http://tc.eserver.org/authors/Quesenbery,_Whitney A bibliography of works by Quesenbery, Whitney in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Quesenbery,_Whitney http://tc.eserver.org/33953.html http://tc.eserver.org/33953.html When people talk about both usability and accessibility, it is often to point out how they differ. Accessibility often gets pigeon-holed as simply making sure there are no barriers to access for screen readers or other assistive technology, without regard to usability, while usability usually targets everyone who uses a site or product, without considering people who have disabilities. In fact, the concept of usability often seems to exclude people with disabilities, as though just access is all they are entitled to. What about creating a good user experience for people with disabilities—going beyond making a Web site merely accessible to make it truly usable for them? http://tc.eserver.org/31993.html http://tc.eserver.org/31993.html Discusses the importance of usability testing as a final check on ballot layout and instructions text. Many of the problems in the report would likely have been caught with even an informal test. The report highlights a usability testing kit for local election officials, the LEO Usability Testing Kit. http://tc.eserver.org/31994.html http://tc.eserver.org/31994.html The election calendar is very tight, with legally mandated deadlines and other constraints, all conducted in the public view. The UPA Voting and Usability Project wanted a way to fit usability testing into that schedule, and give election officials a way to do what they all want: run excellent elections. http://tc.eserver.org/31630.html http://tc.eserver.org/31630.html On May 3, 2008, something extraordinary happened: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities went into effect. The goals of the Convention are lofty: it insists that all persons with all types of disabilities must enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms and sets out eight guiding principles and obligations to meet them. http://tc.eserver.org/30579.html http://tc.eserver.org/30579.html An interview with Whitney Quesenbery about minimalism and plain language in user experience design. http://tc.eserver.org/30133.html http://tc.eserver.org/30133.html The best place to learn about HTML is on the Web itself. A few of the best resources for exploring HTML design are listed here. http://tc.eserver.org/30043.html http://tc.eserver.org/30043.html In the article, 'A Methodology for Testing Voting Systems' (JUS, November 2006, pp7-21), Selker, Rosenzweig, and Pandolfo discuss their methodology for usability testing of voting systems. With so much at stake in the usability of our ballots and voting systems, we can only applaud any research in this field. There is little history of research in this area, so discussions of test protocols are especially valuable. Unfortunately, although this article sets out to compare 'the relative merit in realistic versus lab style experiments for testing voting technology,' it falls short of this goal. If their point is that real-world testing is important because real election environments add burdens that are not present in lab settings, this conclusion is not supported by any of the work described. http://tc.eserver.org/29296.html http://tc.eserver.org/29296.html Just what do we mean by usability? Before we can set out to achieve it, we need to understand what it is we are trying to achieve. It's not enough to declare that from here on, our software will be more user friendly or that we will now be customer focused. http://tc.eserver.org/29294.html http://tc.eserver.org/29294.html En matière d'amélioration de votre site web, produit ou logiciel, comment passer de la simple volonté à l'action? Que dites-vous de ceci pour commencer: si la réponse c'est l'utilisabilité, quelle peut bien être la question? http://tc.eserver.org/28824.html http://tc.eserver.org/28824.html How do you review a product for usability, but make that review user-centered? http://tc.eserver.org/28785.html http://tc.eserver.org/28785.html Quesenbery is one of the authors of Content and Complexity: Information Design in Technical Communication. Quesenbery explains the five E's -- a simple way to talk about product usability. The five E's are efficient, effective, engaging, error-tolerant, and easy to learn. She elaborates on what it means for a product to be engaging/satisfying. Quesenbery also explains the importance of personas, which she has written about in the Personas Lifecycle by Tamara Adline and John Pruit. She says stories are essential to personas. http://tc.eserver.org/28677.html http://tc.eserver.org/28677.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28686.html http://tc.eserver.org/28686.html Here are some 'truths' we've all heard: 'Documentation is just a band-aid for poor design.' 'Real users don't read manuals.' 'Super users never read anything.' 'Help doesn't.' But are they really true? I've seen some signs of life in the use of documentation for digital products recently. http://tc.eserver.org/27962.html http://tc.eserver.org/27962.html Usability through storytelling, the theme for the UPA 2006 conference, was examined from many angles. Presenters looked at how stories fit into our work, throughout the entire user-centered design process. http://tc.eserver.org/27175.html http://tc.eserver.org/27175.