http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Usability A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Usability 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/Articles/Usability http://tc.eserver.org/35696.html http://tc.eserver.org/35696.html Those who think video games are not educational, this post is for you. Not only can video games be an enjoyable experience, they can teach us many things. Websites and video games often use similar concepts about usability in order to achieve an amazing end-product. I’ve come up with 6 essential concepts that video games can teach web designers about usability. http://tc.eserver.org/35707.html http://tc.eserver.org/35707.html Listen up open source developers, if you want your project to succeed you’re going to have to do more than write great code; you’re going to have to document it, teach new users how it works and provide real-world examples of what you can do with it. That’s the message from Jacob Kaplan-Moss, one of the creators of Django, a very successful open source, Python-based web framework. At least some Django’s success can be attributed to its thorough documentation which is not just reference materials, but also includes tutorials, topical guides and even snippets of design philosophy. http://tc.eserver.org/35635.html http://tc.eserver.org/35635.html Integrating user assistance into the software interface is one of the best ways to increase the usability of your software application and thus make your customers more satisfied and successful. However, embedded help has the reputation of being difficult to develop and execute. Let’s take a look at a solution that makes it possible to quickly include an embedded, dynamic help pane in a software interface. http://tc.eserver.org/35646.html http://tc.eserver.org/35646.html In this Ask UXmatters column—which is the second in a three-part series of columns focusing on usability—our experts discuss how to conduct usability testing with limited funding. http://tc.eserver.org/35651.html http://tc.eserver.org/35651.html In this Ask UXmatters column—which is the first in a series of three columns focusing on usability—our experts discuss the use of usability testing versus expert reviews. http://tc.eserver.org/35653.html http://tc.eserver.org/35653.html It is easy to get excited about eyetracking. Seeing where people look while using your Web site, Web application, or software product sounds like an opportunity to get amazing insights into their user experience. But eyetracking is expensive and requires extra effort and specialized knowledge. The heat maps and other visualizations certainly look impressive, but what can you really learn from them? After using eyetracking for the first time, many find that it is not easy to know how to analyze the visualizations and make conclusions from them. Does eyetracking really provide any additional insights you would not have discovered anyway through traditional usability testing? Does the value of eyetracking outweigh its limitations? This article will discuss and answer these questions. http://tc.eserver.org/35679.html http://tc.eserver.org/35679.html How can you guarantee a clearly understandable user manual? Is it even possible to measure the quality of technical documents or does comprehensibility merely depend on the reader? To answer these questions for the Porsche AG, content analysis provider semiotis³ developed a model to help measure the quality of documents. http://tc.eserver.org/35597.html http://tc.eserver.org/35597.html A common mandate at many software companies is “Make our products consistent!” I’ve heard this clarion call for consistency at every company I’ve worked for that has more than a single product or service. The rationale behind the consistency mandate is that it will reduce design and development costs, improve the overall quality of the software, strengthen the brand (“the products should all look like they come from the same company”), make learning easier for users, and reduce errors when multiple products are used together. These are all great goals, but there is a problem with the consistency mandate – consistency is complex, multi-dimensional, and sometimes at odds with other important goals like usability. http://tc.eserver.org/35598.html http://tc.eserver.org/35598.html I’m part of the AEC User Experience Team at Autodesk. Our goal is to design a great user experience for our customers, but just what does that mean? Our definition of user experience focuses on all the touchpoints that current or new users have with our product. For example, the downloading of software trials is often the beginning of one’s user experience with a product. If you have to fill out forms that ask for too much information, (should “cell phone number” be a required field on a trial download form?) or present you with too many obstacles, the likelihood of a positive user experience will be low. Your interactions with technical support, documentation, the product, and even other products that you use, are all aspects of the user experience. http://tc.eserver.org/35599.html http://tc.eserver.org/35599.html User research focused on single experiences with a feature or workflow uncovers different problems and issues than longitudinal research. http://tc.eserver.org/35602.html http://tc.eserver.org/35602.html A few years ago, some of my colleagues decided to run a first-experience study on one of our software packages. The purpose of such a study is to gain an understanding of what our users go through in their first hour of use. What do they experience? Where do they get stuck? How far can they get in the software? What are their learning strategies? As a side experiment, my colleagues asked several experts in the company for their expert opinion as to what problems users would run into, and compiled them into a list. (These experts included the software designers, domain experts, and the people who trained users on the software.) Then my colleagues ran their study, observing sixteen people using this software for the first time, and made a list of the problems that users actually ran into. The result? There was not one