#28645
Sizing UCD projects presents special challenges to usability practitioners and consultants. Each project and UCD methodology comes with its own set of variables that makes it difficult to accurately estimate resource requirements and completion times.
Usability Body of Knowledge (2007). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Project Management
#31611
It's a People Thing: The Switch to Reader-Centered Documents
One of the central causes of poor writing is a lack of a thorough understanding of the audience. What are the problems that readers have to solve, and how can we help them? Too many writers believe that people will understand what they have written just because the writers themselves understand it. Good writing always begins with a study of the readers' reading skills, their actual physical situation, the problems they face, the motivation they need, and the actions they need to take.
DuBay, William H. Impact Information (2003). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>User Centered Design
#24850
It's Not Enough to Say What it Does
All too often, developers think that documenting their new creations just means writing a detailed technical description of what it does. In a sense, they're explaining things to themselves. But what you really need to do is explain things to someone who's coming across your stuff for the first time.
McManus, Eamonn. Artima (2004). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design
#28957
Key Steps in Creating Your Reader Persona
The Web is about self-service and self-service is about simplicity and convenience. You've got a small screen and every time you add something extra to that screen you make the world more complicated for your reader. You must make very difficult choices if you want your website to work. You can't serve everybody, and if you try to you will serve nobody.
McGovern, Gerry. uiGarden (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Personas
#31738
The Kind of Documentation Users Really Want
Have you ever asked your users what kind of training materials they want, or how they prefer to learn software? This kind of information is critical to figuring out what help deliverables to produce. But really when it comes down to it, there are only so many options — printed manuals, short guides, interactive flash guides, videos, online help, live training, reference cards, context-sensitive help, workbooks and exercises, or, usually the favorite, someone to stand by their computer and answer questions whenever they need help.
Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Documentation>Usability>User Centered Design
#18583
It's interesting to watch people using a Web site or online course you've built. When they click on the wrong button or mutter about not being able to find something, your instinct is to jump in to show them what to do. Or you may silently ridicule them for not understanding the obvious. But if we blame the user, we miss the point entirely. Navigating an online course should be easy. If the user is making lots of mistakes, it's probably the designer — not the user — who's dense. That's why it's so important to focus on usability when you're building an online course.
Shank, Patti. TrainingMag.com (2002). Articles>User Centered Design>Instructional Design
#26507
Knowledge Management in the Workplace: the Librarian as Knowledge Broker
The role of knowledge brokers as the gatekeepers of information is vital for successful knowledge management. In this context, the role of librarians who act as knowledge brokers in creating a market for both buyers and sellers often goes unnoticed. Librarians with their access to information and people, bridge the gap between knowledge seekers and knowledge.
Thaneerkulam, Chitra. STC NJIT Student Chapter (2005). Articles>Knowledge Management>User Centered Design>Workplace
#22160
Let's Stop Writing Documentation and Start Working for the Users 
Nearly 20 years ago, the profession of technical communication began to focus on developing task-oriented documentation. Although task-oriented documentation has always been produced, particularly for consumer products, it was not the standard in the computer industry. More often, people writing about computer systems focused on the system rather than on the tasks people needed to perform. Systems-oriented documentation was the norm.
ComTech Services. Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design
#20725
Let's Stop Writing Documentation and Start Working for the Users
Technical communication's long-time focus on task-oriented documentation has left customers with too many tasks and too much information; itï¿Âs time for a new approach. A user-centered approach reflecting a thorough understanding of users and how they engage the product is the surest route to effective documentation and training. To understand what users need, we need to get closer to them by spending time in their workplaces, watching them execute everyday tasks, and listening to them. Through this kind of ethnographic activity, we will become user experts, gaining credibility within our own organizations and our user communities.
Hackos, JoAnn T. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design
#27246
Listening to the Customer's Voice
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the software developer is sharing the vision of the final product with the customer. All stakeholders in a project-developers, end users, software managers, customer managers-must achieve a common understanding of what the product will be and do, or someone will be surprised when it is delivered. Surprises in software are almost never good news. Therefore, we need ways to accurately capture, interpret, and represent the voice of the customer when specifying the requirements for a software product.
Wiegers, Karl E. Process Impact. Articles>User Centered Design>Collaboration
#18914
Listening to the Learners: A Case Study in Health Information Website Design
An important mantra of user-centered design is to 'know thy user.' Accomplishing this requires one to decide what should be known about the user and how to gather the information. In this paper, we focus on the specific instance where the user is a learner. Specifically, we describe our efforts to listen to the learners of an information website, the Arthritis Source, and to act on this information.
Turns, Jennifer and Tracey S. Wagner. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>User Centered Design>Scientific Communication>Usability
#32034
Literature-Space Vs. Cyberspace
Stories are so hardwired into our subconscious that it would not surprise me if we did indeed inhabit a story-space that is different from our web-based reading-space. This is a testable proposition. Do our brains work differently when we are in the middle of a story versus when we are in the middle of web surfing? I would be astounded if they were the same. But if that was all the happened -- different strokes for stories than for links, then the solution to exiting the web and entering stories is easy -- just read, listen, or watch more stories.