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27176.html http://tc.eserver.org/27176.html 你有没有怀疑过你的同事或者客户是否真的理解“可用性”？在我们和同事的在商务、技术和设计讨论中谈论‘可用性’是什么时，经常充斥着一些标准和指导方针替代品。在本文中，我们通过了解可用性的五个维度，我们便能够围绕可用性目标达成一致的看法，并开始以这个可用性的定义为基础，来计划用户中心设计的工作。 http://tc.eserver.org/26998.html http://tc.eserver.org/26998.html 可用性是 好的沟 通技术 的一 个重要部 分。很多作者将可用性技术如站点访问、用户任务分析 和可用性测试结合到他们的 工作中。 http://tc.eserver.org/26997.html http://tc.eserver.org/26997.html Usability is an important part of good technical communication. Many writers incorporate usability techniques such as site visits, user task analysis and usability testing into their work. http://tc.eserver.org/27005.html http://tc.eserver.org/27005.html Users were having trouble learning about the Open University's special form of distance education on the existing site. To solve this problem, we wanted to make recommendations for the style and format of the information as part of our design. http://tc.eserver.org/27008.html http://tc.eserver.org/27008.html I lost my address book recently. It was one of those near-death computer experiences where you see your data pass before your eyes and start searching through the trash, then the Web, hoping to find the information you need right now. The experience made me think about blame--and trust. http://tc.eserver.org/27023.html http://tc.eserver.org/27023.html I view a user experience as a conversation between people separated over the distance of time. At one end of that conversation are those who create the product; at the other, the people who use it. In between is the product itself--with a design that either helps or hinders; creates a barrier-free interaction or shouts in an unfamiliar language. Because this conversation does not happen in real time, we are not there to smooth over the rough spots and make sure that we have spoken clearly. Instead, we have to build our understanding of those users into every aspect of the design, by putting people--users--at the center of the design process. http://tc.eserver.org/26498.html http://tc.eserver.org/26498.html If usability is part of technical communication, language – the building block of technical communication – is an important part of the usability of a web site or software application. The better a product communicates, the more helpful it is, the easier it is to use. http://tc.eserver.org/26225.html http://tc.eserver.org/26225.html As documentation is more and more built directly into the interface, and as technical communicators move into interface design and usability, it is important to have a theoretical framework within which to make decisions about what kind of information will be conveyed at any moment. We can build on basic principles of cognitive psychology to help us make these decisions. We start from a question: Why should users be aware of the difference between interface and documentation when all they want is to get something done? http://tc.eserver.org/25392.html http://tc.eserver.org/25392.html Is usability the same in New York as in China? As I thought about it, this is really two questions: Is our professional practice the same? Are we working from the same basic assumptions about how to approach the job of making products and applications work for their users, and do we use the same techniques and methodologies? Do western usability principles apply to a Chinese audience? Can we apply what we have learned from usability tests in the US and Europe, or are cultural differences so great that we must rethink what usability 'means?' http://tc.eserver.org/25191.html http://tc.eserver.org/25191.html I traveled to Beijing, China for User Friendly 2004 to meet a few of our usability colleagues there. What I found was a large and vibrant usability community. http://tc.eserver.org/24924.html http://tc.eserver.org/24924.html Muses on the increasing importance of communities in the technical communication profession. http://tc.eserver.org/24427.html http://tc.eserver.org/24427.html Interfaces are more than skin deep. To create a successful electronic documentation project the structure of the information, the navigation and the visual design must all work together. Research Publications' American Journey series of CD-ROMs on topics in American history is a good example of an interface designed from the inside out. http://tc.eserver.org/24327.html http://tc.eserver.org/24327.html Almost all design methodologies call for a prototyping stage, but it can be difficult to decide where to put scarce time and resources for the most impact on the final project. To make a decision, it is important to understand the different types of prototypes and their strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, the larger and more complex a project, the more complete each prototype must be, but even with small projects the right prototype can help ensure that you and your clients have a chance to see and test the design before it is too late to make changes. If you do your work right, each step builds on the