http://www.informationdesign.org/ Dedicated to the growth and improvement of the information experience industries. en-us plato@xs4all.nl 2010-03-09T09:28:02+01:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 "Users overlook features if the GUI elements — such as buttons and checkboxes — are too far away from the objects they act on." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox) Usability 2010-03-09T09:28:02+01:00 "Usability testing is one of the least glamorous, but most important aspects of user experience research. Over the years, it has also been one of the forms of user research we have performed most frequently. In doing so, we’ve learned quite a few best practices and encountered some potential pitfalls. We think it's important that we share what we've learned with the many stakeholders, designers, and engineers who might find this information helpful." (Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain - UXmatters) Usability 2010-03-08T10:16:44+01:00 "Designing is hard enough as it is, taking into account your surprisingly erratic users makes it that much harder. Fortunately, taking unexpected user behaviour into account throughout the design process is a large part of the battle, it's a significant step on the way to a good user experience." (Alistair Gray - Webcredible) Usability 2010-03-05T14:46:52+01:00 "Back quite a while ago, when there was a Sun Microsystems, the company banned the use of PowerPoint, because its employees were spending two minutes on the content of their presentations and 16 hours on using PowerPoint's features to make their slides look pretty. (I probably exaggerate, but you get the point.) Is the technology really making us more productive, or is it simply providing a pleasant (in some cases) user experience at the expense of real productivity?" (Daryle Gardner-Bonneau - Journal of Usability Studies February 2010) Usability 2010-03-05T10:19:54+01:00 "Over the past decade, usability improved by 6% per year. This is a faster rate than most other fields, but much slower than technology advances might have predicted." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox) Usability 2010-02-22T21:25:14+01:00 "Most mobile applications are used only intermittently, so they must be especially easy during initial use. In particular, upfront registration shouldn't be required before users experience an app's benefits." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox) Usability 2010-02-10T11:33:51+01:00 "Usability refers to the ease with which a user can accomplish his or her goals using any tool. (...) Somewhat in contrast, user experience refers to the way a user perceives his or her interaction with a system. User experience design encompasses both interaction design and visual design and seeks to promote an interface that is pleasing to the user." (RJ Owen - InsideRIA) Usability 2010-01-25T14:28:44+01:00 "It's more difficult to conduct usability studies with experienced users than with novices, and the improvements are usually smaller. Still, improving expert performance is often worth the effort." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox) Usability 2010-01-25T11:24:51+01:00 "Bad Usability Calendar is published by Netlife Research, a user experience consultancy firm based in Oslo, Norway. We are dedicated to creating user friendly solutions that our clients and their customers love." (About Us) Usability 2010-01-11T15:03:17+01:00 "Intranet design is maturing and reaping the rewards of continuous quality improvement for traditional features, while embracing new trends like mobile access, emergency preparedness, and user/employee-contributed content." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox) Usability 2010-01-04T10:20:51+01:00 "Usability is like cooking: everybody needs the results, anybody can do it reasonably well with a bit of training, and yet it takes a master to produce a gourmet outcome." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox) Usability 2009-12-21T15:00:26+01:00 "This column is an attempt to synthesize a new set of guidelines for testing your own designs that I’ve based on the best of my own and UXmatters readers’ ideas." (Paul J. Sherman - UXmatters) Usability 2009-12-21T11:30:07+01:00 "One of the clearest mistakes we make in web site development is not understanding the people who use them. Despite the help of personas, user testing, scenarios and marketing data in advance, even the big brand sites struggle to be user friendly. Why is this? One reason is the context in which pages and links are delivered. For findability to work properly, we need to know the words people use to communicate with their surroundings. This may be different online, especially in situations where we can ‘be anyone’ and change who we are." (Kim Krause Berg - Search Engine Land) Usability 2009-12-18T11:49:23+01:00 "I have seven somewhat controversial usability predictions for the 2010 I think you might be surprised to read. These predictions are based on my understanding of the state of the usability field based on blog posts, articles, tweets and all the other news and information I’ve picked up throughout the year. Whether you agree or disagree with these predictions, I think you’ll agree that in the past year we’ve seen plenty of change, and will continue to see increasing changes in our field in 2010." (Useful Usability) Usability 2009-12-15T11:58:13+01:00 "The human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data memorization that that websites often demand. Many usability guidelines are dictated by cognitive limitations." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox) Usability 2009-12-07T10:36:50+01:00