common item on the two lists. http://tc.eserver.org/35573.html http://tc.eserver.org/35573.html Every programmer and user interface designer eventually comes to this point: You can’t decide how a specific part of your user interface should behave. It’s easy, of course. Just make it a preference, and everyone will be happy. http://tc.eserver.org/35575.html http://tc.eserver.org/35575.html Basically, terrible testing yields terrible results, and since the goal of the comparative usability tests was to find best practices, some teams in those tests did not follow best practices and thus did not get good results. In other words, the fact that they did not get good results is not an inherent problem with usability tests; it’s a direct result of them doing a poor job. http://tc.eserver.org/35577.html http://tc.eserver.org/35577.html Fortunately, you don't see dialogs in web apps much, but this sort of modal dialog lunacy is, sadly, becoming more popular in today's AJAX-y world of web 2.5. Those who can't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, I guess. http://tc.eserver.org/35578.html http://tc.eserver.org/35578.html This may sound a little harsh, but you'll see, when you do usability tests, that there are quite a few users who simply do not read words that you put on the screen. If you pop up an error box of any sort, they simply will not read it. http://tc.eserver.org/35591.html http://tc.eserver.org/35591.html As a user researcher with a primarily qualitative background, I have to confess that when I was asked to conduct a usability benchmark study on AutoCAD, I was not exactly jumping out of my chair. Frankly, I was wary of the quantitative emphasis of the method and the proposal to reduce the whole user experience down to a single number. I was also more than slightly nervous about designing a benchmark study for a product as complex as AutoCAD. http://tc.eserver.org/35593.html http://tc.eserver.org/35593.html How can we designers get valid feedback from more design iterations in less time? One bottleneck in the design flow is finding a steady stream of usability testers. Between the extremes of the perfect (an actual user, on site) and the unacceptable (the developer who's coding the feature), lies the grey zone of user proxies. Can you use internal employees with relevant domain knowledge to usability test your products, and still get valid data? http://tc.eserver.org/35595.html http://tc.eserver.org/35595.html User Experience and usability practitioners are on a continuous hunt for problems that plague our users. This seems straightforward – find problems from testing, user forums, observation, and other methods, prioritize the problems, and generate solutions that eliminate the complaint. However, some events that we call problems in one context may not be problems in another. http://tc.eserver.org/35454.html http://tc.eserver.org/35454.html When designing an online store, you have to consider many different types of customers: repeat customers, first-timers, people in a rush, etc. One thing that would help all of them is optimum usability. You can achieve this in a variety of ways, starting with eliminating the most common usability problems from your website. Fixing any one of the following eight common usability problems will get you started on the path to usability and user-experience heaven and, ultimately, more sales. http://tc.eserver.org/35446.html http://tc.eserver.org/35446.html Eye tracking has been investigated and 'toyed with' for many years by researchers and commercial usability professionals. Many new techniques and therefore interesting and powerful results are now available. http://tc.eserver.org/35447.html http://tc.eserver.org/35447.html Incorporation of eye position recording into product usability evaluation can provide insights into human-computer interaction that are not available from traditional usability testing methods. We present here some thoughts on this topic which arose primarily from a CHI 99 workshop. This workshop brought together human-computer interaction designers, eye movement researchers and usability testing specialists for a discussion about how to extract information about product usability from users’ eye movements. http://tc.eserver.org/35404.html http://tc.eserver.org/35404.html Usability evaluations are good for many things, but determining a team's priorities is not one of them. The Molich experiment proves a single usability team can't discover all or even most major problems on a site. But usability testing does have value as a shock treatment, trust builder, and part of a triangulation process. Test for the right reasons and achieve a positive outcome. http://tc.eserver.org/35397.html http://tc.eserver.org/35397.html Next time you consider adding a reset button to a form, think it through very carefully first. Does the user really benefit from being able to reset the form? Is being able to reset the form to its initial state so valuable that it is worth the risk of the user losing the data they have entered? Probably not. http://tc.eserver.org/35366.html http://tc.eserver.org/35366.html Although there are other ways to increase your blog's readability, these are the most important elements to consider: font size, line height, line length, typeface, background, subheadings, paragraphs, white space, graphics, and invisibility. http://tc.eserver.org/35359.html http://tc.eserver.org/35359.html Discusses the cognitive shortcuts that may hinder technical communicators in empathizing with readers. Explores the issue of judging the severity of problems detected in a document evaluation. Demonstrates how cognitive shortcuts may affect technical communicators' capability to assess the likelihood and impact of reader problems. http://tc.eserver.org/35352.html http://tc.eserver.org/35352.html There seems to be this idea going around that usability testing is bad, or that the cool kids don’t do it. That it’s old skool. That designers don’t need to do it. What if I told you that usability testing is the hottest thing in experience design research? Every time a person has a great experience with a website, a web app, a gadget, or a