previous one, and there are no surprises at the end of the project. http://tc.eserver.org/24167.html http://tc.eserver.org/24167.html One definition of communication is 'the transfer of information from one location to another so that meaning is understood.' In other words, communication is what happens when one person connects to another to share information. http://tc.eserver.org/23865.html http://tc.eserver.org/23865.html Author Ilise Benun looks at the web from a refreshing perspective, tying marketing and usability together through a common interest in understanding the people who use a web site. http://tc.eserver.org/23869.html http://tc.eserver.org/23869.html How do we communicate what we know about the people who use our products in an engaging, efficient way? How do we get beyond statistics to a portrait of users that helps us use this information to make decisions? http://tc.eserver.org/23745.html http://tc.eserver.org/23745.html Lighting design has a utilitarian role: to put enough light on the stage so that the audience can see the actors. But the lighting also helps shape the performance by providing the color and overtones that add meaning and layers and depth. The same mix of art and technology, craft and discipline exists in user interface design. http://tc.eserver.org/22869.html http://tc.eserver.org/22869.html Answers to questions like: where do Web pages come from? What are all those brackets in the text, anyway? How much HTML do I have to learn? How can I get started quickly? What kinds of HTML authoring tools are available to me? http://tc.eserver.org/22857.html http://tc.eserver.org/22857.html In the world of printed documentation, there are many different programs, with different ways of solving the problem of editing and layout, but they all produce the same product in the end--a printed page. The online world can be bewildering even to experienced authors, since not only the authoring approach but the end result can vary so widely. This session is a look at some of the different types of online systems and how they affect both interface and document design. http://tc.eserver.org/22849.html http://tc.eserver.org/22849.html As documentation is more and more built directly into the interface, and as technical communicators move into areas of interface design and usability, it is important to have a theoretical framework within which to make decisions about what kind of information should be conveyed at any moment. http://tc.eserver.org/21093.html http://tc.eserver.org/21093.html It's been two-and-a-half years since we started the Voting and Usability Project. This project started as we all realized with some horror that usability problems in our voting systems could affect the results of an election--effectively disenfranching some voters through the design of the ballot, as Susan King Roth put it in the report on her research. Since then, our interest has expanded into a more general interest in the usability of voting systems and usability professionals can help make voting systems more usable for everyone. http://tc.eserver.org/21034.html http://tc.eserver.org/21034.html The challenge of finding the right information at the right time has grown with the Web. The information superhighway is larger and more crowded than ever, and individual sites are also larger and more complex. With this explosion in the sheer volume of pages, finding the information you need is harder than ever. Search engines have always held out the promise of solving this problem, but they are often a usability disaster area. Inaccurate results, cluttered search entries, and a narrow focus on technological capabilities are only a few of the issues that make search features so difficult to use. http://tc.eserver.org/20928.html http://tc.eserver.org/20928.html For those who are interested in usability – whether long-time advocates or newly introduced – this is a good time to introduce a user-centered design process. http://tc.eserver.org/20926.html http://tc.eserver.org/20926.html Why are style guides so frequently created, but so rarely successful? All too often, businesses ask for a style guide as a means to create a common look and feel, in the belief that it will solve usability problems and establish consistency between applications – only to be disappointed in the results. Even if such a style guide is followed carefully, the resulting interfaces may not meet usability goals.. This paper explores strategies for creating a style guide that is more than a simplistic rules book. By making the style guide part of the process, it can be used to promote a shared vision, to help the product meet business and usability requirements for consistency and…it may actually be used. http://tc.eserver.org/20931.html http://tc.eserver.org/20931.html User-centered design should be a core part of every software development effort yet, despite its well-documented paybacks, it has yet to be widely adopted. Too often, user-centered design remains the province of visionaries rather than the everyday practice of programmers and analysts. Despite a general consensus on a basic approach to user-centered design (UCD), there is little understanding of the process and how it fits into larger software development methodologies. http://tc.eserver.org/20933.html http://tc.eserver.org/20933.html We are so accustomed to watching television that we easily overlook the limited resolution of the television screen. Compared to TV, even VGA looks good. Although both use a similar display monitor, they differ in both the way the screen is 'painted' and in how much information can be placed on the screen. To design effectively for interactive television, it is essential to understand the technical constraints of the medium. http://tc.eserver.org/20923.html http://tc.eserver.org/20923.