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

Interaction Elasticity

Usage goes down as interaction costs increase. User motivation determines how fast demand drops, following an elasticity curve.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Interaction Design

Year's 10 Best Application User Interfaces

Many winners employ dashboards to give users a single overview of complex information and use lightboxes to ensure that users notice dialogs. Also, the Office 2007 ribbon showed surprisingly strong early adoption.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>User Interface>Usability

Intuitiveness and Adaptability

With few exceptions, intuitive user interfaces really don't exist. Familiar interfaces do, however. But does that mean developers need to be locked into the same old design patterns? There's no reason why they should.

Nesbitt, Scott. DMN Communications (2008). Articles>User Interface>Usability

Usability in Practice: The Human Face Of Software

Welcome to Usability In Practice. This is the first in a series of columns that will focus on the design of the user experience (UX). In the past, user experience was not a high priority for most development projects, but that's changed. Today, end users have a lot of experience with the Web and with software. They want design that's easy to learn and use and that fits their workflow. This column will show you how to deliver such designs.

Kreitzberg, Charles B. and Ambrose Little. Microsoft (2008). Articles>Usability>User Interface>User Experience

Making the Right Constraints for Usable and Accessible User Interfaces

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.

Cornelius, Gary and John J. Chelsom. IDEAlliance (2005). Articles>Information Design>User Interface>Usability

Usability Tips for Your Application (Part I)

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.

Odden, Michael. Unlimited Edition (2009). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Interaction Design

Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product

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.

Norman, Donald A. Interactions (2009). Articles>User Interface>User Experience>Usability

The Inclusion Principle

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.

Link-Rodrigue, Margit. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Usability

Enhancing User Interaction With First Person User Interface

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.

Wroblewski, Luke. Smashing (2009). Articles>User Interface>Usability>3D

Powers of 10: Time Scales in User Experience

From 0.1 seconds to 10 years or more, user interface design has many different timeframes, and each has its own particular usability issues.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Usability>User Experience>User Interface

Preferences Considered Harmful

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.

Mathis, Lukas. ignore the code (2008). Articles>User Interface>Usability>User Experience

Treating User Myopia

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.

Atwood, Jeff. Coding Horror (2009). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Usability

Teaching Users to Read

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.

Atwood, Jeff. Coding Horror (2004). Articles>User Interface>User Centered Design>Usability

The Consistency Conundrum

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.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Designing the User Experience at Autodesk (2009). Articles>User Interface>Usability