Usability

PDF Manuals: The Wrong Paradigm for an Online Experience

"I'm not down on every use of PDF files online. Campus maps, article reprints, and my aunt's Christmas letters all work quite well as PDF files. What I want to challenge in this column is the use of PDF files for distributing user assistance online, in the form of large books." (Mike Hughes - UXmatters)

Posted on November 17, 2008 | Permalink

Agile Development Projects and Usability

"Agile methods aim to overcome usability barriers in traditional development, but pose new threats to user experience quality. By modifying Agile approaches, however, many companies have realized the benefits without the pain." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 17, 2008 | Permalink

Today is World Usability Day

Welcome message by Bill Gates - "It's about making our world work better. It's about 'Making Life Easy' and user friendly. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy to access as a doorknob. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, government, communication, entertainment, work and other areas, we must develop these technologies in a way that serves people first. World Usability Day was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals' Association to ensure that services and products important to human life are easier to access and simpler to use. Each year, on the second Thursday of November, over 225 events are organized in over 40 countries around the world to raise awareness for the general public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice."

Posted on November 13, 2008 | Permalink

Aspects of Design Quality

"Usability scores for 51 websites shows some correlation between navigation, content, and feature quality, but no connections to other usability areas." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 03, 2008 | Permalink

Transactional Email and Confirmation Messages

"Automated email can improve customer service, strengthen relationships, and help websites bypass search engines. But most messages fared poorly in user testing and didn't fulfill this potential." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 20, 2008 | Permalink

Interplay between Usability Evaluation and Software Development 

Proceedings of the International Workshop - "The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners from the Human Computer Interaction and Software Engineering fields to determine the state-of-the-art in the interplay between usability evaluation and software development and to generate ideas for new and improved relations between these activities. The aim is to base the determination of the current state on empirical studies. Presentations of new ideas on how to improve the interplay between HCI & SE to the design of usable software systems should also be based on empirical studies." (MAUSE COST Action 294)

Posted on October 15, 2008 | Permalink

Concepts versus Products: Usability is about Execution

"You can have a great plan for a User Experience Strategy, but you should really consider whether your company is able to execute that strategy. The same thing goes for product concepts, I believe. A groundbreaking, radical new product concept is inspiring, but if your company is currently not able to realize it and needs some time to live up to the strategy, by exposing your product concept to the public you have just told everyone in what direction you will be heading in the coming years." (Jasper van Kuijk - uselog)

Posted on October 03, 2008 | Permalink

About Us Information on Websites

"We found a 9% improvement in the usability of About Us information on websites over the past 5 years. But companies and organizations still can't explain what they do in one paragraph." (Jacob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 29, 2008 | Permalink

Beauty Matters: Usability and Aesthetics

"Usability is an approved quality when designing interactive products. Another factor becomes more and more important: the hedonic quality, which includes the aesthetic of a product. The long-time experiences in user-friendly design convinced the initiators of Beauty matters that the combination of usability and aesthetics ensures the success of a product. Usability alone ist not enough. Most people associate the aesthetics of a product with its beauty. The beauty is also decisive whether a product represents a special value for us." (Michael Burmester, Marc Hassenzahl and Franz Koller)

Posted on September 23, 2008 | Permalink

Quick Turnaround Usability Testing

"It starts with any number of scenarios: Design and development have taken too long to produce a prototype, you need to release in three weeks, and you suspect there may be design flaws. You are trying to incorporate usability testing into an Agile development process. Or maybe you simply want to pare down your process to make it shorter and less expensive." (Paul Nuschke - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on September 19, 2008 | Permalink

Store Finders and Locators

"Finding addresses and location information on company websites has gotten dramatically easier, but users increasingly turn to search engines first for this task." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 15, 2008 | Permalink

us■able

"A label for things that are convenient, practical, and functional." (Lennart Grötzbach)

Posted on September 10, 2008 | Permalink

When Role Playing Doesn't Work

"Usability testing makes use of a lot of role-playing scenarios like this one, and many findings and design recommendations result from participants’ responses to these scenarios. But an over-reliance on role playing when testing a product and making design recommendations can have major downsides and risks (...)" (Isabelle Peyrichoux - UXmatters)

Posted on September 08, 2008 | Permalink

Site Map Usability

"New user testing of site maps shows that they are still useful as a secondary navigation aide, and that they're much easier to use than they were during our research 7 years ago." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 02, 2008 | Permalink

Top 10 Usability Highs Of Mac OS

"Although I've been a Windows power user for years, the transition to Mac couldn’t have been easier and more pleasant. I don’t want to turn this article into some endless rambling about how great Mac is, but as the user of both systems I can speak from my own experience quite objectively. Let's take a look at some of the spots where Apple really has done it better in terms of user interface and usability." (Juul Coolen - Smashing Magazine)

Posted on August 12, 2008 | Permalink

Nielsen Norman Group: The First Decade

"Started in 1998, the company is now 10 years old and has a long list of accomplishments. (...) Whatever the general outlook, I think the future is extremely bright for usability, for the simple reason that it works and has hugely profitable ROI for companies that embrace it." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 08, 2008 | Permalink

Weekly User Testing: TiVo Did It, You Can, Too

"TiVo ran 12 user tests in 12 weeks while designing its new website. As TiVo's experience shows, frequent and regular testing keeps the design usability focused." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 28, 2008 | Permalink

Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click

"Different traffic sources imply different reasons for why visitors might immediately leave your site. Design to keep deep-link followers engaged through additional pageviews." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 30, 2008 | Permalink

Extreme Usability: How to Make an Already-Great Design Even Better

"The 1% of websites that don't suck can be made even better by strengthening exceptional user performance, eliminating miscues, and targeting company-wide use and unmet needs." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 23, 2008 | Permalink

OK and Cancel Buttons: What's the Right Order?

"After some questions about the most appropriate order for these buttons on a web application came up on a usability-related email distribution list, I decided to conduct an online survey of usability and user experience professionals to see what order they think is best." (Tom Tullis - Measuring the User Experience) - Who's right: Tom or Jakob?

Posted on June 11, 2008 | Permalink

The top 8 mistakes in usability (and companies investing in it)

"(...) when committing to customer-centered development (of a product, service, website, or whatever), it's important to stay strategic, always try to improve the business, and listen to customers (as human beings, not as users of a tool)." (Mark Hurst - Good Experience)

Posted on May 30, 2008 | Permalink

OK–Cancel or Cancel–OK?