service, it’s because a design team made excellent decisions about both design and implementation—decisions based on data about how people use designs. And how can you get that data? Usability testing. http://tc.eserver.org/35317.html http://tc.eserver.org/35317.html Usability tests are a core design tool and, when done well, they deliver tremendous insights to the team. However, when a usability test is done poorly, it can be a disaster for everyone involved. An important key to their success is the work of a great moderator. http://tc.eserver.org/35305.html http://tc.eserver.org/35305.html Users hate change, so it's usually best to stay with a familiar design and evolve it gradually. In the long run, however, incrementalism eventually destroys cohesiveness, calling for a new UI architecture. http://tc.eserver.org/35306.html http://tc.eserver.org/35306.html Users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on social networks. http://tc.eserver.org/35307.html http://tc.eserver.org/35307.html From 0.1 seconds to 10 years or more, user interface design has many different timeframes, and each has its own particular usability issues. http://tc.eserver.org/35308.html http://tc.eserver.org/35308.html Simple user testing with 5 participants, paper prototyping, and heuristic evaluation offer a cheap, fast, and early focus on usability, as well as many rounds of iterative design. http://tc.eserver.org/35285.html http://tc.eserver.org/35285.html When the subjects of usability and user friendliness in relation to documentation are broached, writing isn’t often the first thing that comes to mind. But it should be. http://tc.eserver.org/35266.html http://tc.eserver.org/35266.html Preparing for usability testing requires a surprisingly large amount of planning. Here are the 6 key steps you should go through to get ready. http://tc.eserver.org/35237.html http://tc.eserver.org/35237.html We believe user research is too important to give up. So we have to run tests quickly and cheaply for our clients to accept the cost - and we have to clearly show how it brings value. Because of this, we’ve developed a toolbox of quick, cheap UX research techniques. In this article, we’ll talk about one technique known as fast prototyping, and how we effectively used it in a recent project for Vodafone Ireland. http://tc.eserver.org/35230.html http://tc.eserver.org/35230.html I live and breathe user experience design, and yet it took me two years to get myself the device referenced by almost every single presentation about user experience since 2007… Apple’s iPhone. My reasons were very specific and perhaps boring, but what is interesting is the perspective this wait has afforded me. Since it was released, the iPhone has grabbed an astonishing share of mobile Web traffic, been regarded as a “game-changer” in both the design and business worlds, and has even been referred to as the “Jesus Phone.” Now that I’ve owned one for two weeks I’ve developed a different perspective. The iPhone is surprisingly difficult to use, but it sure is fun! And that is why it’s a game-changer. http://tc.eserver.org/35213.html http://tc.eserver.org/35213.html Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites. http://tc.eserver.org/35216.html http://tc.eserver.org/35216.html First person user interfaces can be a good fit for applications that allow people to navigate the real world, “augment” their immediate surroundings with relevant information, and interact with objects or people directly around them. http://tc.eserver.org/35195.html http://tc.eserver.org/35195.html For simple, commonly known actions in a closed environment, you probably can design your way to a “no user documentation” approach. Good design can also lead to less documentation. However, customers may expect to do more than that with a product and, in those situations, documentation can play a key role in meeting those expectations. http://tc.eserver.org/35162.html http://tc.eserver.org/35162.html Now when people show up at a website, many of them ignore our lovingly crafted navigational elements and jump to the site search box. The increased use of site search as a core navigation method makes it very important to understand the data that site search generates. http://tc.eserver.org/35173.html http://tc.eserver.org/35173.html Affordance allows us to look at something and intuitively understand how to interact with it. For example, when we see a small button next to a door, we know we should push it with a finger. Convention tells us it will make a sound, notifying the homeowner that someone is at the door. This concept transfers to the virtual environment: when we see a 3D-shaped button on a web page, we understand that we are supposed to “push” it with a mouse-click. http://tc.eserver.org/35115.html http://tc.eserver.org/35115.html The millions in America who navigate the world with a physical disability are poised to receive a lot of company over the next 20 years. The Baby Boomer generation is about to flood the population and promises to create a future in which centenarians are not at all unusual. With increased longevity comes more frequent occurrence of disabilities, thus demanding increased attention to making accessible technology more widely available. http://tc.eserver.org/35096.html http://tc.eserver.org/35096.html Recently, Office Depot redesigned their search user interface, adding attribute-based filtering and creating a more dynamic, interactive user experience. Unfortunately, Office Depot’s interaction design misses some key points, making their new search user interface less usable and, therefore, less effective. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the Office Depot site presents us with an excellent case study for demonstrating some of the important best practices for designing filters for faceted search results. http://tc.eserver.org/35103.html http://tc.eserver.org/35103.html We made a timeline message more punchy, credible, and viral through 5 rounds of redesign. http://tc.eserver.org/35106.html http://tc.eserver.org/35106.html Websites that let users customize the UI have the same measured usability as regular sites. Sites for customizing products, however, score substantially worse due to complex workflow. http://tc.eserver.org/35092.html http://tc.eserver.org/35092.html A product is actually a service. Although the designer, manufacturer, distributer, and seller may think it is a product, to the buyer, it offers a valuable service. In reality a product is all about the experience. http://tc.eserver.org/35082.html http://tc.eserver.org/35082.html Usability is the combination of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which the users accomplish defined goals in a given environment. User-centered documentation matches the users' mental model, thereby helping the users find information they want quickly and easily in their hour of need. The list of documentation usability criteria is fairly subjective at this time, and various opinionated discussion groups have contributed to this. Usable documentation is based on a deep understanding of the users' tasks, and this understanding can only be gained through interviewing representative users. Applying information architecture techniques, the content within documentation should be properly chunked so that the users can assimilate the information properly. Procedural guides should have a well-defined and searchable index that enables users to connect key application terms to their correct context. User-friendly documentation is always succinct, but never at the expense of omitting critical/useful information. It should be developed using a structured process so that it starts with the big picture and gradually adds lower level of details, addressing the needs of every unique group of users. Finally, the documentation must be tested among a representative group of users, and their feedback should be incorporated to make sure that it has met all of the major usability criteria. http://tc.eserver.org/35052.html http://tc.eserver.org/35052.html Marketing departments – especially in IT – like to speak in the modern lingo about a product’s innovative “Look and Feel”. While “Look“ refers to the design of the solution, “Feel” means usability, the quality of use. Developers of Content Management Systems and other enterprise IT solutions have to walk a fine line to meet the exacting demands of users in both areas. But in recent years a clear trend has become apparent: There is a drive towards the modern, “cool” product design where at a minimum usability takes a back seat, often to its detriment. http://tc.eserver.org/34938.html http://tc.eserver.org/34938.html Every day in offices around the world usability professionals ask and are asked this question: How many users do we need for our usability test? Its an important question. We want to find most of and the most severe problems. So, we need to test enough people. But usability testing is so expensive, and the cost of testing increases with each participant. So, we don't want to test too many, either. http://tc.eserver.org/34941.html http://tc.eserver.org/34941.html There is a necessary connection between theory and practice. But there is also a difference between the two. And that difference, as van de Snepscheut said, is larger in practice than it is in theory. http://tc.eserver.org/34942.html http://tc.eserver.org/34942.html Ideally, academic research should inform workplace practices and workplace practices should inform academic research and education. However, as many researchers have noted, a gap often exists between academia and industry. This article begins to bridge that gap by reporting the results of a small-scale study at Microsoft in which 12 individuals were interviewed about their views on usability education and research. This study addressed two questions: (1) What knowledge, skills, and abilities should technical communication teachers stress in teaching usability and (2) how can academic research in usability benefit practitioners? The results indicate that usability education needs to be expanded to include additional usability evaluation methods and that students need strong critical assessment and communication skills when they enter the workplace. The results also reveal that usability research in the areas of return-on-investment, online help, and cognition would be of great use to practitioners. http://tc.eserver.org/34943.html http://tc.eserver.org/34943.html We present a study comparing usability testing of a single interface versus three functionally equivalent but stylistically distinct designs. We found that when presented with a single design, users give significantly higher ratings and were more reluctant to criticize than when presented with the same design in a group of three. Our results imply that by presenting users with alternative design solutions, subjective ratings are less prone to inflation and give rise to more and stronger criticisms when appropriate. Contrary to our expectations, our results also suggest that usability testing by itself, even when multiple designs are presented, is not an effective vehicle for soliciting constructive suggestions about how to improve the design from end users. It is a means to identify problems, not provide solutions. http://tc.eserver.org/34946.html http://tc.eserver.org/34946.html There are many articles on the web, which have deliberated upon technical communication (TC) and usability together. Apparently, there are two distinct regions of usability where technical communicators can contribute. http://tc.eserver.org/34952.html http://tc.eserver.org/34952.html There is a lot of curiosity about ethnography in design among designers, especially the academicians. Context study or field study are the other similar activities discussed in the domain of usability. I happened to have carried out an ethnographic assignment almost a decade ago. I thought, sharing that experience (good or bad) will be useful to many. http://tc.eserver.org/34954.html http://tc.eserver.org/34954.html In a typical on-camera usability test, in the lab environment, we ask the subjects to perform certain tasks using the product. Such tests are time-bound and follow strict procedures in terms of user profiling, briefing, task descriptions, actual performance and think aloud exercise, screen capturing (in case of software), etc. You do the video recording of usability test to observe the user performance, their response and behavior. All this is perfectly fine. Coming back to certain observations from the Big Boss reality show. I found that the participants of Big Boss have evolved through distinct psychological stages, which are sequentially progressive. http://tc.eserver.org/34891.html http://tc.eserver.org/34891.html Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures. http://tc.eserver.org/34892.html http://tc.eserver.org/34892.html ユーザがパスワードを打ち込んでも、黒い点の列でしかフィードバックが返ってこないとき、ユーザビリティは損なわれている。