Uses for Virtual Reality in the Workplace and Classroom  

Virtual reality and game technology can be used in the technical communication classrooms and the workplace as well as the laboratory. Because our communication into the 21st century will take many "technical" forms, the technology, creativity, degree of interaction, and multimedia designs of virtual reality simulations should become part of our communication technology in the 1990s. Although hypertext, hypermedia, computer-aided design (CAD), and multimedia, multisensory training applications are becoming more common in the workplace, the concept of virtual reality has seldom been translated into practical applications that require business and technical communicators to have special skills. As well, advances in holographic information create exciting new educational designs for the future.

Porter, Lynnette R. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>TC>User Interface>3D

Visio: The Interaction Designer's Nail Gun

How to use Visio for rapid prototyping - now with scrolling pages and sketchy interface widgets.

Olsen, Henrik. Guuui (2008). Articles>User Interface>Software>Visio

Voting and Usability Project Update

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.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Usability Professionals Association (2003). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Civic

Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous

AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Ajax

What Causes Usability Problems

With so much good advice available, and the need for user input being so much a matter of common sense, it seems fair to ask why usability issues are so common amongst websites and applications - even those which have invested significant resources in development. What is it that drives otherwise sensible organisations and businesses to build products and services that are counter-intuitive and actively annoying for many users? The answers to these questions are revealing, in the sense that they illustrate how easily usability can be subverted by alternative agendas. And they highlight the need for a user champion within the organisation, an individual outside any internal interest groups, and potentially the company itself, who acts as a corrective to the forces that can leave usability on the back burner. This list is not one of objections (no time, no money, etc.), most of which are spurious, but rather of explanations for apparently baffling decisions that are often taken without even thinking about the consequences.

Farrell, Tom. Frontend Infocentre (2000). Articles>Usability>User Interface

What We Can Learn from Microsoft Mojave

A pretty interface doesn’t make an application or website. Even the early releases of Microsoft Vista looked amazing. The graphics, interface, and 'look' of the system were much more impressive than XP. But looks alone don’t make the package. It lacked in usability, creating error messages and not having a standard navigation schema. Users didn’t know if they were to click a button, an image, or text to complete their task. It is important to create a standardized and intuitive interface, as well as nice looking, so that users can navigate your site or application.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Microsoft Windows

What's Wrong with (Almost) All Web Sites

The vast majority of web sites commit usability and design violations that make it hard for users to find relevant content and functions. These problems are not difficult to diagnose or remedy. How many of these "user crimes" is your web site guilty of committing?

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Interaction Design

Why We Get No Respect, and What We Can Do About It

It's time interface designers, or whatever we're calling ourselves, get some respect. After 25 years of whining about it, I've finally realized we have only ourselves to blame. Take control. If you look at nothing else of mine this year, please read this, act on it, and pass it on.

Tognazzini, Bruce. Nielsen Norman Group (2003). Articles>User Interface>Professionalism

Writing at the User Interstices

The most coveted writing assignment in the computer industry is the overview of an integrated software package. It calls for careful pacing, creative metaphor, and lavish graphics, all integrated with the highest skill. Here stands the pinnacle of a career, to be 'writing at the user interface.'

Oram, Andrew. Boston Broadside (1990). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>User Interface

Your Design Is Infringing On My Patent: The Case Against User Interface and Interaction Model Patents and Intellectual Property

Companies often file for and the US government actually grants patents for user interface and interaction design 'innovations' that are either strikingly obvious or have appeared before in other systems.

Sherman, Paul J. UXmatters (2007). Articles>Intellectual Property>Patents>User Interface

Your New Excuse to Get an Xbox: How UX Professionals Can Learn from Video Game Design

Games are fun, addictive, beautiful, and immersive. Websites, for the most part, are not. Take a moment and think about what video games look like, what they sound like, the way you can move on the screen, what “you” can be. Think of how you feel when you play and who you play with. Consider the launch of Halo 3 on Xbox 360, with unprecedented graphics, sound, and interactivity that Time.com called “refined to the point where it delivers only pure unadulterated gaming bliss.”

Northrop, Mia. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Articles>User Experience>User Interface

Отработка Возражений Против Дизайна Пользовательского Интерфейса

У эргономиста могут возникнуть трудности в отстаивании своих позиций. Иногда сложно определить интересы всех участников обсуждения и найти сильную аргументацию для парирования возражений коллег. Задачей данной статьи является подготовка к ведению деловых бесед по вопросам проектирования и разработки пользовательского интерфейса. Представленный материал поможет добиться понимания и принятия позиции эргономиста в проекте при отстаивании интересов пользователя.

Andreev, Viktor. Usability.ru (2002). (Russian) Articles>Usability>User Interface

Zebra Striping: More Data for the Case

I recently conducted a study into the helpfulness (or lack thereof) of zebra striping—the shading of alternate rows in a table or form. The study measured performance as users completed a series of tasks and found no statistically significant improvement in accuracy—and very little statistically significant improvement in speed when zebra stripes were implemented.

