The Mystery of Recruiting

We love a good detective novel, so it is no surprise that the sometimes mysterious nature in which market research operates gives us a similar kick. As the great Sherlock Holmes poses the endless questions for his unfortunate sidekick, Watson, it behooves us to do the same in our line of work: What is the ultimate goal of the ubiquitously mysterious end-client? Who will benefit from this study? Who ultimately has the means, the motive and the opportunity to participate?

Lundgren, Lauren and Tina Osinski. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Articles>Usability>Methods

The Myth of "The User"

Instead of becoming computer users, like the cheery protagonists of Star Trek, we've become the computer used, like the gloomy inhabitants of Dilbert.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Indus (2007). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

The Myth of Discoverability

Discoverability is often defined as the ability for a user of a design to locate something that they need, in order to complete a certain task. It’s common to hear programmers and designers utter the phrase “that won’t be discoverable”, while pointing to a specific command or link they believe users will fail to find. The trap, and the myth, of discoverability is that in any design, not everything can be discoverable.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2003). Articles>Usability

The Myth of the Genius Designer

Having a good designer doesn't eliminate the need for a systematic usability process. Risk reduction and quality improvement both require user testing and other usability methods.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Testing

The Narrative Web: Beyond Usability and Design

The point is not that we should add stories to our sites to ensnare narrative-starved readers. The point is that the reader's journey through our site is a narrative experience. Our job is to make the narrative satisfying.

Bernstein, Mark. List Apart, A (2001). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Rhetoric

Navigation: Left is Best

Web sites and Web applications require users to select from navigational options to access subsequent content pages. An important question relates to where the first navigational choices should be located on the page. Is the navigation better placed at the top of the page, on the left or right panels? If three clicks (i.e., three navigational level selections) are required to get to the desired content, should they be grouped together at the top, left, right, or split between different locations (e.g., select from the top, with the next selection[s] from the left, top or right)?

Bailey, Robert. Usability.gov (2006). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

New Hampshire Usability Professionals' Association Launches On Seacoast

A dedicated group of industry experts have launched the New Hampshire Usability Professionals' Association (UPA). The goal of the newly formed group is to foster the growth of the user experience community in the Seacoast and Southern New Hampshire regions. The group will provide networking and professional development opportunities for usability professionals and provide an environment for members to exchange information on tips, tools, methodologies, and technologies related to usability.

Whalen, Kelly. Usability Professionals Association (2008). Articles>Usability>Community Building>New England

New Plasma Screens Fail London's Commuters

Although the new screens at Waterloo station use the latest screen technology and look very impressive, they have not been designed with the hassled and hurried commuter in mind.

Usability by Design (2005). Articles>User Interface>Accessibility>Usability

New Technical Writer: Use the Persona to Create the Most Useful Section of Your User Document

A good User Document includes sections on how to set up, use, and care for the product. However, to create a great User Document, the technical writer should use the Persona, generated in the analysis of the User/Reader, to create the topics for the most useful section of the User Document. This article describes this procedure.

Millman, Barry. Article Alley (2007). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Personas

Ninety Percent of All Usability Testing is Useless

Ninety percent of all usability testing performed on Web sites is useless. This is not to say that it doesn’t have a significant role to play in user experience design. When done right, usability testing will improve your Web site and your development process, but the current culture surrounding Web site usability testing is such that it rarely benefits the design. Worse, this misapplication can undermine the acceptance of this important technique throughout an organization.

Becker, Lane. Adaptive Path (2004). Articles>Usability>Testing

Nip It in the NUB (Neo-Usability Bashing)

Lately in some quarters it's cool to bash usability. This is a bit different from the 'Never heard of it and don't need it' kind of opposition many of us have encountered in our careers. The Neo-Usability Bashing (NUB) argument goes something like this: Usability is so '90s, so software-application centered. In this brave new networked world, usability's outlived its worth. On the Web, people aren't 'users' as they were when they were using a spreadsheet or a word processing application, they're 'searchers,' 'game-players,' 'shoppers,' etc.

Donahue, George. Usability Professionals Association (2000). Articles>Usability>Workplace

NNGroup and Me: A Tale of Two Tickets

A review of the Nielsen-Norman Group's 2002 Intranet Usability tutorial.

McEvoy, Chris. WebWord (2003). Articles>Usability

Nobody Reads Manuals, Do They?