パスワードを隠したからといって、セキュリティは強化されないことが多く、逆に、ログインの失敗によって、あなたのビジネスに悪影響を及ぼす。 http://tc.eserver.org/34893.html http://tc.eserver.org/34893.html Enemies of usability claim that because "the experts disagree," they can safely ignore user advocates' expertise and run with whatever design they personally prefer. http://tc.eserver.org/34894.html http://tc.eserver.org/34894.html ユーザビリティの敵達は「専門家の意見が一致していない」という理由で主張し、ユーザを擁護する者の専門知識を難なく無視し、彼らが個人的に好きなデザインなら何であれ推進する。 http://tc.eserver.org/34901.html http://tc.eserver.org/34901.html ごくごく小規模な経験的な事実（例えば、観察対象のユーザが2人）からでも、そこから得られる事実はUIデザインに対して、正しい判断ができる確率を大きく高めてくれる。 http://tc.eserver.org/34902.html http://tc.eserver.org/34902.html 個人投資家はあまりにも複雑なIRサイトに怖気づき、財務データのシンプルなサマリーを欲しがっている。個人投資家も投資専門家も、共に必要としているのは、企業自体のstoryとその投資ビジョンである。 http://tc.eserver.org/34904.html http://tc.eserver.org/34904.html タスク成功率は、2004 年のユーザビリティ統計と比べると大きく上昇した。しかしそれにもかかわらず、ユーザがタスクを完遂できないケースがあり、その原因の大半は情報アーキテクチャ(IA)の出来の悪さにある。 http://tc.eserver.org/34905.html http://tc.eserver.org/34905.html リンクの最初の11文字がどれだけ理解されるかをテストすれば、そのサイトがユーザのために書かれたかものかどうかがわかる。ユーザというのはリストの項目を全部読む、というよりは、流し読みをするものだからだ。 http://tc.eserver.org/34906.html http://tc.eserver.org/34906.html ユーザー調査の結果、非営利団体のウェブサイトはコンテンツが著しく不足しており、寄付に踏み切るための判断材料に欠けていることがよくあることがわかった。 http://tc.eserver.org/34908.html http://tc.eserver.org/34908.html 大きな二次元のドロップダウンパネルは、ナビゲーションの選択肢をグループ化することでスクロールの必要性を無くし、タイポグラフィやアイコン、ツールチップを使うことで、ユーザの選択できる内容をわかりやすく提示してくれる。 http://tc.eserver.org/34911.html http://tc.eserver.org/34911.html Submitting regulatory documents electronically to the FDA is beneficial for sponsors and regulatory reviewers, but the use of electronic submissions brings with it a set of problems associated with how these documents are read by reviewers. http://tc.eserver.org/34868.html http://tc.eserver.org/34868.html Accessibility is not something to be left to specialists hired to clean up our mess at the end. It should be a priority of the entire development team from the beginning. Yes, companies should definitely have accessibility people on-board, but they should act as much as educators and coaches as designers. Everyone on the development team must be aware of and responsive to the full spectrum of identified users if your product is to sell to the widest possible audience. That’s the only way to achieve inclusive design. http://tc.eserver.org/34869.html http://tc.eserver.org/34869.html Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be disabled? Well, you better start thinking about it! As my collegue Gregg Vanderheiden is fond of pointing out, 'We all will have disabilities eventually, unless we die first.' http://tc.eserver.org/34870.html http://tc.eserver.org/34870.html The job of a retail site is to attract the consumer, sell the product, and deliver it. In the case of a manufacturer site, the only difference when encountering a retail customer is that, instead of delivering the product, the site may deliver the customer—to an authorized retailer. http://tc.eserver.org/34872.html http://tc.eserver.org/34872.html Want to build a great website incorporating aesthetic design and usability? Find out what to measure to help ensure your site has great aesthetic design. http://tc.eserver.org/34873.html http://tc.eserver.org/34873.html Despite the authoritative nature of international standards for usability, many of them are not widely used. This paper explains both the benefits and some of the potential problems in using usability standards in areas including user interface design, usability assurance, software quality, and usability process improvement. http://tc.eserver.org/34874.html http://tc.eserver.org/34874.html The System Usability Scale (SUS) is an inexpensive, yet effective tool for assessing the usability of a product, including Web sites, cell phones, interactive voice response systems, TV applications, and more. It provides an easy-to-understand score from 0 (negative) to 100 (positive). While a 100-point scale is intuitive in many respects and allows for relative judgments, information describing how the numeric score translates into an absolute judgment of usability is not known. To help answer that question, a seven-point adjective-anchored Likert scale was added as an eleventh question to nearly 1,000 SUS surveys. Results show that the Likert scale scores correlate extremely well with the SUS scores (r=0.822). The addition of the adjective rating scale to the SUS may help practitioners interpret individual SUS scores and aid in explaining the results to non-human factors professionals. http://tc.eserver.org/34875.html http://tc.eserver.org/34875.html The trade show booth on the exhibit floor of a conference is traditionally used for company representatives to sell their products and services. However, the trade booth environment also creates an opportunity, for it can give the development team easy access to many varied participants for usability testing. The question is can we adapt usability testing methods to work in such an environment? Extremely rapid usability testing (ERUT) does just this, where we deploy a combination of questionnaires, interviews, storyboarding, co-discovery, and usability testing in a trade show booth environment. We illustrate ERUT in actual use during a busy photographic trade show. It proved effective for actively gathering real-world user feedback in a rapid paced environment where time is of the essence. http://tc.eserver.org/34876.html http://tc.eserver.org/34876.html A study of how 23 Taiwanese and North American subjects use a consumer electronic product shows that