"Should the OK button come before or after the Cancel button? Following platform conventions is more important than suboptimizing an individual dialog box." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 27, 2008 | Permalink

Link List Color on Intranets

"Lists of links are an intermediate case between content-embedded links and menu items. Showing listed links in blue or in the site's main link color is the recommended design — and the one most intranets follow." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 13, 2008 | Permalink

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

Usable GUI Design: A Quick Guide for F/OSS Developers

"Professional UI designers tell us that user interfaces should be the first thing designed when we come to develop an application, and that programmers are incapable of doing this kind of design. They say it can only be done by the professional UI experts; OSS projects don't have access to these kind of people, and therefore can never be truly usable." (Benjamin Roe) - courtesy of slash dot org

Posted on November 26, 2004 | Permalink

OpenUsability.org

"(...) a project that brings open source developers and usability experts together. The idea behind is simple: There are many usability experts who want to contribute to software projects. And there are many developers who want to make their software more usable, and - as a consequence - more successful." (Open Usability Projects) - courtesy of slash dot org

Posted on November 25, 2004 | Permalink

Planning a usable website: A three-step guide

"A website is like an information flow, with you as the provider and your site visitors as the receivers of the information. If you don't plan your website with this in mind right from the start, you could find yourself with a brand new website that solves all your immediate needs, but not those of your site visitors." (Trenton Moss - bytestart.co.uk) - courtesy of james robertson

Posted on November 22, 2004 | Permalink

Undoing the Industrial Revolution

"The last 200 years have driven centralization and changed the human experience in ways that conflict with evolution. The Internet will reestablish a more balanced, decentralized lifestyle." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 22, 2004 | Permalink

The End of Usability Culture, Redux

"Usability is one of the critical components of successful Web design. But it doesn't change the fact that the paradigm of usability culture is ending." (Dirk Knemeyer - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on November 18, 2004 | Permalink

Using Language to Improve Usability 

"Usability: The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use. Document design: The field concerned with creating texts (broadly defined) that integrate words and pictures in ways that help people to achieve their specific goals for using texts at home, school or work." (Whitney Quesenbery)

Posted on November 18, 2004 | Permalink

The End of Usability Culture

"Usability culture has unquestionably made the Web a much more usable place. Given the way the Web generally worked just five years ago, the role of usability and related disciplines to the evolution of the Web was vital. But usability culture has steered the Web development ship long enough. It's time for a new approach. To understand the urgent nature of making that shift, we need to understand how we got where we are today." (Dirk Knemeyer - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on November 11, 2004 | Permalink

Oops! They Forgot the Usability: Elections as a Case Study 

"An election is a perfect usability case study. It bring together large numbers of diverse voters, an unfamiliar interface and an outcome that shapes the future of our society. With such a seeming simple task, usability was not on the curriculum for elections officials. However, despite the focus on technology and security, it was poor information design and usability in the 2000 Palm Beach ballot that taught us all new words like 'chad' (hanging or pregnant)." (Whitney Quesenbery)

Posted on November 09, 2004 | Permalink

Email Newsletters During Last Week of Presidential Campaign

"Once again, the candidate who scored highest on usability guidelines won the U.S. presidential election." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 09, 2004 | Permalink

Acting on User Research

"User research offers a learning opportunity that can help you build an understanding of user behavior, but you must resolve discrepancies between research findings and your own beliefs." (Jacob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 08, 2004 | Permalink

Hardware and usability: Part 1

"Usability studies tend to focus entirely on software, ignoring the impact of hardware design and features on a system's usability. In this first installment of a two-part miniseries, Peter takes a look at the interactions between hardware and usability." (Peter Seebach - IBM Developers Work) - courtesy of lawrence lee

Posted on November 03, 2004 | Permalink

What is Usability?

"This article provides an overview of what usability is (and what it is not). It provides ideas on how to include more usability activities in projects and the types of activities that are needed in order to create more usable systems." (Donna Maurer - KM Column)

Posted on October 31, 2004 | Permalink

User Education Is Not the Answer to Security Problems

"Internet scams cannot be thwarted by placing the burden on users to defend themselves at all times. Beleaguered users need protection, and the technology must change to provide this." - (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 25, 2004 | Permalink

Devising a new paradigm for usable, maintainable Web applications

"Why does usability tend to lag behind as Web applications become increasingly complex? Much of this lag can be attributed to the fact that the languages we use to create Web pages are not optimized for usability engineering." - (Ka Wai Cheung - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on October 21, 2004 | Permalink

Newsletter Usability: Can a Professional Publisher Do Better?

"The Washington Post's email newsletter earns a high usability score. It's particularly good at setting users' expectations before they subscribe, though the unsubscribe interface has some problems." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 11, 2004 | Permalink

Renewing my driving license online: a Kafkaesque experience: Part 2

"Action is what matters on the Web. Someone comes to your website in order to do something. The only measure of success that counts is whether they have been able to do what they came to your website to do." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted on October 10, 2004 | Permalink

Why simplicity?

<marketese>"The digital revolution is supposed to have made our lives easier, but studies have shown that’s not the case. (...) Our research showed that we had a unique opportunity to answer your need for simplicity, while strengthening our brand in the minds of consumers and customers everywhere."</marketese> (Royal Philips Electronics)

Posted on October 03, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Renewing my driving license online in 50 tortuous steps

"The best websites make our lives easier, while the worst ones make our lives more difficult. After trying to renew my driving license online, I was stunned by how awful some websites still are. Much of the Web is a quagmire of appalling design and even worse management." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted on October 03, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Server side usability: How to make web servers behave

"Most usability professionals don't have a driver's licence to web servers and are not aware of the steps that can be taken to make servers behave in a user-friendly way. In this article, we'll take a look at how to avoid that server technology becomes an obstacle to usability." (Henrik Olsen - guuui.com)

Posted on October 01, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Cost of Frustration

"It's difficult to find someone who doesn't believe it's beneficial to make a more usable design. However, in today's design environment, it's often difficult to justify the expense of usability work against other business priorities." (Jared Spool - webpronews.com) - courtesy of john rhodes

Posted on September 21, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Bush vs. Kerry: Email Newsletters Rated

"Both candidates for president of the United States offer email newsletters with much good content to excite supporters, but miserable subscription interfaces and several other usability problems." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 20, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Less is more for university websites

"Many university websites are poorly organized, and filled with out-of-date content that has been directly published from print. Delivering a better service to students and staff faces challenges because of decentralized management structures and concepts such as academic freedom." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted on September 19, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

User Research Abroad: Handle Logistics in Four Easy Steps

"(...) there are simple, clear ways to accommodate linguistic, cultural, and monetary differences when conducting user research. Follow these four easy steps for a successful interview abroad." (Indy Young - Adaptive Path)

Posted on September 19, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Simplicity

"Simplicity may be the most important usability design principle as well as being the common thread through many other design principles." (Jeff Brace)

Posted on September 16, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Lost in gallery space: A conceptual framework for analyzing the usability flaws of museum Web sites

"This article reports on a study which used results from 119 scenario-based evaluations of 36 museum Web sites to develop a conceptual framework for analyzing the usability flaws of museum Web sites. It identifies 15 unique dimensions, grouped into five categories, that exemplify usability problems common to many museum Web sites. Each dimension is discussed in detail, and typical examples are provided, based on actual usability flaws observed during the evaluations. The availability of this conceptual framework will help the designers of museum Web sites improve the overall usability of museum Web sites in general." (Paul F. Marty and Michael B. Twidale - First Monday 9.9)

