#13738
An Eye on User Data: An Interview with Jared Spool, Founding Principal of User Interface Engineering
Our most striking finding is how bad web sites are in general. We have yet to find a site where, if you choose questions at random based on information the developers have placed on the site, users can find the answers more than 50% of the time. (The best we've found is 42% of the time.)
Spool, Jared M. WebWord (1999). Articles>Usability>Web Design
#27167
F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content
Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Eye Tracking
#31071
Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry
Findability is to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as 'web standards' is to 'table layouts.' In a web whose vastness exceeds comprehension, sites with findable content win. The good news is that everyone on your team can help make your site findable.
Walter, Aarron. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#13345
Finding Information on the Web: Does the Amount of Whitespace Really Matter?
It has been a long-held notion that the use of open space or 'whitespace' adds not only to the attractiveness of the design of a written publication, but adds to the functionality as well. For example, it has been stated that whitespace plays the crucial role of 'directing the viewers attention to the regions where important information is provided and allowing the global structure of the composition to assume a meaningful configuration' (Mullet & Sano, 1995, p. 126). It is contended that Whitespace 'gives the eye a place to restIt can help to organize the material on the page. It can tie successive pages together by repetition of identifiable areas' (White, 1974, p. 48). However, it has been asserted by Web usability researcher Jared Spool that these assumptions should not apply to Web design.
Bernard, Michael, Barbara S. Chaparro and R. Thomasson. Usability News (2000). Articles>Usability>Web Design
#29810
Five-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site's Content Pages
On your site, the content page is the user's most frequent final destination. This page contains the information the user came to the site to find. Sites often have hundreds, if not thousands (and in some cases, millions) of these critical pages. How can design teams be confident their content pages are understandable to users? How does a team ensure they've designed content pages that communicate the essential information effectively?
Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#26634
Once an online form goes beyond two screenfulls, it's often a sign that the underlying functionality is better supported by an application, which offers a more interactive user experience.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Web Design>Forms>Usability
#29816
The Freedom of Fast Iterations: How Netflix Designs a Winning Web Site
The designers of Netflix.com have a smashing success on their hands, but we didn't find them resting on their laurels. They want to get even better, and for them that means iterate, iterate, iterate. Netflix isn't the only company using a fast iterative design approach. Google has also gained attention for their unorthodox design methods, with many people complaining that they have a huge stable of products, but only a few they've designed well.
Porter, Joshua. User Interface Engineering (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Workflow
#11911
Goal Composition: Extending Task Analysis to Predict Things People May Want to Do
One of the basic questions during the development of a computer system and its user interface is what the users will want to do with the system. Unfortunately, a task analysis of users' current activities is not sufficient to predict what they will do in the future. It is well known that people's use of computers change over time and that new and unexpected uses are found for most new systems.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1994). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#27942
Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First
Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#25403
Although the World Wide Web has great potential as an educational tool, and many educational practitioners have begun utilizing the Web in many ways (e.g., Dodge, 1995; Logan, 1996; Mounts, 1996; Weiler, 1996), as yet, there has not been much systematic, theory based, research aimed at examining these methods. The principal purpose of this experiment was to begin to address the issue of how best to structure an interface between learners and the vast jumble of resources at their disposal on the Web. The need for the development and investigation of such an interface is indicated by research, which has found that some degree of learner guidance is particularly important in effective web learning (Anderson & Joerg, 1996).
Hall, Richard H. University of Missouri-Rolla (1997). Articles>Web Design>Education>Usability
#14941
Helping Web Customers Sniff Out a Deal
In Jared Spool's presentation, 'Scent of a Web Site' to the Washington DC Chapter of UPA (September 18, 2002), Spool used scent as an analogy to attract customers to the goods or services they desire online. A predator locates prey by following a scent trail. If the predator loses the scent trail, it returns to the location where the trail was strong, and tries again. Spool reports seeing a similar behavior with people looking for content on very large Web sites. Spool introduced two new vocabulary words that I plan to use. Gallery pages are used on very large Web sites to aggregate content pages. Store pages are used to aggregate gallery pages. The home page connects to stores; effective home pages also connect to galleries and content as well. These concepts aren't necessary for Web sites of one to twenty or so pages. They are essential for very large Web sites, such as Amazon or Microsoft Network, with pages numbering in the millions.
