakes in my list of top ten mistakes in Web design. For new or inexperienced Web designers, I stand by my original recommendation. Ajax: Just Say No. With respect to the use of ajax by highly skilled Web designers, I have changed my opinion somewhat: people who really know what they are doing can sometimes use Ajax to good effect, though even experienced designers are advised to use ajax as sparingly as possible. (...) This is a spoof article. Please compare it with the original and you will see how little it has been changed." (Constructed by Chris McEvoy with apologies to Jakob Nielsen)

Posted on December 07, 2005 | Permalink

Talking-Head Video Is Boring Online

"Eyetracking data show that users are easily distracted when watching video on websites, especially when the video shows a talking head and is optimized for broadcast rather than online viewing." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 05, 2005 | Permalink

Online International Journal of Usability Studies

"(...) a peer-reviewed, international, online publication dedicated to promote and enhance the practice, research, and education of usability engineering. Its aim is to provide usability practitioners and researchers with a forum to share: empirical findings, usability case studies (research case studies, not business case studies), opinions and experiences (regarding the practice and education of usability engineering), and reports of good practices in usability engineering." (The Usability Professionals' Association) - courtesy of markverderbeeken

Posted on November 23, 2005 | Permalink

Enterprise Usability

"Usability goes beyond the level of individual users interacting with screens. It's also a question of how easy or cumbersome it is for the entire organization to use a system." - (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 07, 2005 | Permalink

Usability doesn't have to be ugly

"There is a balance that needs to be struck between a website that is truly functional and one that is elegant and stylish." - (Gerry McGovern)

Posted on November 06, 2005 | Permalink

The secret of making things work

"Consumers forever grumble about products and services making their life difficult, but there are some shining examples leading the way. As World Usability Day approaches, what are the best doing right?" (Max Gadney - BBC)

Posted on November 04, 2005 | Permalink

Incompetent Email Marketing = Lost Future Opportunities

"Lack of personalization made an email newsletter completely useless to the recipient, damaging long-term customer relationship efforts." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 30, 2005 | Permalink

Intranet Portals Get Streamlined

"An analysis of intranet portals found slimmer information architectures and a renewed emphasis on fresh content and useful applications. Past findings, including those on role-based personalization, were confirmed" (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 24, 2005 | Permalink

R.I.P. WYSIWYG

"Macintosh-style interaction design has reached its limits. A new paradigm, called results-oriented UI, might well be the way to empower users in the future." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 10, 2005 | Permalink

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005

"The oldies continue to be goodies - or rather, baddies - in the list of design stupidities that irked users the most in 2005." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 03, 2005 | Permalink

The Power of Defaults

"Search engine users click the results listings' top entry much more often than can be explained by relevancy ratings. Once again, people tend to stick to the defaults." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 26, 2005 | Permalink

Forms vs. Applications

"Once an online form goes beyond two screenfulls, it's often a sign that the underlying functionality is better supported by an application, which offers a more interactive user experience." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 19, 2005 | Permalink

Time Budgets for Usability Sessions

"Up to 40% of precious testing time is wasted while users engage in nonessential activities. Far better to focus on watching users perform tasks with the target interface design." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 12, 2005 | Permalink

The Slow Tail: Time Lag Between Visiting and Buying

"Users often convert to buyers long after their initial visit to a website. A full 5% of orders occur more than four weeks after users click on search engine ads." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 06, 2005 | Permalink

Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents

"When using PC-native file formats such as PDF or spreadsheets, users feel like they're interacting with a PC application. Because users are no longer browsing a website, they shouldn't be given a browser UI." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 29, 2005 | Permalink

Putting A/B Testing in Its Place

"Measuring the live impact of design changes on key business metrics is valuable, but often creates a focus on short-term improvements. This near-term view neglects bigger issues that only qualitative studies can find." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 16, 2005 | Permalink

International Sites: Minimum Requirements

"Users from other countries have special needs related to entry fields for names and addresses, measurements and dates, and information about regional product standards." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 08, 2005 | Permalink

Usability Testing for e-Learning

"Usability testing has long been a part of the software and product design world. Jakob Nielsen brought the concept of usability to the Web, making Web pages simple to navigate and intuitively organized so that users can easily find the information they're looking for. While this definition may be considered sufficient in the world of software, the definition of usability in the e-learning world should encompass a few more components than simply good user interface design." (Shailesh Shilwant and Amy Haggarty - CLO) - courtesy of usernomics