We technical writers have a mantra that we mutter quietly whenever someone asks an obvious question about how to use our software: 'RTFM.' But though Reading The (ahem) 'Fine' Manual would often solve the problem--assuming the purchaser actually received one of those increasingly rare printed manuals with the software--only technical writers seeking inspiration on how to do their own jobs better can be relied upon to read product documentation. To make matters worse, many of us admit that we'd rather play with a product, hoping to figure out what to do, than use the documentation.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. TECHWR-L (2000). Articles>Documentation>Usability

Noncommand User Interfaces

Several new user interface technologies and interaction principles seem to define a new generation of user interfaces that will move off the flat screen and into the physical world to some extent. Many of these next-generation interfaces will not have the user control the computer through commands, but will have the computer adapt the dialogue to the user's needs based on its inferences from observing the user. This article defines twelve dimensions across which future user interfaces may differ from the canonical window systems of today: User focus, the computer's role, interface control, syntax, object visibility, interaction stream, bandwidth, tracking feedback, interface locus, user programming, and software packaging. Keywords: Agents, Animated icons, BITPICT, DWIM, Embedded help, Eye tracking, Generations of user interfaces, Gestural interfaces, Help systems, Home computing, Interactive fiction, Interface paradigms, Noncommand based user interfaces, Prototyping, Usability heuristics, Virtual realities, Wizard of Oz method.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1993). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Interface>Usability

Nondirected Interviews: How to Get More Out of Your Research Questions

As user experience designers, a key component to nearly all the techniques we use in our practice is the one-on-one interview. It's the basis of requirements gathering, usability testing, and task analysis. In order to remove our personal biases, expectations and opinions from the questions asked, I practice a kind of questioning technique called the nondirected interview. The questions asked are at the heart of any interview. Following are a loose set of guidelines to help you frame questions in a way that elicits honest and accurate responses.

Kuniavsky, Mike. Adaptive Path (2002). Articles>User Centered Design>Interviewing>Usability

Not All Web Sites Are Alike

Many people have a hard time talking about the distinctions between different kinds of Web development, which makes it difficult to decide how to proceed. This article offers a quick survey of various Web projects and of the techniques that address them.

Korman, Jonathan. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Heuristic Evaluation

Not Getting Personal: Assessing Website Effectiveness  

Websites are sometimes evaluated primarily on first impressions or personal preference. More difficult to ascertain is their success in terms of communication. Assessments of websites can benefit from research and developments from fields such as usability studies, linguistics, professional writing, and rhetoric.

Durham, Marsha. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>Usability

Not Just a Hammer: When and How to Employ Multiple Methods in Usability Programs  

Why should usability programs incorporate many kinds of methodology to influence corporate decision-making? This paper describes what makes successful multiple-method usability programs. It discusses when to apply each method and how to justify usability programs to management.

Rosenbaum, Stephanie L. Tec-Ed, Inc. (2002). Articles>Usability>Methods

Not Just Usability Testing: Remembering and Applying Non-usability Testing Methods for Learning How Web Sites Function    

Usability testing is increasingly popular and effective for guiding Web site redesign. However, like any method, it has limitations, including a narrow focus at the expense of larger contexts. Analyzing Web sites with other techniques, including 1) rhetorical analysis based on research in rhetoric, design, and content of similar texts, and 2) content analysis based on matching Web content to an organization’s goals for its Web sites, can yield additional information. This information, which traditional usability tests don’t provide, can help designers better create Web sites. Web designers should not rely exclusively upon usability testing to provide information about Web site design, but instead should also examine how the sites invoke the audiences that they desire to reach.

McGovern, Heather. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Usability>Methods

Notes on Moving from a Character Cell to GUI

For things like order-entry or general form input, some of the attributes of windowing applications can get in the way. If you are designing a windowing application for frequent form-based input/modification, you want really good keyboard capabilities, an absence of windows popping around, a minimum of keyboard mouse transitions, etc. The guidelines for Windows design don't really deal well with form design and high-frequency data input and modification.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Usability Interface (1998). Articles>Usability>Online

Novice vs. Expert Users

Web usability has traditionally been focused on increasing ease of learning for the novice users. This makes great sense and should continue to be the main goal. Remember Jakob's Law of the Internet user experience: users spend most of their time on other sites than your own. Thus, users rarely learn enough about any given site to become true expert users.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2000). Articles>Web Design>Usability

Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research

With all the attention to usability over the last five years or so and the wonderful swelling of information-architecture-related books just since 2001, you would think we would have enough methods and advice to keep our projects in perfect tack. But so many of these resources, excellent though they are, tend to be more about how to pilot the ship than how to find that all-important star and keep it in sight.

Hinton, Andrew. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods

Observing What Didn't Happen

During usability tests, everyone notices when a user fails because a feature breaks down. We don’t need Holmes to solve these! But when expected things don’t happen, or illogical things do happen, it can mean that developers didn’t understand what the users needed, or how they would use the product.

User Interface Engineering (1999). Articles>Usability

Of Mice and iPods, or The Death of the Designer

Computing technologies are becoming so familiar it can feel as if they have always been here. It is strange to think that the mouse, for instance, was invented by Doug Englebart in the seventies. He must encounter a degree of incredulity when he mentions this to people. “You invented the mouse? Really? How nice. Did you also invent the pen?”

Blythe, Mark. uiGarden (2008). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Centered Design>Usability