Posted on September 14, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Need for Web Design Standards

"Users expect 77% of the simpler Web design elements to behave in a certain way. Unfortunately, confusion reigns for many higher-level design issues." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 13, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

When it comes to homepages, it is polite to stare

"If it's your job to design the homepage for a newspaper website, you already deserve sympathy. The organization chart may show you have one boss. But you know better. You must drive traffic from that one page to everything else on the site. So everyone else at your company whose job depends on that traffic becomes your boss when design decisions affect his or her interests." (Jay Small - Eyetrack) - courtesy of jakob nielsen

Posted on September 09, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Preparing for the Holiday Shopping Season

"Reduce the bounce rate for organic landing pages, collect data to manage PPC for maximum ROI, and take five other steps to maximize your site's holiday sales potential before it's too late." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 06, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design

"Simple, unobtrusive designs that support users are successful because they abide by the Web's nature -- and they make people feel good." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 30, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Informational Articles Must Ask For the Order

"Unless you have explicit links to product pages from article content, users who visit articles directly from search engines might never realize that you sell related products." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 23, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Profits First, Users Second

"The purpose of this article is to challenge a core belief in usability. An argument is made that profits are more important than users since organizations cannot survive without profits. Although the business value is high, usability is only one mechanism for driving profits and success." (John S. Rhodes - Oristus)

Posted on August 19, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

When Search Engines Become Answer Engines

"The website is becoming a less prominent locus of experience as people use search engines to bring up answers to their current questions. How can sites cope with masses of freeloaders?" (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 16, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Test Data Logger

"This spreadsheet allows you to measure task completion rates, analyse questionnaire data, and summarise participant comments. It even includes a timer so you can measure time-on-task." (Userfocus) - courtesy of column two

Posted on August 12, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

How not to get a job in usability

"So, for anyone out there who feels like failing to get a job in usability, here's a brief checklist of steps." (Caroline Jarrett)

Posted on August 06, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Receivingly Strong Information Scent Costs Sales

"Users will often overlook the actual location of information or products if another website area seems like the perfect place to look. Cross-references and clear labels alleviate this problem." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 02, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

GNOME 2.6 Usability Study and Review

"A usability overview of one of the larger open source software projects: the 2.6 version of the GNOME desktop and developer platform. We look at how well GNOME lives up to its challenge of being the desktop for the masses, including a lengthy survey of a group of new users and their reactions to the system." (User Instinct)

Posted on July 21, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Fight of Challenge vs. Usability in Games

"Usability is great when it comes to most applications - unless one of the criteria for the application is 'challenging for the user'. Such is the dilemma of video game design." (Kevin Cheng - OK/Cancel)

Posted on July 14, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Beyond the Buy Button in E-Commerce

"The best way for ecommerce sites to increase subsequent orders is to treat customers well after they place their initial order." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 06, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability and listening to customers have limits

"Listening to customers and making sure your website is usable are important to website success. It is much more important, however, to have a website that delivers real value both to the organization and the reader. Going for value can sometimes mean going against customer feedback and usability best practice." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted on July 04, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Restoring Confidence in Usability Results

"Adding confidence intervals to completion rates in usability tests will temper both excessive skepticism and overstated usability findings. Confidence intervals make testing more efficient by quickly revealing unusable tasks with very small samples. Examples are detailed and downloadable calculators are available." (Jeff Sauro - Measuring Usability)

Posted on June 29, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Voting and Usability: Top 10 Things to Read

"This is a large field, and there is a lot of material to read. If you are just learning about voting, it can e a bit overwhelming. To help out, we've assembled a short list of the most critical readings on voting and usability." (UPA)

Posted on June 23, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Ten Best Government Intranets

"Redesigning an intranet for usability often more than doubled the use of these award-winning designs from ten public-sector organizations." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 20, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

90% of All Usability Testing is Useless

"When done right, usability testing will improve your Web site and your development process, but the current culture surrounding Web site usability testing is such that it rarely benefits the design. Worse, this misapplication can undermine the acceptance of this important technique throughout an organization." (Lane Becker - Adaptive Path)

Posted on June 16, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Web site usability quiz

"Test your knowledge of basic Web usability principles." (Human Factors International)

Posted on June 16, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

What is Cognitive Ergonomics?

"Cognitive ergonomics is especially important in the design of complex, high-tech, or automated systems. A poorly designed cellular phone user-interface may not cause an accident, but it may well cause great frustration on the part of the consumer and result in a marketplace driven business failure. A poor interface design on industrial automated equipment, though, may result in decreased production and quality, or even a life threatening accident." (Ergonomics Today) - courtesy of lucdesk

Posted on June 14, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Apples and Oranges

"Designers and user researchers need to communicate effectively, with mutual appreciation, in order to achieve an optimal outcome. In my opinion, as expressed earlier, user researchers need to have an understanding of fundamental design principles such as typography, emphasis, style, layout, composition, color, perspective, space, placement and size." (Didier P. Hilhorst - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on June 10, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Remote Control Anarchy

"The six remote controls required for a simple home theater illustrate the problems caused by complexity and inconsistency in user interfaces." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 07, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Thirty Years With Computers

The rule on staying alive as a forcaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once. -- Jane Bryant Quinn Poker Party http://www.party-poker-x.com

Posted on May 23, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

What they didn't teach me in Design & Usability school - Part 2/2

"If you write usability reports, how much do you understand about whom you are designing usability reports for? Have you ever applied user centered design principles to usability reports themselves? Why or why not? My guess is that you haven't, and if you did, the results would surprise you. What you're providing is probably not quite what your team (aka your second set of users) needs from you. What they are looking for is probably at odds with what you want them to look for, and the usability report becomes some kind of philosophical battleground. Generally, the authors of the reports lose." (Scott Berkun) - courtesy of columntwo

Posted on May 11, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Web-User Satisfaction on the Upswing

"Site visitors are more likely to finish Web tasks successfully, but site searches are still troublesome, according to a recent survey." (Dennis O'Reilly - PC World) - courtesy of lawrence lee

Posted on May 11, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Guidelines for Visualizing Links

"Textual links should be colored and underlined to achieve the best perceived affordance of clickability, though there are a few exceptions to these guidelines." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 10, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

How Much Interaction is Too Much?