Kelly, Kevin. KK (2008). Articles>Publishing>Online>User Centered Design
#20364
Little Machines: Understanding Users Understanding Interfaces 
This paper questions the ubiquitous practice of supplying minimalist information to users, of making that information functional only, of assuming that the Shannon-Weaver communication model should govern online systems, and of ignoring the social implications of such a stance. Help systems that provide fast, temporary solutions without providing any background information lead to the danger of users completing tasks that they do not understand at all. (Word will help us write a legal pleading, even if we have no idea what one is.) As a result, we have help systems that attempt to be invisible and to provide tool instruction but not conceptual instruction. Such a system presents itself as a neutral tool, but it is actually an incomplete environment, denying both the complexity and alternative (and possibly improved) modes of thinking about the subject at hand.
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Journal of Computer Documentation (2001). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Usability
#28937
Long Live the User (Persona): Talking with Steve Mulder
More companies are doing user research than ever before, but what is becoming of all the information? Steve Mulder talks about strategies for getting research into shape so real people can actually use it. The key: user personas.
Danzico, Liz and Steve Mulder. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Interviews>User Centered Design>Personas
#30764
Low Bandwidth and the Highs of Web Design
The emergence of Internet was, and still is a fascinating thing to happen in technology firmament. The ease and the comforts of connecting to people, defying geographical boundaries, and getting a global audience for businesses were unparalleled -- first of its kind ever. So wonderful a thing has, unfortunately, got its share of woes -- the connection speed. The bandwidth of Internet connectivity was considerable at the time when it was entirely new to the world. The newness of the medium did not let it know to the excited lots of users and beneficiaries. Gradually, when people wished for more speed, they earnestly expected that things will turn favorable in the times ahead. Strategy is not something entirely applicable to chart out the direction of a corporation. Yeah, Your web design has to be strategized as well if you wish to serve your target audience in business friendly manner.
Azam, Rahbre. Amateur Writerz (2008). Articles>Web Design>Technical Writing>User Centered Design
#20155
Low-Fidelity Prototyping for Technical Communicators
Technical communicators are responsible for a great deal of what the user sees and touches. This means that more technical communicators are becoming integrated members of product design teams, bringing their expertise into the group and taking the lead in designing and evaluating their information systems, Creating low-fidelity paper prototypes of software for customer feedback sessions is an effective methodfor gathering valuable user input early in development.
Rauch, Thyra L., Dana L. Gillihan and Paul Leone. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design
#28764
Making Help More Human, and Other Discussions
Discusses a number of trends in the technical writing world, particularly the need to make help more human by adopting conversational tones and addressing the angry/frantic state of the user.
Johnson, Tom H. and Heidi Hansen. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Help
#29811
Making Personas Work for Your Web Site: An Interview with Steve Mulder
It's important for the people responsible for creating the personas to have active listening skills, empathy, and clear communication skills. Ultimately, what design teams need to do is aggregate all of the qualitative or quantitative data into a clearly communicated story. This means that writing and communication skills are also critical. From the point of view of a more tactical skillset, the design team will get better results if they have experience conducting interviews and writing surveys.
Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2007). Articles>Interviews>User Centered Design>Personas
#19411
There are about 1,000 usability-related articles published each year. My guess is that less than 5% ever have any practical, long-term value to most usability practitioners. In some cases, the topics being studied are of little interest to practitioners. In many cases the research results are simply too hard for practitioners to find.
Bailey, Robert. Web Usability (2002). Articles>Publishing>User Centered Design>Usability
#23995
By focusing on how a product performs in the lab without broader knowledge of the user's environment and goals, measurement alone may be misleading. To get the most value and meaning out of user feedback it is important to choose the appropriate method for conducting and analyzing user research.
Anderson, Gretchen. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design
#29434
Acting without planning can be expensive, and because of the potential cost of poorly thought-out actions, we should not only plan, but plan twice.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (2000). Articles>Project Management>Planning>User Centered Design
#28925
Measuring the Success Of a Classification System
When working with government and large private organizations on complex information systems, project managers and business representatives often demand early-stage validation that the proposed classification system provides the user-friendly solution they are charged with delivering. They also require this validation in a format that will be engaging for senior business stakeholders.
Barker, Iain. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Information Design>Taxonomy>User Centered Design
#28357
Metrics for Heuristics: Quantifying User Experience (Part 2 of 2)
In part one of 'Metrics for Heuristics,' Andrea Wiggins discussed how designers can use Rubinoff’s user experience audit to determine metrics for measuring brand. In part two, Wiggins examines how web analytics can quantify usability, content, and navigation.
Wiggins, Andrea. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience>Heuristic Evaluation
#25078
Mobile Phone Games Designed for Girls
Unlike many game developers, one company creates games primarily targeted at young women and girls. MiniFizz is certainly not just a traditional boys’ game painted pink.
Allaeys, Sabine. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>User Centered Design>Wireless Web>Games
#25085
The Most Hated Advertising Techniques
Studies of how people react to online advertisements have identified several design techniques that impact the user experience very negatively.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>User Centered Design>Marketing