Enders, Jessica. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Human Computer Interaction>User Interface

Transforming Taiwan Aboriginal Cultural Features into Modern Product Design: A Case Study of a Cross-Cultural Product Design Model

With their beautiful and primitive visual arts and crafts, Taiwan’s aboriginal cultures offer great potential for enhancing design value and becoming recognized in the global market. Evidence shows very high prospects for Taiwan’s local cultures to become crucial cultural elements in future design applications. The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of cultural objects from Taiwan’s aboriginal cultures and to extract their cultural features. The paper attempts to illustrate how, by enhancing the original meaning and images of these cultural features and by taking advantage of new production technologies, they can be transformed into modern products that meet the needs of the contemporary consumer market.

Lin, Rung-Tai. uiGarden (2008). Articles>User Interface>International

Emotion and Voice User Interfaces

When you hear the term voice user interface (VUI), what comes to mind? Most likely, memories of an interactive voice response system (IVR) for customer service arise. IVRs are certainly not going away. For many companies, they remain the foremost contact point with customers. But voice user interfaces are more than just IVRs. In fact, VUIs have tremendous potential for enhancing the experience of any mobile phone user. As the use of mobile devices and applications proliferates internationally, understanding how to integrate, or mash up, graphic user interfaces (GUI) and VUIs is becoming critically important.

Clayton, Darnell and Colleen Jones. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Interface>Emotions>Voice

Fun with Overflows

Making use of the overflow and scrollLeft DOM property to scroll elements is a much more effective use of the CPU, over animating using CSS top/left. So this episode of J4D demonstrates the same effect used in two completely different ways.

Sharp, Remy. jQuery for Designers (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Ajax

Toward a More Human Interface Device: Integrating the Virtual and Physical

As UX professionals, we often take for granted the fact that our users will be dealing with a keyboard, mouse or track pad, and monitor. We think about users’ physical relationship with their digital devices very selectively, if at all. But, as we explore new human interface devices and incorporate new interactions into our designs, we have the opportunity to create deep connections between users and their technology.

Follett, Jonathan. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction

The Effect of Input Device on Video Game Performance

First-person shooter (FPS) games have become increasingly popular, and the player’s ability to accurately control their weapon is very important in these games. This study assesses players’ accuracy on eliminating targets in the FPS game Star Wars Battlefront II using three different input devices (mouse, Playstation 2 controller, and joystick) with two different rifle types (sniper and blaster rifle). No significant performance differences were found between input devices although subjectively participants believed they peformed the worst with the joystick.

Lenz, Kelsi. Usability News (2008). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Academic

Where Visual Literacy and Interface Design Meet

Scientists tell us that visual communication is natural human behaviour which all normally sighted persons engage in every day and take for granted, yet it is the product of a complex human intelligence that is very poorly understood.

Hugo, Jacques. Usability News (2005). Articles>User Interface>Visual Rhetoric

Clean, Cutting-Edge UI Design Cuts McAfee's Support Calls by 90%

When McAfee Inc. recently introduced its ProtectionPilot software--a dashboard-type management console for its Active VirusScan SMB Edition and Active Virus Defense SMB Edition suites--the trial downloads were fast and furious: In the first 10 weeks after release, more than 20,000 users went online to get a copy.

Hadley, Bruce. SoftwareCEO (2004). Articles>Web Design>User Interface

Interior Design Versus Product Design

From my outsider’s point of view, automobile interior design seems to be first and foremost about appearance, about style. Function matters, but it is not the primary focus, except for anomalies, such as when consumers force cupholders down the throats of reluctant designers or insist upon easy to fold rear seats for SUVs and the ilk. It feels as if dashboard designers see functions as irritants: so many controls and devices, so little room. How can we ever manage?

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (2004). Articles>User Interface>Usability

Typography and the User Interface

While processing speed and computational flexibility have grown at incredible rates, our displays, the most human-facing elements of our digital lives, lag behind.

Kuo, Daniel. Cooper Journal (2005). Articles>User Interface>Typography

Interface Design and Optimization of Reading of Continuous Text

At present, we do not know how to optimize reading via electronic equipment. In this chapter, some considerations that may help us do this in the future will be raised, and some of the relevant evidence and theory that do exist will be cited and briefly highlighted. The focus of this paper is on reading of continuous text, whether in linear form or hypertext form, and with or without the presence of graphics or other types of information.

Muter, Paul. University of Toronto (1996). Articles>Typography>User Interface>Usability

Image Links vs. Text Links

Years back, we compared successful clickstreams (clickstreams that resulted in users accomplishing their goals, as observed in tons of usability tests) with unsuccessful clickstreams (clickstreams where users abandoned their goals before completing), looking for any clues that would help us predict behaviors in one that we didn’t see in the other. One factor we looked for was whether the clickstreams contained image links versus text links — does one type of link show up more often in successful clickstreams than the other. Our finding was when users clicked in image links they were just as likely to succeed or fail as when the clicked on text links. There was no statistically-meaningful difference.

Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Hypertext