Heuristics to Evaluate Online Help

Creates a set of questions for each usability category for the person performing the heuristic evaluation with a range of very satisfied to very unsatisfied to not applicable. Each question can have a severity level that can raise significant opportunities for improvement to the foreground.

DeBoard, Donn. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods>Heuristic Evaluation

HHS Announces Availability of New Guidelines to Improve Web-Based Communication

Last month HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced the availability of a new research-based guide to Web site design and usability.

Usability Professionals Association (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods

Hiding Behind the User

At a time when the customer service culture has penetrated every level of business, and businesspeople fret endlessly over issues such as customer loyalty, companies are extremely susceptible to worries that they are, without even knowing it, turning customers away.

Eliot, Ben. Spiked Online (2002). Articles>Web Design>Usability

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.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Usability>Project Management>Planning

Home Stayers And Trench Diggers

This paper offers some observations on the ways 9 to 12 year children search for information on websites and how this may differ from the search behaviour of adults.

Hudson, Roger. Usability.com.au (2002). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Search

Hotspots and Hyperlinks: Using Eye-Tracking to Supplement Usability Testing

This article discusses how eye-tracking can be used to supplement traditional usability test measures. User performance on two usability tasks with three e-commerce websites is described. Results show that eye-tracking data can be used to better understand how users initiate a search for a targeted link or web object. Frequency, duration and order of visual attention to Areas of Interest (AOIs) in particular are informative as supplemental information to standard usability testing in understanding user expectations and making design recommendations.

Russell, Mark C. Usability News (2005). Articles>Usability>Testing>Eye Tracking

Hotspots and Hyperlinks: Using Eye-Tracking to Supplement Usability Testing

This article discusses how eye-tracking can be used to supplement traditional usability test measures. User performance on two usability tasks with three e-commerce websites is described. Results show that eye-tracking data can be used to better understand how users initiate a search for a targeted link or web object. Frequency, duration and order of visual attention to Areas of Interest (AOIs) in particular are informative as supplemental information to standard usability testing in understanding user expectations and making design recommendations.

Russell, Mark C. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>Testing>Eye Tracking

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.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>Web Design

How Do People Really Use Text Editors?

Keystroke statistics were collected on editing systems while people performed their normal work. Knowledge workers used an experimental editor, and secretaries used a word processor. Results show a consistent picture of free use patterns in both settings. Of the total number of keystrokes, text entry accounted for approximately 1/2, cursor movement for about 1/4, deletion for about 1/8, and all other functions for the remaining 1/8. Analysis of keystroke transitions and editing states is also presented. Implications for past research, editor design, keyboard layout, and benchmark tests are discussed.

Whiteside, John, Norman Archer, Dennis Wixon and Michael Good. ACM SIGCHI (1982). Articles>Usability>Software>Word Processing

How FreshDirect Delivered e-Commerce Success

The lessons for FreshDirect's usability success can be applied to many e-commerce businesses.

Seiden, Alan. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

How Good Does Your Web Site Look on Paper?

Paper prototyping is a fast, low-cost method of testing web site designs. It involves creating rough sketches of a web site design and inviting some of your users to take the design for a test drive using their pen, instead of a mouse, to complete important tasks.

Janisch, Troy. Icon Interactive (2004). Articles>Web Design>Usability

How Important is Visual Feedback When Using a Touch Screen?

From check station point-of-sale devices (restaurants, grocery stores, etc.) to information kiosks, to the cars we drive (navigation systems), touch screens have become the input device of choice.  While the versatility of the touch screen is highly desired, the poor performance it achieves relative to the mechanical keyboard has been something that users have been forced to deal with.  Empirical research studies have found that touch screens consistently produced slower and less accurate performance when compared with keyboards  (Barrett & Krueger, 1994; Wilson, Inderrieden, & Liu, 1995). Schneiderman (1998) outlines the many advantages and disadvantages to using a touch screen.

Deron, Michael. Usability News (2000). Articles>Usability>Design

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.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design

How Many Subjects Do I Need for a Statistically Valid Survey?