"I've been doing usability testing for almost 20 years. Although I haven't been exposed to that many other facilitators, the ones I had seen facilitated very much like I did, which also seemed to be very much 'by the book'. Here, was someone with a very different approach." (Clifford Anderson - STC Usability SIG Newsletter)

Posted on May 06, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Change the Color of Visited Links

"People get lost and move in circles when websites use the same link color for visited and new destinations. To reduce navigational confusion, select different colors for the two types of links." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 03, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

B2B: Help Your Fans Convince Their Bosses

"B2B websites must support a more complex buying process than B2C sites. Three key goals are to make a buyer's shortlist, offer a downloadable advocacy kit, and build a reputation for great service." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 26, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Guidelines

"These guidelines include most factors to consider during a usability evaluation of a web site. Not all factors apply to every site." (MIT Information Services and Technology) - courtesy of lucdesk

Posted on April 22, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Remote Contextual Inquiry: A Technique to Improve Enterprise Software

"Remote Contextual Inquiry gives us an opportunity to view our end users' desktops to observe how they are using their current products in a cost and time-efficient manner. It is a marriage between the remote usability lab test and contextual inquiry, allowing us to transcend geographical boundaries without actually having to travel to distant locations. We gain contextual insights such as personalized settings, hidden fields, and added functionality that are typically not obtained during a usability test. It is truly a flexible method that provides a wealth of knowledge about the use of customized enterprise software" (Jeff English and Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on April 20, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Why Mobile Phones are Annoying

"Bystanders rated mobile-phone conversations as dramatically more noticeable, intrusive, and annoying than conversations conducted face-to-face. While volume was an issue, hearing only half a discussion also seemed to up the irritation factor." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 12, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

What they didn't teach me in Design & Usability school

"People who make things happen do so through the credibility they earn over time. It can take months or years to develop the relationships needed to make great things happen, so be patient. Be smart. Be helpful. Listen to ideas from other people and show them that you appreciate their help, and consider what they say." (Scott Berkun - UIWeb)

Posted on April 06, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Top 3 Priorities of the Talking Horse

"Anytime somebody does something new with technology, something nobody else has ever done before, that technology goes through a talking horse stage. It's extremely common and, more importantly, it's critical for the design team to recognize that they are in this stage." (Jared Spool - UI Engineering)

Posted on March 30, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Red Herring of Usability ROI

"Like all of Rosenberg's observant myths, the misguided belief that statements like these can be made (and more importantly believed!) is the great red herring of usability ROI research. Let's rid ourselves of these top-down, macro-level assertions and get down to the real work of analyzing specific usability interventions at the project level. Only through rigorous and in-depth analysis can larger patterns emerge and applications be developed." (Scott Hirsch - Net Now) - courtesy of ia slash

Posted on March 30, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Seven Myths of Usability ROI

"Daniel Rosenberg began his talk by confessing that he doesn't believe in usability Return on Investment (ROI). Having spent 30 years in the field of User Experience (UE), and never having been asked to justify usability by its ROI, Rosenberg raises a question: Why are we still discussing this topic?" (BayCHI) - courtesy of nick finck

Posted on March 29, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Productivity in the Service Economy

"Yes, it is possible for white-collar workers to work smarter and become more productive. While intranet usability provides substantial initial gains, workflow usability can go much further and will save millions of jobs." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 28, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Using the 5Es to Understand Users

"(...) look at usability requirements for different aspects of the user experience. For each of the five dimensions of usability (the 5Es), we think about how it is reflected in requirements for each of the user groups." (Whitney Quesenbery - WQusability) - courtesy of beth mazur

Posted on March 24, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

An open letter to Jakob Nielsen

"Prove to the world that you understand what it takes to provide the world with good design. Prove that you understand that good design, especially as it pertains to the field of high-technology product design, is also about nuts and bolts, honest, straight-forward usability. Prove to the designers out there you understand the principles of good design by tackling your own little spot on the World Wide Web." (Andrei Michael Herasimchuk - Design by Fire)

Posted on March 17, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Eyetrack Is Not a Solution

"Eyetrack is an effort to show how online news users process information on a Web page. We look through the eyes (literally) of a group of consumers as they view broadband-era news websites and multimedia editorial content." (Poynter Online)

Posted on March 17, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

I am USER, hear me roar!

"There are some things, that have been and are done successfully throughout the years of the internet. The biggest one is the big C - content." (Chris Heilmann - Evolt)

Posted on March 15, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Emotional about design

"Visceral design is what nature does. (...) Behavioural design is all about use. (...) Reflective design is about the meaning of things." (Guardian Unlimited) - courtesy of lawrence lee

Posted on March 11, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Risks of Discounted Qualitative Studies

"The discerning usability analyst should employ a mix of both qualitative and quantitative methods when discovering usability problems. The risks of relying heavily on a qualitative approach can lead to a severe misdiagnosis especially when usability problems are difficult to detect. This article is a response to Nielsen’s 'The Risk of Quantitative Studies' and shows how the problems voters had with the 'butterfly-ballot' in the Florida 2000 election would not have been detected with popular discounted qualitative methods. The problems with relying on one-size-fits all usability guidelines such as 'testing with only five users' and the inherent bias of pay-for-hire guru’s are also discussed." (Jeff Sauro - measuring usability)

Posted on March 05, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Risks of Quantitative Studies

"Number fetishism leads usability studies astray by focusing on statistical analyses that are often false, biased, misleading, or overly narrow. Better to emphasize insights and qualitative research." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 01, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Conducting Inherent Value Testing

"We've found having a focus works better than just a random tour without any focus. We get to see how users work with the site as they discuss it. Their commentary is easier to understand and more accurately represents true issues with the site." (Jared Spool - UI Engineering)

Posted on February 28, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability: Drawing Outside the Lines

"As Web design and development become wider in scope, individual topics within it become equally deeper. Usability has become its own depth area over the past few years, largely due to the influence of usability 'Thought Leaders' attempting to create better interactive Web sites for site visitors." (Molly Holzschlag - informIT) - courtesy of andrew fernandez

Posted on February 23, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Assessing Mobile Devices more Effectively

"Most user studies in the past have focused on the use of static devices. What are the new challenges to us, as designers and evaluators, on how to approach the design and evaluation of multimodal mobile devices and applications? In other words, function, value and meaning are relational and not absolute, as the applications and services reside on the network and not on the device. From the point of view of design and evaluation this presents new challenges. But why should we be interested?"

Posted on February 19, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Targeted Email Newsletters Show Continued Strength

"E-newsletters that are informative, convenient, and timely are often preferred over other media. However, a new study found that only 11% of newsletters were read thoroughly, so layout and content scannability is paramount." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 17, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Don Norman on Emotion Design (IT Conversation)

"Don Norman used to be known as a critic of unusable things but now, he says, he has changed. He has transformed himself into an advocate for pleasurable, enjoyable products. Beauty is good, says Norman. Successful products should a pleasure to use, and convey a positive sense of self, of accomplishment, and pride of ownership. In this keynote address, Norman shares work from his latest book, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things." (IT Conversations) - courtesy of ben hyde

Posted on February 15, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Usability: A New International Standard

"ISO is developing a new standard for web usability. The new standard will be of interest to anyone who designs, evaluates or commissions web sites and it is likely to have a significant impact in improving the overall usability of the web." (Userfocus) - courtesy of usability news

Posted on February 12, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

More Than Just a Footer

"(..) there are effective ways to utilize the entire height of the page, and to take advantage of the footer location to add value for the user. Innovative sites will surely extend these ideas and come up with new ways to keep users involved no matter what part of the page they are viewing." (Jeff Lash - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on February 05, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Keep Online Surveys Short

"To ensure high response rates and avoid misleading survey results, keep your surveys short and ensure that your questions are well written and easy to answer." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 02, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

How Big is the Difference Between Websites?