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/20934.html http://tc.eserver.org/20934.html The technology of magazine production is well established. Editors have access to high-resolution print screens, and can use a wide variety of fonts, layout designs and graphics to create attractive and readable pages. Readers are used to seeing a lot of information on a single page - some in body text, some in sidebars or callouts. On screen, by contrast, the resolution is relatively low - 72 dpi as opposed to 2400 dpi. Readers are not yet accustomed to reading directly from the screen, and an overly cluttered screen or one with fonts which are too small can quickly become unreadable. http://tc.eserver.org/20932.html http://tc.eserver.org/20932.html Discussion of a global knowledge management system created in Lotus Notes for Novartis Consumer Health. http://tc.eserver.org/20929.html http://tc.eserver.org/20929.html What makes a story appropriate? Convincing? http://tc.eserver.org/20924.html http://tc.eserver.org/20924.html One of the exercises I find helpful is to 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. http://tc.eserver.org/20927.html http://tc.eserver.org/20927.html In defining a field, each person seems to look at the world and place themselves in the center of the circle, giving their specialty top billing as the summation of all the others. What exactly is gained by this political one-upmanship? In the face of this inflation, I find myself pulling back to the simplest craft title I can find. Or avoiding titles altogether. http://tc.eserver.org/20925.html http://tc.eserver.org/20925.html No one knew what to do. But there was a deadline, and the reviewers were coming. As a team, we walked through the schedule again and again until we had a plan. The next day, the video was edited, the shop finished the screens, and the production crew walked through the critical paths. http://tc.eserver.org/20285.html http://tc.eserver.org/20285.html As documentation is more and more built directly into the interface, and as technical communicators move into interface design and usability, it is important to have a theoretical framework within which to make decisions about what kind of information will be conveyed at any moment. We can build on basic principles of cognitive psychology to help us make these decisions. We start from a question: Why should users be aware of the difference between interface and documentation when all they want is to get something done? http://tc.eserver.org/19956.html http://tc.eserver.org/19956.html Technical writers have known for years that a good explanation for a bad software interface may be better than nothing, but that it’s not as good as a usable software interface. With ‘usability' gaining greater visibility, this is a good time to implement a usercentered design process. This article looks at ways that the approach and techniques of such a process can be applied to the task of introducing a new process. http://tc.eserver.org/19825.html http://tc.eserver.org/19825.html Many electronic documentation projects fail because usability and interface design are not included in the initial project definition and integrated into the process. The Cognetics Design Methodology is an approach to project planning that places the user at the center of the design. Whether you are just getting started on your first project or looking for ways to make your work better, the Cognetics Design Methodology can help you produce high quality work. This workshop will focus on the initial project definition steps, and is intended to give participants practical experience in the difficult task of getting a project off the ground. http://tc.eserver.org/19779.html http://tc.eserver.org/19779.html Creating a new magazine is a large task. Creating a new magazine on CD-ROM can be a huge task. All of the design and layout decisions which are part of any project are magnified in an electronic project. Writers and editors have to learn to write “for the screen, ” illustrations have to fit the size, graphics format and palette determined by the display program, every reference, sequence and link has to be checked online, and the whole thing has to run on a “real world” 386 machine. GetSmart made the journey, with its premier issue release in July 1995. http://tc.eserver.org/19497.html http://tc.eserver.org/19497.html The definition of usability is sometimes reduced to 'easy to use,' but this over-simplifies the problem and provides little guidance for the user interface designer. A more precise definition can be used to understand user