culture strongly affects the usability of the product. Survey data shows that North American users had much lower levels of user satisfaction and perceptions of effectiveness and efficiency than Taiwanese users. On the other hand, results on performance were unclear, indicating similar levels of effectiveness for both cultural groups and conflicting results on levels of efficiency. http://tc.eserver.org/34803.html http://tc.eserver.org/34803.html Usability and compatibility testing is a must. If you’re developing a Web application, test it with not only the major desktop browsers but with the popular mobile browsers as well. If your application isn’t friendly to mobile devices, say so up front when someone visits that application using a mobile browser. It will prevent a lot of frustration on the part of users. http://tc.eserver.org/34785.html http://tc.eserver.org/34785.html Try right-branching sentences in your technical documents for higher comprehension. Right-branching sentences start with the subject, follow it with primary verb (or sometimes the other way around if the verb is in imperative/order mode), and then end with modifiers and other relevant information. What branches off to the right of the subject and the verb is all the additional information you want to get across. http://tc.eserver.org/34759.html http://tc.eserver.org/34759.html Four major components are covered in this checklist: accessibility, identity, navigation and content. The list is a printable PDF and contains a rating system and space for comments. http://tc.eserver.org/34685.html http://tc.eserver.org/34685.html Focus groups and usability testing are two very useful but very different user research disciplines. This article will look at the difference between focus groups and usability testing, the pros and cons of each and when in the development process you should use them. http://tc.eserver.org/34686.html http://tc.eserver.org/34686.html Las normas básicas de como escribir un texto para web, vamos, lo que todo copywriter se sabe de carrerilla. http://tc.eserver.org/34637.html http://tc.eserver.org/34637.html Even though your customers may not read manuals, your tech support team probably does, which means someone is reading the manuals and using them to help others. But if your users find it easier to call someone, wait on hold for an agent, and then ask the agent a question rather than find the answer in the help, maybe your help materials aren’t very usable. Maybe increasing the usability of your company’s documentation could alleviate the need users feel to seek answers from another source. http://tc.eserver.org/34622.html http://tc.eserver.org/34622.html Summary The issue with HP laptops that have a touch pad with a scroll zone contained it (as shown in image A) is that they do not provide a tactile cue for the user to help interpret what section of the touch pad the finger is positioned at. In the absence of a tactile cue, it is difficult for the user to determine whether the finger is on touch pad or the scroll zone without looking at it, resulting in the accidental scrolling on the screen when actually the user simply wants to move the cursor. The issue and multiple solutions are discussed ahead. http://tc.eserver.org/34617.html http://tc.eserver.org/34617.html The concept behind website operability is simple: Can everybody use the tools and mechanisms required to operate your website? Operability may seem easy, but it can be very challenging. Every control, every link, and every button on your site is a potential point of failure for operability. Without appropriate consideration for the disabled, you run the risk that disabled users will be unable to access your site. http://tc.eserver.org/34586.html http://tc.eserver.org/34586.html Finding information in documentation is easy. Or is it? This blog post argues that there's no universal solution, and that each document and each delivery method offers challenges and requires a slightly different solution. http://tc.eserver.org/34536.html http://tc.eserver.org/34536.html Many digital agencies are now talking about usability and including it in their offering, but few are incorporating into their everyday process. Here are some reasons why agencies should think seriously about integrating usability and usability testing into their offering. http://tc.eserver.org/34537.html http://tc.eserver.org/34537.html Even the tiniest amount of empirical facts (say, observing 2 users) vastly improves the probability of making correct UI design decisions. http://tc.eserver.org/34538.html http://tc.eserver.org/34538.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34502.html http://tc.eserver.org/34502.html In case you are not using the services of a professional recruitment agency, or do not have an internal recruitment team that can help you acquire participants for usability tests, here are some tips to help you begin with finding those participants successfully. http://tc.eserver.org/34506.html http://tc.eserver.org/34506.html Context-sensitive help is a practical way to cut down on customer support expenses and add more value to documentation. By providing more complex, context-sensitive help, the usability of the help increases while call center phone calls decrease. http://tc.eserver.org/34507.html http://tc.eserver.org/34507.html Makes the case for embedded help as one of the most effective ways to integrate help within an interface. Although it can be difficult, Bleiel illustrates a way to “elegantly implement and map embedded help.” http://tc.eserver.org/34508.html http://tc.eserver.org/34508.html Have you ever found it difficult to fill out a seemingly simple form? Jarrett explains how to create questions that are easy to understand and accessible by all, focusing on details, the difference between prompts and fully formed questions, questions that need more explanation, and other aspects. http://tc.eserver.org/34509.html http://tc.eserver.org/34509.html that optimal word choices, good sentence structure, and general readability are the basics that comprise usability. “Writing is what most of us do most of the time.” http://tc.eserver.org/34510.html