"The average difference in measured usability between competing websites is 68%. This is smaller than expected, but makes sense given the dynamics of design within individual industries." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 19, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Five ways to identify intranet usability issue

"Many intranets are under-used. Intranet managers lament the low use and discuss how to get staff to 'use the intranet more', resulting in marketing and promotions activities to increase use." (Donna Maurer - Step Two Designs)

Posted on January 13, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution

"Better prioritization, fewer interruptions, and concentrated information that's easy to find and manage helps people become more productive and stop wasting their colleagues' time." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 05, 2004 | Permalink

Emotion design

"Final manuscript: Except for proofing. Do NOT tell me about mistakes. These files are riddled with errors. I believe that all have been found and corrected. And if not, well, it is too late." (Don Norman - NN/g) - courtesy of ben hyde

Posted on January 01, 2004 | Permalink

Why machines should fear

"Once a curmudgeonly champion of 'usable' design, cognitive scientist Donald A. Norman argues that future machines will need emotions to be truly dependable." (W. Wayt Gibbs - Scientific American) - courtesy of lucdesk

Posted on January 01, 2004 | Permalink

A steady dose of realtime interruptions is toxic to anyone's health

"Respected technology commentators say that they now prefer instant messaging (IM) over e-mail as their medium of choice for computer-mediated communication. The main reasons are that e-mail has become an overloaded channel for readers and that you can't be sure to get a timely response from the recipients of your e-mail." (Jakob Nielsen - ACM Queue)

Posted on January 01, 2004 | Permalink

Top ten web design mistakes of 2003

"Sites are getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 22, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Quality control: The importance of website testing

"A website needs to be as close to perfect as possible before it is presented to the intended audience, and the adherence to a formal test plan and test procedures will assist in making sure that all bases are covered before the site is launched." (Julie Price - Thread Inc.)

Posted on December 12, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability and open-source software development

"Open-source is becoming an increasingly popular software development method. This paper reports a usability study of the open-source Greenstone Digital Library collection-building software. The problems highlighted by the study are analysed to identify their likely source within the social context of Greenstone's development environment. We discuss how characteristics of open-source software development influence the usability of resulting software products. " (David M. Nichols, Kirsten Thomson and Stuart A. Yeates - Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand)

Posted on December 10, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Automated email from websites to customers

"Transactional email can be a website's customer service ambassador, but messages must first survive a ruthless selection process in the user's in-box. Differentiating your message from spam is thus the first duty of email design." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 08, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Two sigma: Usability and six sigma quality assurance

"On average across many test tasks, users fail 35% of the time when using websites. This is 100,000 times worse than six sigma's requirement, but Web usability can still benefit from a six sigma quality approach." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 24, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The ten most violated homepage design guidelines

"There are ten usability mistakes that about two-thirds of corporate websites make. The prevalence of these errors alone warrants attention, especially since they appear on sites with significant investment in usable design." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 10, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The art of usability benchmarking

"One common concern raised by managers and engineers alike is this: how usable is enough? This question, and the absence of an easy answer, is often the first defense people offer against investing in usability and ease of use. The smart usability engineer or designer has at least one response: the usability benchmark. By capturing the current level of ease of use of the current product or website, a reference point is created that can be measured against in the future. It doesn't answer the question of how usable is enough, but if the benchmark is done properly, it does enable someone to set goals and expectations around ease of use for the future." (Scott Berkun - uiweb) - courtesy of lawrence lee

Posted on November 05, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Role: Usability Specialist

Presentation by Eugene Chen (Aaron Marcus and Associates), Steve Krug (Advanced Common Sense), and Keith Instone (Usable Web) (AIGA Experience Design) - courtesy of croc o'lyle

Posted on November 04, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

OK/Cancel: Interface Your Fears

"(...) a comic strip written for a very specific audience, but much of what we talk about is quite universal. Most everybody can relate to things in the world which don't work like they should -- and you needn't be a usability specialist, interaction designer, industrial designer or any sort of designer to appreciate that frustration. But if you ARE any of those aforementioned people or have had the pleasure and pain of working with one or more of this rare breed, this strip is for you. " (Kevin Cheng & Tom Chi)

Posted on November 04, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Research Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines

All files on this site are PDFs. (Usability.gov)

Posted on November 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Don't Test Users, Test Hypotheses

"I find that by basing hypotheses on a site or application's goals, I can integrate usability testing into the design process. By thinking in terms of hypotheses based on design goals I can generate relevant, action-oriented findings. In this way, usability doesn't stifle creativity, it focuses it." (Avi Soudack - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on October 29, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

About Us: Presenting Information About an Organization on Its Website

"Study participants searched websites for background information ranging from company history to management biographies and contact details. Their success rate was 70%, leaving much room for usability improvements in the 'About Us' designs." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 27, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Value of Usability

"Value" is like 'quality'Ý-- no one seems to be able to define it, and yet everyone knows it when they see it. This ATW feature explores the concept of 'value' in a Web site and looks at how creating usable Webspace is an integral part of creating valuable Webspace." (All Things Web)

Posted on October 22, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

U-Pods: The Business of Usability

"U-Pods focuses on the business of usability and the people charged with the responsibility of managing that business. As a peer-based community, U-Pods brings the right people together within the right scale and structure to foster the right type of dialog, support, relationships, and history. U-Pods' creation of small-scale pods collectively forming a large-scale organization gives you the best of both worlds. " (About U-Pods) - courtesy of usability news

Posted on October 21, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Ten Best Intranets of 2003

"This year's winning intranet designs emphasized workflow support, self-service content management, and offloading tasks from email to collaboration tools. On average, companies spent three years between redesigns, and one year on the redesign itself." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 13, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Squaring Up To Usability At Nokia

"Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive, says usability is at the heart of the company's approach. He adds that it was one of the first to realise that ease of use had to become the main goal in design." (Neil McCartney - Financial Times) - courtesy of croc o'lyle

Posted on October 13, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Making Rich Web Application Architecture Usable

"Learning requires a cognitive investment by the user. It doesnít make sense to learn new interactions if there's no return on the investment we must make to learn them. Using standard elements in the interface, and keeping those elements visually consistent among interactions, enables the user to learn once and then apply that knowledge anywhere " (Viswanath Gondi - SitePoint) - courtesy of lucdesk

Posted on October 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Balancing Visual and Structural Complexity in Interaction Design

"By reducing visual complexity at the cost of structural simplicity, you will give your users a hard time understanding and navigating the content of a web site." (Henrik Olsen - guuui)

Posted on October 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Alertbox#200

"I've published 200 Alertbox columns on the Web since 1995; in addition to achieving key victories over multi-million-dollar special interests and enemies of usability, the column's readership statistics validate the practice of archiving content." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 29, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Time to Make Tech Work

"The IT industry is maturing. Hopefully, this maturity will result in a slower introduction of new features, which in turn will let companies focus their attention and resources on making existing technology work better for users." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 15, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Misconceptions About Usability

"Misconceptions about usability's expense, the time it involves, and its creative impact prevent companies from getting crucial user data, as does the erroneous belief that existing customer-feedback methods are a valid driver for interface design." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on September 08, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Joining Strategy and Usability: The Customer Experience Methodology 

"The customer experience methodology is a business-oriented method for creating positive change to the customer experience of online technology." (Mark Hurst - Creative Good, Inc.)