Posted on August 08, 2005 | Permalink

Amazon: No Longer the Role Model for E-Commerce Design

"Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world's largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon's design." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 25, 2005 | Permalink

A Study of Blogs and Usability

"Our analysis sheds light on a variety of heretofore neglected, user-experience related design challenges associated with blogs' potential to become a mainstream medium for Internet users." (John Franklin - Catalyst Group Design)

Posted on July 22, 2005 | Permalink

Scrolling and Scrollbars

"Despite posing well-known risks, websites continue to feature poorly designed scrollbars. Among the ongoing problems that result are frustrated users, accessibility challenges, and missed content." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 11, 2005 | Permalink

Usability: Empiricism or Ideology?

"Usability's job is to research user behavior and find out what works. Usability should also defend users' rights and fight for simplicity. Both aspects have their place, and it's important to recognize the difference." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 27, 2005 | Permalink

Is Jakob Nielsen evil, stupid or just plain lazy?

"I would like to propose the addition of 'Jakob Nielsen' to that list. By continuing to talk to web designers as if they are ignorant, lazy philistines only serves to undermine the role of usability specialists within organisations." (Chris McEvoy - Confusability) - courtesy of usabilityviews

Posted on June 26, 2005 | Permalink

Archiving Usability Reports

"Most usability practitioners don't derive full value from their user tests because they don't systematically archive the reports. An intranet-based usability archive offers four substantial benefits." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 14, 2005 | Permalink

Alertbox: Ten Years

"300,000 words of usability essays have had an impact: online user interfaces are considerably easier to use now than they were in 1995. Many predictions and recommendations have come true, though the full Alertbox vision is far from realized." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 01, 2005 | Permalink

The Canonical Intranet Homepage

"In recent years, intranet homepages have become very similar in their basic layout. Intranets that look the same can nonetheless differ drastically in usability due to different features and content." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 22, 2005 | Permalink

Remote from Reality: The Out-of-Box Home Experience

"The challenges are considerable and daunting." (Aaron Marcus - ACM Ubiquity)

Posted on May 10, 2005 | Permalink

Sun.com Usability, Design & Other Stuff

"If you frequent our web sites, you've probably noticed the change: There's a fresh new look, and we've also updated things to make it easier to navigate. Rather than explain everything, which I will do in coming weeks, I thought I would show some before and after pictures." (Sun Bloggers)

Posted on May 03, 2005 | Permalink

Formal Usability Reports vs. Quick Findings

"Formal reports are the most common way of documenting usability studies, but informal reports are faster to produce and are often a better choice." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 25, 2005 | Permalink

Contingency Design White Paper

"Contingency design is design for when things go wrong. It's the error messaging, graphic design, instructive text, information architecture, backend system, and customer service that helps visitors get back on track after a problem occurs." (37signals) - courtesy of guuui

Posted on April 19, 2005 | Permalink

Ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site

"More and more money is being spent online as consumers switch to shopping on the web. Yet so many websites don't seem to have considered the usability of their ecommerce site and of their ordering process, resulting in users prematurely giving up and abandoning their shopping basket. Here are ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site, so that you can maximise your conversion rate and help convert the contents of users' shopping baskets into orders." (Webcredible) - courtesy of guuui

Posted on April 15, 2005 | Permalink

Medical Usability: How to Kill Patients Through Bad Design

"A field study identified twenty-two ways that automated hospital systems can result in the wrong medication being dispensed to patients. Most of these flaws are classic usability problems that have been understood for decades." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 13, 2005 | Permalink

The world is ready for usability. Is usability ready for the world?

"Today we know that consumers evaluate and select both products and services based on the user-friendliness of an interface." (Kath Straub - Human Factors International Newsletter) - courtesy of usabilityviews

Posted on April 01, 2005 | Permalink

Evangelizing Usability: Change Your Strategy at the Halfway Point

"The evangelism strategies that help a usability group get established in a company are different from the ones needed to create a full-fledged usability culture." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 28, 2005 | Permalink

Designing Embraceable Change

"Change isn't bad. It can't be. If it were, we'd never have any technology advancement and wouldn't be pleased with our iPods and TiVos. Yet people obviously resist some change. Understanding why change is sometimes embraced and sometimes resisted is critical to successfully introducing new designs." (Jared Spool - User Interface Engineering)