requirements, formulate usability goals and decide on the best techniques for usability evaluations. An understanding of the five characteristics of usability – effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, easy to learn – helps guide the user-centered design tasks to the goal of usable products. http://tc.eserver.org/14247.html http://tc.eserver.org/14247.html Performance support (also called EPSS, for electronic performance support system) emerged from the instructional design and training communities because corporate enterprise systems were difficult for people to use, and the training needed to make them productive was expensive and time consuming. A good definition is that 'EPSS (Electronic Performance Support Systems) are systems that provide employees with the information, advice and learning experiences they need to get up to speed as quickly as possible and with the minimum of support from other people' (Raybould 1996). One of the issues in designing performance support is managing information overload. Two approaches are the use of agents and the presentation of information in visual form (called information visualization). The former looks for ways that computer programs can do work for users, sorting through data on their behalf; the latter looks for ways to present information so that users can directly access it through direct manipulation. You can do both, but the selection of each has an impact on the interaction style and the degree to which users can directly control the system. It is therefore an issue that any performance support system designer should consider carefully. This is a logical extension of the goal of easy-to-use programs, adding the requirement that the user interface be actively informative and helpful. http://tc.eserver.org/13710.html http://tc.eserver.org/13710.html For the past nine months the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) participated in a project to investigate the feasibility of certifying usability (or user-centered design) professionals. The project was kicked off in Salt Lake City last November when a group of people from many organizations, countries and associations met for three days. That meeting ended with a sense of enthusiasm for creating a certification program based on the international standard for a human-centered design process, ISO 13407. The group planned activities to survey professionals to determine the level of support for certification, and to understand the benefits and drawbacks seen by stakeholders. http://tc.eserver.org/13715.html http://tc.eserver.org/13715.html The mood on the usability e-lists is somber. At the WinWriters conference in February, every hand in the audience went up when we were asked if we knew someone who was out of work. Successive rounds of budget cuts and layoffs mean that even those who are still employed are on tenterhooks, or working even harder to fill the gaps. On list recently, posts were predicting even harder times ahead and worrying about whether it was time for usability practitioners to look for alternate careers. http://tc.eserver.org/11905.html http://tc.eserver.org/11905.html It might be easy to dismiss the WAI as another mouthful of acronyms for yet another Web standard but that would be a mistake. Their goal is to, '…make Web content more available to all users, whatever user agent they are using (e.g., desktop browser, voice browser, mobile phone, automobile-based personal computer, etc.) or constraints they may be operating under (e.g., noisy surroundings, under- or over-illuminated rooms, in a hands-free environment, etc.).' http://tc.eserver.org/11824.html http://tc.eserver.org/11824.html Why technical communicators and usability? Both writers and software development managers have asked me that question. In both cases, it springs from a narrow view of communicators as 'just writers.' It is a point of view that fails to see the many activities, from learning the subject matter to organizing the information or creating good document design, that are hidden behind that final task of writing the words. http://tc.eserver.org/11794.html http://tc.eserver.org/11794.html At the STC 1998 Annual Conference, attendees of usability related sessions participated in a survey investigating some of the issues involved in making the transition from technical writing to usability. We were interested in exploring what skills writers bring from their current job in technical writing, which they believe they are missing ,and how they are acquiring them. Most of the 67 participants in the survey (82%) are full time technical writers. The businesses represented range from finance to engineering; however, 45% are in the software industry. The companies themselves tend to be large: over half have 1000 or more employees, 25% are mid-sized with 100–1000, and 22% are smaller. http://tc.eserver.org/11795.html http://tc.eserver.org/11795.html Accessibility is often the last challenge taken up in designing the user interface. A color scheme is created and shown to the team for review. 