Posted on September 04, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability 101

"Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word 'usability' also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 25, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Mobile Devices: One Generation From Useful

"New mobile devices show a huge improvement over previous generations, but they're still not good enough to score a real win. To get there, we need both PC-integrated applications and specialized mobile services rather than repurposed website content." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 18, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Pollution

"Excessive word count and worthless details are making it harder for people to extract useful information. The more you say, the more people tune out your message." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on August 11, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Professionals Must Disappear

"(...) a good user experience practitioner is a facilitator - someone who quietly (having disappeared) guides the process, allowing knowledge to emerge, from users and the company alike. Instead of coming in with the answers, or the framework, or (my personal favorite) 'the 200 rules of user experience design', they should come in with their auditory organs turned up to eleven." (Mark Hurst - Good Experience)

Posted on August 08, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Review: A Pattern Language for Web Usability

"The notion of 'patterns', and of a 'pattern language', comes from the work of Christopher Alexander, a contemporary architect who proposed the use of collections of architectural patterns to address deficiencies in modern building design. In later works, Alexander expanded the scope of his rather fascinating concept of patterns to a broader design context. In the early 90s, computer scientists began to apply Alexander's work to software development. The Web usability pattern language described in this book resulted from the collaborative efforts of attendees at a workshop hosted by the author in 1994." (Carl Bedingfield - ACM Ubiquity)

Posted on August 08, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Civil servants' families could test government websites

"Government web managers needing users to make their websites citizen-friendly should consider recruiting public sector staff or their families as a 'cheap alternative' to usability consultancies." (Ian Cuddy - The Register) - courtesy of usability news

Posted on August 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Slings of Boxes and Arrows: Persecuting Jakob

"One of the best things I've ever (co-)written is now up at Boxes and Arrows (...) We aimed for a New Yorker-style review -- to use the subject as a jumping off point for discussing the underlying issues. So, while about half the review is an evisceration of the reports remarkably flawed methodology and lack of usefulness, the other half suggests steps that user experience professionals can take to begin to appropriately value their contribution." (Peter Merholz)

Posted on July 29, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Nielsen/Norman Group's Usability Return on Investment

"This report seems to be directed at usability practitioners, to support their efforts in increasing their budgets. Presumably, usability practitioners will, in turn, show this to management. They will tell management that current 'best practice' is to devote 10 percent of a project's budget to usability efforts. They will also tell management that, 'on average', usability provides measurable improvements of around 135 percent." (Peter Merholz and Scott Hirsch - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on July 29, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Gateway Pages Prevent PDF Shock

"Spare your users the misery of being dumped into PDF files without warning. Create special gateway pages that summarize the contents of big documents and guide users gently into the PDF morass." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 28, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Adobe's Robert McDaniels Responds (Again) to Nielsen Criticisms of PDF

"He conveniently failed to mention that his own research group makes its for-profit reports available for purchase online in PDF." (Planet PDF) - courtesy of webword

Posted on July 24, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Culture and Usability Feature: Culture as a Design Heuristic

"Culture theories can elicit design alternatives, help us ask the 'right questions' and help designers think about new implementations and new interfaces, she said. To be predictive, cultural theory requires constrained target audience, but it can still be productive." (Ann Light - Usability News)

Posted on July 15, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

"Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 14, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Jakob Nielsen Declares the Letter 'C' Unusable

"Our research indicates that 83% of the words being looked up are words that contain the letter 'C'." (Uncle Sharky - BBspot) - courtesy of theotherblog

Posted on July 08, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

An Example of Poor Usability

"(...) elements of the interface are so badly designed that the experience of using my phone is often frustrating." (Dirk Knemeyer - Thread)

Posted on July 04, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability!=User Experience

"This is not to say usability engineering isn't important -- it's critical. But it's also critical that the practice's inputs and outputs stay focused on making things *usable*, that is, making it so that people are able to use the product. Able as in physically able, cognitively able." (PeterMe)

Posted on July 03, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster

"The easier it is to find places with good information, the less time users will spend visiting any individual website. This is one of many conclusions that follow from analyzing how people optimize their behavior in online information systems." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on July 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

FAQ Questionnaires in Usability Engineering

"Over the years, I have seen many questions asked about the use of questionnaires in usability engineering. The list on this page is a compilation of the questions I have heard most often and the answers I gave, should have given, or would have given if I had thought of it first." (Jurek Kirakowski - Human Factors Research Group) - courtesy of webword

Posted on June 24, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Diversity is Power for Specialized Sites

"Small websites get less traffic than big ones, but they can still dominate their niches. For each question users ask, the Web delivers a different set of sites to provide the answers." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 16, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Why Usability Matters to Your Business

"Most, if not all, Internet users are familiar with the hallmarks of poor usability. How often have you invested time at a site only to be frustrated because you were unable to complete a purchase or registration process, or couldnít find the information you sought? More importantly for commercial websites, how was your perception of the brand behind the website affected by your experience?" (Marc Sparrow - The Usability Company) - courtesy of webword

Posted on June 05, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability For $200

"How can a small company's website benefit from usability activities despite a minuscule budget? By integrating four simple and effective usability practices into the design process." - (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on June 02, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability for Programmers

"There's this idea floating around that programmers, web developers, shouldn't need usability."