http://tc.eserver.org/34510.html Using an example from his personal life, Haller shows how government writing should be simplified to ensure that a reader can understand government documents. He also discusses the importance of passing the Brayley Bill, the plain language bill. http://tc.eserver.org/34511.html http://tc.eserver.org/34511.html The authors give a detailed account of their assignment to create a content management system (CMS) for a large office and how paying close attention to workplace culture and behavior affected their design of an effective CMS. http://tc.eserver.org/34512.html http://tc.eserver.org/34512.html As human beings, we create conceptual models that enable us to understand the complex world around us. Hart believes that information designers should understand mental models as a tool for creating the best possible communications. http://tc.eserver.org/34514.html http://tc.eserver.org/34514.html There are a exponentially growing amount of applications being developed. Some of them vanish at an early stage, while others grow to be quite (and sometimes extremely) popular. What really dazzles me is how sucky many of them (both the popular and the unpopular ones) are regarding how they deal with user-interaction. http://tc.eserver.org/34479.html http://tc.eserver.org/34479.html When we’re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we’ve organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click. What they actually do most of the time (if we’re lucky) is glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they don’t even look at. http://tc.eserver.org/34459.html http://tc.eserver.org/34459.html The out of box experience (OOBE) describes the users first interaction with a product or service. In the technology sector this first experience invariably involves plugging stuff in, installing some software and crossing your fingers in the hope that the product will work. The problem is that, in far too many cases, it doesn’t. http://tc.eserver.org/34460.html http://tc.eserver.org/34460.html The benefits of user testing have long been established. It is still important however to try and maximise these benefits. One way in which this can be done is by viewing the user test yourself. http://tc.eserver.org/34461.html http://tc.eserver.org/34461.html It is important to remember that the experience a person has using a product or service is every bit as important as that product or services usability. http://tc.eserver.org/34462.html http://tc.eserver.org/34462.html Focus groups are a great way to collect information from several people very quickly and cost effectively. They are mainly used to gauge people’s reactions and feelings to items, however when used appropriately they can also be used as part of user requirements gathering. http://tc.eserver.org/34463.html http://tc.eserver.org/34463.html In recent user testing with a range of participants including Visually Impaired (VIP) and Blind users we found that the majority of problems were common across all groups. However the effect of poor usability is more severe for users with visual disabilities. Surprisingly all of the issues are very familiar and are easy to fix so we thought we’d revisit some of the basics of accessible web design. http://tc.eserver.org/34464.html http://tc.eserver.org/34464.html In several recent websites we have user tested, the site designers have placed important task critical links and information on the right hand side (RHS) of three column page layouts. The user testing was conclusive, users ignore any information presented on the RHS. We think this is a similar effect to the well documented banner blindness. It is essential to ensure that import links or information is not positioned on the RHS as they will surely be ignored. http://tc.eserver.org/34467.html http://tc.eserver.org/34467.html Requirements gathering is all about aiming at the right target. It doesn't matter how accurate you are, if you aim at the wrong target, you miss. http://tc.eserver.org/34433.html http://tc.eserver.org/34433.html If we say that it was mainly because of the Windows operating system that a computer could become a personal computer it would not be an exaggeration. The revolution is still on. Windows is far beyond what a common man presently knows and uses. http://tc.eserver.org/34407.html http://tc.eserver.org/34407.html Though the relationship between software engineering and user experience is not always an easy one, software engineers and UX professionals share some common goals. Both have a vested interest in producing systems that are useful and usable. This column will explore how we can apply software engineering concepts and practices in the context of user experience design and, hopefully, build greater understanding between the two disciplines. http://tc.eserver.org/34290.html http://tc.eserver.org/34290.html Task success is up substantially compared with usability statistics from 2004. Bad information architecture causes most of the remaining user failures. http://tc.eserver.org/34291.html http://tc.eserver.org/34291.html Testing how well people understand a link's first 11 characters shows whether sites write for users, who typically scan rather than read lists of items. http://tc.eserver.org/34292.html http://tc.eserver.org/34292.html User research finds significant deficiencies in non-profit organizations' website content, which often fails to provide the info people need to make donation decisions. http://tc.eserver.org/34293.html http://tc.eserver.org/34293.html Given that regular drop-down menus are rife with usability problems, it takes a lot for me to recommend a new form of drop-down. But, as our testing videos show, mega drop-downs overcome the downsides of regular drop-downs. Thus, I can recommend one while warning against the other. http://tc.eserver.org/34294.html http://tc.eserver.org/34294.html Writing for Kindle is like writing for print, the Web, and mobile devices combined; optimal usability means optimizing content for each platform's special characteristics. http://tc.eserver.org/34299.html http://tc.eserver.org/34299.html Mobile phone users struggle mightily to use