Bine, Katharyn. Usability Interface (2002). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#14881
Heuristic Evaluations vs. Usability Testing
How many of the usability problems identified in a heuristic evaluation are true usability problems? Several years ago, I published an article suggesting that many of the 'problems' identified by heuristic evaluators were not problems at all (Bailey, Allan and Raiello, 1992). Even so, many of us have continued to waste time and go to the expense of fixing many usability problems that were not problems. Recently, three research papers were published that provided some insights into the validity of heuristic evaluations (Catani and Biers, 1998; Rooden, et.al., 1999; Stanton and Stevenage, 1998). The articles discussed usability testing in three totally different domains with very similar results.
Bailey, Robert. Human Factors International (2002). Articles>Usability>Web Design
#27487
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
#25098
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
#21766
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
#26391
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
#23058
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
#31909
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
#10614
The Iceberg Analogy of Usability
Developers sometimes ask which aspects of look and feel contribute most to the overall usability of an application or Web site. They are typically surprised when I answer that the 'look and feel' aspects aren't the major contributors at all. Look and feel have been popular discussion topics for many years, and some developers have proposed various schemes purporting to allow an easy swap of one look and feel for another. They were perhaps compelled to this thinking to compensate for an inadequate understanding of their users. Around 1990, I became alarmed by the popularity of design architectures advocating paradigms like the User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) that enable a pluggable look and feel. Many of my colleagues and I felt that look and feel represented only the tip of the iceberg. We felt that the set of concepts users must learn and understand to use a product or Web site effectively is actually the most important factor.
Berry, Dick. IBM (2001). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Web Design
#29355
In Search of Salience: A Response-Time and Eye-Movement Analysis of Bookmark Recognition
Describes the effect of bookmark naming on bookmark recognition. The purpose is to provide empirically-determined guidelines for web producers on how to title pages in order to optimise the recognition of bookmarks by users, and increase the rate of revisitation to their websites.
Poole, Alex. Alex Poole (2005). Articles>Information Design>Usability>Web Browsers
#19758
Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster
The easier it is to find places with good information, the less time users will spend visiting any individual website. This is one of many conclusions that follow from analyzing how people optimize their behavior in online information systems.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Search
#26778
Interaction Modeling: User State-Trace Analysis
Interaction modeling is a good way to identify and locate usability issues with the use of a tool. Several methods exist. Modeling techniques are prescriptive in that they aim to capture what users will likely do, and not descriptive of what users actually did.
Queen, Matt. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Interaction Design
#26639
International Sites: Minimum Requirements
Users from other countries have special needs related to entry fields for names and addresses, measurements and dates, and information about regional product standards.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Web Design>International>Usability
#23956
Les Internautes Détestent Scroller?!?
Readers hate to scroll... vous risquez d'entendre plus d'une fois cette rengaine! Bien évidemment, les utilisateurs n'apprécient pas de dérouler des masses de textes contenant des informations composites et indifférenciées. Bien évidemment, les accès et les messages les plus importants doivent être placés en haut de page s'ils veulent améliorer leurs chances d'être perçus. Mais cela ne veut pas dire que le scrolling est à bannir systématiquement et que toutes vos pages doivent tenir dans un écran ! Une fois passé en mode 'consommation', l'internaute déroulera volontiers une page dont le sujet l'intéresse.
Redaction (2004). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#18733
La usabilidad (dentro del campo del desarrollo web) es la disciplina que estudia la forma de diseñar sitios web para que los usuarios puedan interactuar con ellos de la forma más fácil, cómoda e intuitiva posible. La mejor forma de crear un sitio web usable es realizando un diseño centrado en el usuario, diseñando para y por el usuario, en contraposición a lo que podría ser un diseño centrado en la tecnología o uno centrado en la creatividad u originalidad.
Hassan Montero, Yusef. Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Articles>Usability>Web Design