Beware of people who give quick, pat answers in response to the question - ‘I’m doing a survey. How many subjects do I need?’ They probably haven’t a clue as to what they’re talking about. There aren’t any valid quick answers to this question. I work in the medical domain and advise faculty/residents/medical students on sample size determination for survey research studies all the time because, in medicine, survey results are often discounted and are not publishable unless you can support/validate the decision you made regarding sample size. We do this through power analysis, and except for the simplest power analyses, it's good to have the advice and assistance of a statistician.

Gardner-Bonneau, Daryle. Usability Interface (1998). Articles>Usability

How Many Users Should You Test With in Usability Testing?

Doesn't one need to test with at least 100 or more users for statistical significance, accuracy and validity?

Spillers, Frank. Demystifying Usability (2005). Articles>Usability>Testing>Methods

How Might People Interact with Agents?

Agents occupy a strange place in the realm of technology, leading to much fear, fiction, and extravagant claims. The reasons for this are not hard to find: the concept of an 'agent,' especially when modified by the term 'intelligent,' brings forth images of human-like automatons, working without supervision on tasks thought to be for our benefit, but not necessarily to our liking. Probably all the major software manufacturers are exploring the use of intelligent agents. Myths, promises, and reality are all colliding. But the main difficulties I foresee are social, not technical: How will intelligent agents interact with people and perhaps more important, how might people think about agents?

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (1997). Articles>Usability>Interactive

How Much Interaction is Too Much?

Watching a colleague facilitate usability testing, the author asks what constitutes too much interaction by the facilitator. What his colleagues had to say got me thinking.

Anderson, Clifford. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Usability>Testing

How Product Teams Benefit from Usability

Product teams can leverage usability in three simple ways. First, usability can disambiguate requirements. Second, it can push a product closer to perfection with a small investment. Finally, usability helps product teams inform the organization about potential and expected support issues.

Rhodes, John S. Apogee (2006). Articles>Usability>Collaboration

How the Usability SIG Survey Was Developed

Although I had extensive experience creating surveys and analyzing survey results, working on a Usability SIG and an Employment and Salary Survey taught me a lot about a new survey tool.

Kleid, Naomi A. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Surveys

How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic evaluation is a usability engineering method for finding the usability problems in a user interface design so that they can be attended to as part of an iterative design process. Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the 'heuristics').

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1994). Articles>Usability>Methods>Heuristic Evaluation

How to Design an Effective User Interface  

Technical communicators who work as members of software development teams often act as user advocates. Part of this role includes working with developers to design screens that allow users to easily use the software and understand the information presented. This two-part workshop presents various exercies and handouts which help attendees develop an easy-to-use and understand interface for users.

Chiricosta, Tracey C. and Alice Alspach Jones. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>User Interface>Usability

How to Embed Usability and UCD Internally

Integrating usability into any organisation can be a difficult and isolating experience. Get the lowdown on how to achieve this within your organisation.

Ismail, Ismail. Webcredible (2007). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

How to Get Beneath the Surface in Focus Groups

It should come as no surprise that you can't always believe what you hear in focus groups, or anywhere else. Some people still believe that any moderator who can put participants at ease will get them to talk 'openly,' creating the 'right atmosphere' where the truth will come pouring out. This attitude has all too often led to findings which are clear-cut, simple, unambiguous and wrong. Are the things people are saying when pressed in focus groups really what moves them? How do you sort out the ambiguity, vagueness, omissions, contradictions, biases and irrelevancies of groups? Surely some of the most important motivators cannot easily be put into words: they are feelings, attitudes, values and beliefs that people may not be consciously aware of. How do you get beneath the surface to these hidden motivators? How do you eventually come out with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I have agonized over these issues for 26 years in thousands of groups. I still agonize over them in each and every project I undertake.

Silverman, George. MNav.com (2000). Articles>Usability>Methods>Focus Groups

How to Know Your Audience  

Lazzaro presents a method for conducting thorough user and audience analyses.

Lazzaro, Heather. Intercom (2001). Articles>Usability>Audience Analysis