websites, even on high-end devices. To solve the problems, websites should provide special mobile versions. http://tc.eserver.org/34300.html http://tc.eserver.org/34300.html As three studies of journalists show, they use the Web as a major research tool, exhibit high search dominance, and are impatient with bloated sites that don't serve their needs or list a PR contact. http://tc.eserver.org/34304.html http://tc.eserver.org/34304.html Simplicity is key to any successful website or web app. If your site is too complicated, the user will have to go through too many hoops to find what they are looking for and won’t even bother trying it out. http://tc.eserver.org/34285.html http://tc.eserver.org/34285.html Looking to design a website for older users? Read through these top tips and ensure your site is as effective as possible. http://tc.eserver.org/34121.html http://tc.eserver.org/34121.html To address the challenge of developing a shared understanding of the users that participate in each scenario we have developed a set of personas that describe the work styles, characteristics and motivations that are common to particular groups of people using our products. The personas help us communicate these characteristics by humanizing them, increasing the empathy that team members have for these fictional users. http://tc.eserver.org/34125.html http://tc.eserver.org/34125.html Do you want faster-loading Web pages? Learn how you can make the browsing experience better for dial-up users by reducing loading times by as much as 80 percent, in some cases. http://tc.eserver.org/34080.html http://tc.eserver.org/34080.html If your site’s core function is in the content you publish, then the interface should take a back seat. Make an interface that’s transparent and not distracting to use. Remember that the UI is not the content and not the focus of your site. Getting these priorities right will help you make a great user interface. http://tc.eserver.org/34050.html http://tc.eserver.org/34050.html Ubuntu's biggest Achilles heel is software installation and updating. Installing some software was simple, but installing others was so baffling as to be nearly incomprehensible. The same holds true for updates; I ultimately gave up on even trying to update OpenOffice.org. http://tc.eserver.org/33963.html http://tc.eserver.org/33963.html It can be difficult to move from a static, pixel-based design approach to an elastic, relative method. Properly implemented, however, elastic design can be a viable option that enhances usability and accessibility without mandating design sacrifices. 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/33956.html http://tc.eserver.org/33956.html Search results pages are some of the most visited pages on typical e-commerce sites—to say nothing of a search engine like Google. Many articles appear each year about optimal search algorithms, database performance, and the like. In contrast, very few publications focus on improving the search experience from the customer’s perspective. http://tc.eserver.org/33958.html http://tc.eserver.org/33958.html In today’s financial climate, organisations are trying to cut costs. This has led to lots of new and innovative cost-cutting usability techniques springing up. Some of them are ingenious, but not every cost saving measure is a good idea. One technique that is becoming popular with some is focus group usability testing. I recommend that you avoid this technique completely. I’ll try to explain why. http://tc.eserver.org/33937.html http://tc.eserver.org/33937.html What’s the difference between usability and user experience? For me, user experience is the experience someone has when using a design. Usability is the extent to which the design provides a good user experience. Usability is often misunderstood to mean ‘ease of use’. It’s much more than this though. http://tc.eserver.org/33939.html http://tc.eserver.org/33939.html The usability of a website is relative to the audience that it was designed for. A website that is designed well for its primary audience will not necessarily provide a great user experience for everyone that tries to use it. It’s important to identify your target user if you’re going to make a site that works well for the right people. http://tc.eserver.org/33911.html http://tc.eserver.org/33911.html How we choose what to buy is a key question that should be asked when designing an ecommerce website. Find out the importance of and relationship between aesthetics and usability. http://tc.eserver.org/33912.html http://tc.eserver.org/33912.html Even in these relatively advanced times, there's a whole set of problems faced by mobile users when it comes to accessing the Internet. Read about the importance of mobile usability. http://tc.eserver.org/33872.html http://tc.eserver.org/33872.html More than likely your content management system (CMS) will have many usability problems if you just use it “out of the box”. Having been involved in a number of projects tasked with implementing a these types of systems—including content management systems for websites, intranets and wikis for knowledge management—I’ve noticed that there are a number of key areas of the user interface that frequently need fixing from a usability point of view. http://tc.eserver.org/33840.html http://tc.eserver.org/33840.html This paper focuses on managing constraints in a way that enables developers to create an accessible and usable user interface (UI). The constraining processes presented in this paper comprise of a language to describe a logical web page in an application, a basic bottom-up repository management system and the processing required for compiling pages. http://tc.eserver.org/33747.html http://tc.eserver.org/33747.html I've been in the following scenario several times. I'm in a meeting room with the web and marketing teams and there is a raging debate about brand guidelines. A proposed improvement to the design contravenes the guidelines. One group think that branding is more important than usability. The other group think the opposite. They are both wrong. Usability is branding. It shapes people's opinions of your product or organisation.