Posted on March 28, 2005 | Permalink

Lower-Literacy Users

"Lower-literacy users exhibit very different reading behaviors than higher-literacy users: they plow text rather than scan it, and they miss page elements due to a narrower field of view." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 14, 2005 | Permalink

Intranets: strategy first, usability second

"More and more intranet teams are buying into the need for usability. However, usability is not a strategy, and without a clear strategy, usability can become a pointless, wasteful and counter-productive exercise." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted on March 06, 2005 | Permalink

Ten Best Intranets of 2005

"On average, this year's winning intranets increased site use by 149% with designs that supported bigger screens, multinational users, collaboration, easily updated content, and factory-floor workers." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 28, 2005 | Permalink

Seven Common Usability Testing Mistakes

"Usability testing is a serious investment of time and resources for any team. Having a clear understanding of what you want to get from it is critical to its success. The most successful teams constantly monitor the decisions that come out of the testing process. They look at subsequent usability problems that appear and ask, 'How did our process miss this? What should we change for next time?' Only with the constant process of honing our skills and improving our processes can we ensure that we're getting the best value from this priceless technique." (Jared Spool - UIE Roadshow: Know Your Users)

Posted on February 15, 2005 | Permalink

It's All Happening in China: A Report from User Friendly 2004

"The community includes people working on mobile telephony, web design and in many other industries as usability engineers, user researchers and interaction designers. Take a look at your phone. There’s a good chance that people from UPA China worked on the user interface. (...) There are all these bright, young, clever, motivated people here who are interested in usability." (Whitney Quesenbery - The UPA Voice) - courtesy of usabilityviews

Posted on February 15, 2005 | Permalink

Authentic Behavior in User Testing

"Despite being an artificial situation, user testing generates realistic findings because people engage strongly with the tasks and suspend their disbelief." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 14, 2005 | Permalink

Usability in E-Learning

"While a large number of organizations have adopted e-learning programs, far fewer have addressed the usability of their learning applications. More attention should be devoted to assuring the usability of e-learning applications if organizations are to fully benefit from their investments." (Michael J. Miller - Learning Circuits) - courtesy of webword

Posted on February 02, 2005 | Permalink

Cognitive bandwidth is like dial-up

"When someone has trouble applying knowledge, it's usually because they really never had knowledge. They had information, and that's not the same thing. You can get information just through listening or reading, but knowledge requires thinking... thinking about the RIGHT things." (Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users)

Posted on January 31, 2005 | Permalink

Usability of Websites for Teenagers

"When using websites, teenagers have a lower success rate than adults and they're also easily bored. To work for teens, websites must be simple -- but not childish -- and supply plenty of interactive features." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 31, 2005 | Permalink

Investing in Usability: Testing versus Training

"(...) usability professionals use their budgets to run usability studies. That is, when given money, they immediately start setting up usability programs to solve particular problems. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because many usability professionals think the value of usability is derived entirely from the results produced through usability tests. Most people think usability is synonymous with usability testing. It isn’t, and this misconception frustrates me." (John S. Rhodes - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on January 26, 2005 | Permalink

Durability of Usability Guidelines

"About 90% of usability guidelines from 1986 are still valid, though several guidelines are less important because they relate to design elements that are rarely used today." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 17, 2005 | Permalink

Putting Context Into Context

"Design happens at the intersection of the user, the interface, and their context. It's essential for interface designers to understand the gamut of contexts that can occur, thereby ensuring they create designs that are usable no matter what's happening around the user." (Jared M. Spool - User Interface Engineering)

Posted on January 04, 2005 | Permalink

Situate Follow-Ups in Context

"Make new or follow-up information easily accessible from the location of the original information or transaction." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 20, 2004 | Permalink

The Most Hated Advertising Techniques

"Studies of how people react to online advertisements have identified several design techniques that impact the user experience very negatively." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 06, 2004 | Permalink

Why it makes sense to do both Expert Review and Usability Testing

"(...) doing both ER followed by UT optimizes the return on the usability investment. ER identifies fundamental or generic challenges within the user experience. Usability Testing highlights contextually specific gaps between the user model and the site model. Executed together, UT builds on the ER, providing complimentary feedback supporting focused and actionable design recommendations. Thus, the power of combined usability review techniques is significantly enhances the power of the review." (Kathleen Straub - The UPA Voice) - courtesy of step two design

Posted on December 06, 2004 | Permalink