'But what about people who are color blind?, ' someone will ask and a small groan goes around the table. Or the screen layout template for a web site is almost complete before anyone considers how it will work with a screen reader. The problem, of course, is that people with disabilities are not usually considered during the process of user segmentation. Their needs, which fall outside of the matrix, become an afterthought to the design. http://tc.eserver.org/11799.html http://tc.eserver.org/11799.html It might be easy to dismiss the WAI as another mouthful of acronyms for yet another Web standard but that would be a mistake. Their goal is to, '…make Web content more available to all users, whatever user agent they are using (e.g., desktop browser, voice browser, mobile phone, automobile-based personal computer, etc.) or constraints they may be operating under (e.g., noisy surroundings, under- or over-illuminated rooms, in a hands-free environment, etc.).' To meet this goal, the WAI identifies two primary principles for accessible design, which are totally in keeping with the basic principles of usability: 'Ensure graceful transformation' and 'Make content understandable and navigable.' There are fourteen guidelines that help authors understand and implement these principles. Each includes a description and rationale, along with links to other resources and a set of checkpoints. A related document shows detailed techniques for implementing accessible web pages. Even if you are not primarily concerned wi http://tc.eserver.org/11801.html http://tc.eserver.org/11801.html Why technical communicators and usability? Both writers and software development managers have asked me that question. In both cases, it springs from a narrow view of communicators as 'just writers.' It is a point of view that fails to see the many activities, from learning the subject matter to organizing the information or creating good document design, that are hidden behind that final task of writing the words. http://tc.eserver.org/11747.html http://tc.eserver.org/11747.html I’ve been working with a product development team for over a year and I think the world of them. Not only are they good at what they do, they are also concerned about creating a product which is both usable and technically robust. They are also serious about their process in which cross-functional teams work together on different parts of a large product. Recently when things got a little busy, we decided to invite another interface designer to help ease the workload. With a robust process and a good interface design, I didn’t think there would be much trouble to integrate a new designer. Imagine my surprise when one member of the group came to me in distress. It turned out that she had been walking the new person through all of the existing designs, showing her both the screen layouts and the analysis behind them. She said, 'As I showed her the prototypes, she kept asking questions. They were good questions, but I felt as though she had found every usability battle I had lost in the last six months.' http://tc.eserver.org/11745.html http://tc.eserver.org/11745.html Style guides are often requested as a way to promote a common look and feel but do little to address the real problems in the way user interfaces are developed. In many situations, a collection of rules for visual design and the use of controls can seem like a band-aid; promoting surface-level consistency rather than solving the real usability problems. Even when a good style guide is created, it is often ignored after release. Worse, the style guide can become a weapon where a user-centered design process is needed. In either case, the style guide has failed to produce the desired effect. What’s missing is a consensus on the scope, ownership, or content. Solving this problem requires a change in the way style guides are developed, distributed, and used. Three suggestions for teams developing style guides are to start early, to make the emerging style guide widely available, and to plan for long-term maintenance of the guidelines. http://tc.eserver.org/11751.html http://tc.eserver.org/11751.html It has been an exciting few months, what with the usability flaws in the 'butterfly ballot' in Florida possibly changing the course of history. The good news is that the controversy put usability into the public conversation with news articles, press releases, and even new research articles. It was an opportunity to explain 'what we do' to friends, relatives, and associates. Some of the lessons from the 2000 Presidential election are the basics of Usability 101. http://tc.eserver.org/10429.html http://tc.eserver.org/10429.html It is well accepted that understanding the users and a thorough analysis of their goals and tasks is a prerequisite for usability. To produce a document, online information, or knowledge base that is truly usable, the designer and writer must also consider different user approaches to the information to create it in a form that meets those needs. The underlying technology must also be considered, as it affects the presentation of the information as well as the functionality available to users. To meet user needs for useful online information, all these elements must be factored into the design—and technical communicators must master the skills necessary to make the right choices.