Posted on May 28, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Engineering Team

"The Usability Engineering Team provides consultation and support for software development teams to ensure that the software they create is easy to learn, easy to use and less costly to develop and maintain. We believe in following a User-Centered Design process that actively involves the users during all phases of the project. We are committed to providing highly effective interface designs that save time, save money and allow users to be more productive. We firmly believe in "making technology work for people." - (NASA) - courtesy of iaslash

Posted on May 28, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Convincing Clients to Pay for Usability

"Professionally run design agencies user test their designs to increase the value they deliver to their clients. The challenge is getting clients to understand the benefits of a solid development methodology. " - (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 19, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Architecture Meets Usability

"We spoke with both Lou and Steve about the advantages of their joint seminars, the common pitfalls of web usability and information architecture, and the state of the web industry today." - (Bruce Stewart - O'Reilly Network)

Posted on May 15, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Usability

"Evidence-Based Information, Training and Tools for Optimizing the Usability of Computer Systems" (Robert W. Bailey - About Web Usability) - courtesy of ron's ramblings

Posted on May 13, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Persistence of Usability Myths

"Last year we researched the top 10 usability myths. A number of people, including technology pundits, had attacked usability. We thought the attacks were based on misconceptions. (...) We conducted an online survey to see whether web professionals agreed with the pundits." (John Knight and Marie Jefsioutine - Usability News)

Posted on May 09, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Making Web Advertisements Work

"Web users are highly goal-driven, and ads that interfere with their goals will be ignored. To succeed, ads must work with the medium, as well as with the user's aims and mindset." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on May 05, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

CHI 2003 Feature: Testing... 1 2 3 4 5 ... Testing...

"Usability can sometimes be more about belief than about evidence or engineering, with usability testing heading the list as a central tenet of the dogma of modern practice. (...) Yet, precisely because of its leading role, it is important for the profession to question the dogma of usability testing and for professionals to keep abreast of new developments and changing perspectives." (Larry Constantine - Usability News)

Posted on May 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

A Proposal for Evaluating Usability Testing Methods: The Practical Review System

"The purpose of this article is to explain the Practical Review System (PRS). The PRS is an outline of 28 characteristics that can be used to understand any usability method, thereby allowing any individual to decide between methods. This solves many of the problems associated with understanding and explaining usability methods." (John S. Rhodes - WebWord)

Posted on May 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Will Plain-Text Ads Continue to Rule?

"Text-only advertisements work far better than banners, but is this only due to their novelty? Search engine text ads will retain their superiority over time, but text ads on other sites will work only if they focus on directly meeting users' needs." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 29, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Low-End Media for User Empowerment

"Fancy media on websites typically fails user testing. Simple text and clear photos not only communicate better with users, they also enhance users' feeling of control and thus support the Web's mission as an instant gratification environment." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 22, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Topic Center

"Balance design and functionality - get the perspective of today's leading Macromedia Flash gurus." (Macromedia) - courtesy of webword

Posted on April 15, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Paper Prototyping: Getting User Data Before You Code

"With a paper prototype, you can user test early design ideas at an extremely low cost. Doing so lets you fix usability problems before you waste money implementing something that doesn't work." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 15, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability is Good Management

"The professional manager is always looking for feedback. They test their plans and theories constantly. They are sensitive to cues within their environment, adapting as appropriate. The website manager operates within a feedback-starved environment. Thus, they need to be much more proactive in seeking feedback. Usability is a way of doing this." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted on April 07, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Alternative Interfaces for Accessibility

"The key difference between user interfaces for sighted users and blind users is not that between graphics and text; it's the difference between 2-D and 1-D. Optimal usability for users with disabilities requires new approaches and new user interfaces." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on April 07, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Eight is Not Enough

"With more users testing your site, you'll get more feedback, find more problems, and have more data, but there may be some less obvious advantages as well." (Christine Perfetti and Lori Landesman - User Interface Engineering)

Posted on April 03, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Intranet Portals: A Tool Metaphor for Corporate Information

"(...) to improve and evolve Web user interface technologies. Work includes formats and languages that add new interaction methods to the Web (e.g. speech recognition, multimodal access), as well as mechanisms for handling the increasing number of new Web access devices (mobile phones, PDAs, interactive television sets etc.)." (W3C) - courtesy of webword

Posted on April 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Myths Need Reality Checks

"Not so very long ago, it was agreed that five to eight users was enough for a good usability test. Somehow, this idea achieved mythic status. We believed it. We preached it to everyone who would listen. It survived in areas where it had been disproved, and was introduced into new situations where it didn't even apply." (Will Schroeder - User Interface Engineering) - courtesy of guuui

Posted on March 26, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Do Productivity Increases Generate Economic Gains?

"Usability improvements can save time-on-task, but critics argue that this is not the same as saving money. Others worry that productivity gains cause unemployment. Neither is correct: usable design saves money and saves jobs." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 17, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Conducting International Usability

"This essay draws from my experience leading an international user testing project, and I hope you can learn from my mistakes and successes." (Peter Merholz - Adaptive Path)

Posted on March 14, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Law

"There are a number of ways that the law impacts on the usability of software and its evaluation." (Richard Griffiths) courtesy of webword

Posted on March 10, 2003 | Permalink

PR on Websites: Increasing Usability

"Compared with a similar 2001 study, a new study of journalists as they looked for information on corporate websites' PR areas showed significant usability improvements: a 5% higher success rate and 15% increased guidelines compliance." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 10, 2003 | Permalink

What Is Usability And Why Is It Important?

"Visitors will leave your web site if they find it difficult to use. The time and money you put into the site will be wasted." (Benefit from IT) - courtesy of cognitive architects

Posted on March 05, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Persuasive Design: New Captology Book

"(...) useful principles on how to think about creating persuasive design, but rarely gives detailed design guidelines. The exception is a section on enhancing website credibility." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on March 03, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Fun, Communication and Dependability: Extending the Concept of Usability

"Designing technology for the home is a stimulus for change but the new concepts will also be applicable in other contexts, e.g., enjoyable software in the office." (Andrew Monk - Department of Psychology, University of York)

Posted on March 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Do Investor-Relations Websites Make the Grade?

"A new study examines problems with information found on corporate websites." (Eric Hellweg - Business 2.0)

Posted on March 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites That Work

"The book is a how-to guide. It describes methods and techniques for designing websites with the assumption that the principles of usability are pervasive." (Eric Lease Morgan) - courtesy of cognitive architects

Posted on February 26, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Employee Directory Search: Resolving Conflicting Usability Guidelines

"Guidelines conflict on whether to limit intranet search to a single search box or dedicate an additional box to employee directory searches. There's theory to support both guidelines. What's up?." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 24, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Investor Relations Website Design

"Individual investors are intimidated by overly complex IR sites and need simple summaries of financial data. Both individual and professional investors want the company's own story and investment vision." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 18, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Homepage Real Estate Allocation

"On average, sample sites evenly distributed valuable screen space between content, navigation, fluff, blank areas, and system overhead. Areas of user interest should occupy more than the current 39%." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on February 10, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Microsoft Usability Research

"Last Updated: November 12, 2001" (Microsoft) - courtesy of craig marion

Posted on February 07, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Views: The Usability A to Z

"2,952 articles about usability, IA, HCI and web design." (Clive McEnroy) - courtesy of guuui

Posted on February 05, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Courtesy Titles - Their Proper Use and Website Design Guidelines

"Do you need a courtesy title? (...) Did you know you could be breaking the law by making them mandatory on your website?" (Silicon Glen) - courtesy of webword

Posted on February 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Voice Interfaces: Assessing the Potential

"Visual interfaces are inherently superior to auditory interfaces for many tasks. The Star Trek fantasy of speaking to your computer is not the most fruitful path to usable systems." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 28, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Linux Usability ... Or Why Do I Bother.

"The experience was, shall we say, less than pleasant." (Jamie Zawinsky)

Posted on January 27, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Role of Online Surveys in the Usability Assessment Process

"I have attended several conferences at which I witnessed a growing debate over the role of survey work in the field of usability." (William MacElroy - STC Usability Newsletter 9.2)

Posted on January 23, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Recruiting Test Participants for Usability Studies

"Many people believe in user testing, but in real design projects, not much testing takes place." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 20, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability of Open Source Software

"In this paper we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open source development influence usability." (David M. Nichols and Michael B. Twidale - First Monday 8.1)

Posted on January 10, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Return on Investment for Usability

"Development projects should spend 10% of their budget on usability. Following a usability redesign, websites increase usability by 135% on average; intranets improve slightly less." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 09, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Requirements: How to Specify, Test and Report Usability

"(...) a guide for how to specify, test and report usability requirements as part of a contractual relationship between a supplier and acquirer." (The PRUE Project) - courtesy of guuui

Posted on January 08, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Testing: Myths, Misconceptions and Misuses

"In this article, I identify and try to straighten out some common misconceptions about usability testing." (Richard F. Dillon - HOT Lab, Carleton University) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted on January 06, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Wu

"Wu is a pattern language for designing and building usable web sites." (Ian Graham et al.) - courtesy of iawiki

Posted on January 06, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002

"As the Web grows, websites continue to come up with ways to annoy users. Following are ten design mistakes that were particularly good at punishing users and costing site owners business in 2002." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Gorilla Usability

"The hardest part about Gorilla Usability is getting that initial contact with your users." (D. Keith Robinson - Evolt) - courtesy of lucdesk

Posted on January 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

UsabilityNet

A project funded by the European Union to promote usability and user-centered design (About UsabilityNet)

Posted on December 12, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Design Guru Sees Flash Challenges

"Nielsen credited Macromedia (...) for taking usability seriously and paying attention to such issues while Flash is still relatively young." (David Becker - C|Net News)

Posted on December 10, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

In the Future, We'll All Be Harry Potter

"The world of magic is a world where inanimate objects come alive; it's as if they had computational power, sensors, awareness, and connectivity." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on December 09, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability is Next to Profitability

"Software companies have finally grasped the value of easy-to-fathom programs, and they're pouring resources into the task." (Jane Black - Business Week)

Posted on December 06, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Professional Usability Testing and Return On Investment

"This paper discusses the return on investment (ROI) implications of integrating formal usability testing methods into web development projects." (Charles L. Mauro - TaskZ)

Posted on December 06, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability and Open Source Software

"In this paper, we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open source development influence usability." (Dave M. Nichols and Michael B. Twidale)

Posted on December 06, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

ROI for Usable User-Interface Design: Examples and Statistics 

"Usability increases customer satisfaction and productivity, leads to customer trust and loyalty, and inevitably results in tangible cost savings and profitability." (Aaron Marcus and Associates)

Posted on December 03, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Users Begin to Demand Software Usability Tests

"The Boeing Co. is changing the way it buys software and is making a product's usability (...) a fundamental purchasing criterion." (Patrick Thidodeau - Computerworld)

Posted on November 27, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Keep It Simple: Simplicity versus Innovation

"The site should be innovative in design and content, but, when it comes to usability, a slightly conservative mindset is the best option." (Peter-Paul Koch - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on November 27, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Flash and Web-Based Applications

"The Internet is changing. Although people have primarily used it to read email and Web pages, more functionality-oriented applications are now emerging, with the goal of providing new features that do more for users." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 25, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Intranet Usability: The Trillion-Dollar Question

"The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross-company intranet usability study. The return on investment? One thousand percent or more." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on November 11, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Spanking Jakob Nielsen

"Jakob Nielsen makes some fantastic claims about intranet usability that must be weighed against other business needs and constraints." (John Rhodes - WebWord)

Posted on November 11, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Flash MX Accessibility Issues

"When usability expert Jacob Neilson proclaimed Flash was 99 percent bad, he was right on at least one account: accessibility." (Jason M. Perry - O'Reilly Network)

Posted on November 11, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Ten Reasons Ease Of Use Doesn't Happen On Engineering Projects

"(...) I've tried to catalog the different reasons why projects didn't result in easy to use designs." (Scott Berkun - uiweb.com)

Posted on November 06, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Accountability of Accessibility and Usability

"(...) the cardinal sin of Web accessibility: they did not use the ALT attribute for images that convey information." (Anitra Pavka - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on November 06, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Beyond Usability

"After being neglected for years, suddenly people are talking about it like they've found the Holy Grail or something." (Grokdotcom)

Posted on November 04, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Appliances Herald the New Usability

"This new and emerging area – appliance design – is focused on the development of devices which resemble home appliances in their narrow range of function and ease of use, but resemble computing devices in that they deal with information-based tasks." (Peter Thomas - Usability News)

Posted on October 29, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Celebrating Holidays and Special Occasions on Websites

"Even small holiday decorations can increase joy of use and make websites feel more current and more connected to users' lives and physical environment. The key is to commemorate without detracting from your users' main reasons for visiting the site." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 28, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Limits of Usability are Challenged Again

"Definitions of usability are part of the problem (...). They not only influence how usability specialists market themselves, but also colour public perception of the profession." (Louise Ferguson - Usability News)

Posted on October 23, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Enemies of Usability

"I know lots of usability advocates who speak the language of business quite fluently." (Peter Morville - Semantic Studios)

Posted on October 21, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Must Die

Usability has grown into a monster. (Chris McEvoy)

Posted on October 17, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Making Online Information Usable

"Usability problems fall on a continuum. On one end are the nuisance problems, like typos or incorrect grammar. Users may not notice these issues, and can ignore them if they do." (User Interface Engineering)

Posted on October 11, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

14 Principles of Polite Apps

"Software should respond to your obvious needs, not just your commands. Use these 14 principles to create accommodating software." (Alan Cooper - DevX)

Posted on October 07, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Common Principles: A Usable Interface Design Primer

"When users perform a transaction or action, their cognition is often split between learning and operating the system or user interface." (Rick Oppedisano - UPA)

Posted on October 07, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Email Newsletters Pick Up Where Websites Leave Off

"In usability testing, success rates were high for subscribe and unsubscribe tasks, but users were frustrated by newsletters that demanded too much of their time." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on October 01, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Date Entry Usability on Hotel Websites

"This report reviews the designs used today for entering dates into hotel booking websites. It proposes a tested, easy-to-use, date-entry layout style and format that can be implemented on any hotel booking website." (Travel UCD)

Posted on September 18, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Road to Usability

"(...) the lack of progress. Today's Web UI doesn't look much different than it did in 1994." (Tim Bray - New Architect)

Posted on September 16, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack