Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design

Changing Terminology: "User" versus "Customer"

The term "user" has also been critiqued because it obscures the fact that people use software and web sites in different ways. Sometimes the "user" is a customer, sometimes a contributor, sometimes an employee, sometimes a learner. In many cases, one of these words would be more accurate than the catch-all "user."

Strategies on How To Motivate Users to Sign Up Through Design

Be it web-based applications or online services, they are taking the Internet by storm. Many websites introducing these services are created and launched to get users to sign up and use the software (hopefully for a long-term). The question is: How do we get users from the unfamiliar zone into the interested zone and subsequently becoming a first time use?

Knowledge of Information Behaviour and Its Relevance to the Design of People-Centred information Products and Services

The purpose of this paper is first to highlight some of the social phenomena that are driving the design of people-centred information solutions; second, to develop a broad ontology of information behaviour research that serves to identify factors that should be taken into account when designing such solutions. Finally, the author illustrates how this knowledge is being applied in the design of people-centred inclusive information products and services.

Using the Repertory Grid and Laddering Technique to Determine the User's Evaluative Model of Search Engines

The purpose of this research is to explore a method for the determination of users' representations of search engines, formed during their interaction with these systems. Determines the extent to which these elicited "mental models" indicate the system aspects of importance to the user and from this their evaluative view of these tools.

The Users' Charter

Could a charter of rights for the user of web applications lead to the design of user-centred interfaces, better user experience and avoid causing frustration, irritation and consequently lost business? The following is an attempt to outline a charter of rights for the user of web applications.

Is Self-Centered Web Copy Hurting Your Websites?

Web developers frequently launch websites with self-absorbed web copy, which turns off visitors and kills conversions. Who’s to blame? Self-absorbed copywriters and business owners. To engage prospects and turn them into customers, web copy needs to appeal to the visitor’s self-interest.

Investigating Behavioral Variability in Web Search

Understanding the extent to which people’s search behaviors differ in terms of the interaction flow and information targeted is important in designing interfaces to help World Wide Web users search more effectively. In this paper we describe a longitudinal log-based study that investigated variability in people’s interaction behavior when engaged in search-related activities on the Web. We analyze the search interactions of more than two thousand volunteer users over a five-month period, with the aim of characterizing differences in their interaction styles. The findings of our study suggest that there are dramatic differences in variability in key aspects of the interaction within and between users, and within and between the search queries they submit. Our findings also suggest two classes of extreme user--navigators and explorers--whose search interaction is highly consistent or highly variable. Lessons learned from these users can inform the design of tools to support effective Web-search interactions for everyone.

Fluid Grids

Fluid layouts are an undervalued commodity in web design. They put control of our designs firmly in the hands of our users and their browsing habits. They’ve also utterly failed to seize the imagination of web designers.

Designing Websites

The parallels between the theories of technical communications and those of web design are very similar, the key aim is to keep the audience in mind at all times. The way you structure and present the information is also important, as is a sense of usability of the content itself.

The Elements of Social Architecture

While your designs can never control people, they can encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior. The psychologist Kurt Lewin developed an equation that explains why people do the crazy things they do. Lewin asserts that behavior is a function of a person and his environment: Bf(P,E). You can’t change a person’s nature, but you can design the environment he moves around in. Let’s explore some of Alexander’s patterns I’ve observed in my work and the design work of my fellow practitioners.

In Defense of Readers

Despite the ubiquity of reading on the web, readers remain a neglected audience. Much of our talk about web design revolves around a sense of movement: users are thought to be finding, searching, skimming, looking. We measure how frequently they click but not how long they stay on the page. We concern ourselves with their travel and participation—how they move from page to page, who they talk to when they get there—but forget the needs of those whose purpose is to be still. Readers flourish when they have space—some distance from the hubbub of the crowds—and as web designers, there is yet much we can do to help them carve out that space.

Search Words Versus Carewords

The words we use when we search are not always the words we like to read when we arrive at a website. Over the years, I have discovered that the way we think and the words we use when we search give strong clues as to what we want, but only clues. The words that will help us complete the task we came to the website to complete can be subtly-and sometimes substantially different-to the words we used when searching for it.

Social Media is Here to Stay... Now What?

For users, Web 2.0 was all about reorganizing web-based practices around Friends. For many users, direct communication tools like email and IM were used to communicate with one's closest and dearest while online communities were tools for connecting with strangers around shared interests. Web 2.0 reworked all of that by allowing users to connect in new ways. While many of the tools may have been designed to help people find others, what Web 2.0 showed was that people really wanted a way to connect with those that they already knew in new ways. Even tools like MySpace and Facebook which are typically labeled social networkING sites were never really about networking for most users. They were about socializing inside of pre-existing networks.

Know Your Site

A good starting point for planning the future of your website is to analyze what you already have. To some extent we are doing this all the time. That is how new projects happen. However, a more formal approach helps to better inform your decision-making throughout the web project. There are two ways to better understand your current website: qualitative and quantitative.

Accessing Information: Not Everyone Does it the Same Way

As some in our profession have come to realize, social media and use of the Web in general have changed (and are still changing) the way in which people access and use information.

The Five Issues that Persuade Visitors

Whenever visitors land on your web site, they consciously or subconsciously deal with five issues until they're satisfied, or better yet, delighted. These five issues will either induce the visitor to take the action you want them to take, or a lack of satisfaction may push them to find a competitor. None of these five issues is easy to measure. None has objective factors that are easily influenced. But all are nonetheless key to converting visitors.

The Trouble With Personalization

Personalization has rarely been implemented well. Its failure is usually because of a lack of understanding of customer behavior.

Where's the Search? Re-Examining User Expectations of Web Objects

In 2001, Bernard determined that users were able to form a schema for the location of web objects on informational websites. The current study investigates whether users' expectations have changed since the 2001 study. Changes were found in the expected location of the site search engine, internal links, and advertisements.

Are We There Yet? Effects of Delay on User Perceptions of Web Sites

One of the chronic challenges that will be highlighted by emotional design is site download speed. There are many sources of delay in Web site and application delivery.

Fast-Downloading Websites are Still Important

People are impatient on the Web. They are function and task orientated. They want to get things done as quickly as possible. The average person is still accessing the Web over a 56 KB modem. You should therefore have a major focus on 'light' webpages if you want to increase reader-satisfaction.

How Did You Get Here?

One of the most overlooked aspects of designing a Web site is how users get to it. Separate factions are often devoted to promoting, designing, and maintaining a Web site, and the lack of communication and involvement can lead to apathy or confusion. Too frequently is it assumed that visitors are knowledgeable about the company and Web site, and that they enter through the home page. False assumptions about visitor entry can plague even a well-planned, well-designed site.

Improving Web Page Loading

When your Web pages load, you can't afford to let people be bored by a blank page at the outset. This article gives some tips on how to avoid common page loading problems and give users that valuable information they want even as more downloading takes place.

Results of a Study about Online Experience

Users’ “enjoyment” of a site is tied closely to how easily they can find the information they want and stay oriented at the same time. I think this is a given for technical communicators; we know that users want to get answers as fast as possible, and documentation must be navigable.

Redesign of the Monash University Web Site: A Case Study in User-Centred Design Methods

This paper presents a case study in user-centred design as applied to the redesign of the Monash University web site. It begins with an overview of user-centred design which is then contrasted with traditional development processes. The case study provides some background information about the project and the choice of methodology, an outline of the user-centred design methods used, and the nature of the multi-disciplinary team responsible for the project.

The User-Centric Design Trap

User-centric design's (UCD's) aim is to enhance and improve the user's experience with software or a product. This principle has benefits, but can it translate seamlessly to the commercial Web design process? Do UCD principles result in a customer-centric Web site that satisfies the diverse needs of potentially millions of visitors? UCD complements the process of designing and optimizing a site for conversion, but it was never conceived to address the intricacies of building a persuasive system.

The Secret of Managing a Successful Website

The Web is about self-service. To achieve success in self-service you need to really understand how your visitors think and behave. If they are to serve themselves they must feel comfortable and confident. That requires getting to know their needs in a comprehensive manner. It requires an ongoing conversation with them.

Five Things to Know About Users

Over the years, we've studied the usability of hundreds of product and web site designs. We've seen designs that were incredibly effective for users and designs that fell tremendously short. One emerging pattern in our ongoing research is that design teams that know a lot about their users are more likely to produce user experiences that are usable, effective, and pleasing.

Top Ten Ways to Lose Your Intranet Users

Intranet developers and content owners are able to grab the attention of their users through momentum. Interest--caused by curiosity, marketing, word-of-mouth, or hype--is raised during initial rollout. And there will always be a surge in your web server's usage logs during this period. But once the novelty has worn off, will your intranet have enough true substance to transform that initial momentum into regular usage?

Meeting Your Intranet Users

You can’t usefully deliver information to users that you haven’t personally met. This article discusses the challenges in delivering information to all staff within an organisation, and outlining practical approaches that ensure efforts spent publishing intranet content are not wasted.

From Producer Logic to User Logic: The Greatest Challenge You May Have

Moving an intranet structure from a producer logic to a user logic is probably the hardest thing an intranet manager will ever have to do, especially in large, complex organisations.

Human-Centered Intranet Design

The role of the developer is to ensure that their systems don't put undue stress on users simply for the sake of technology. Developing for technology alone helps no one. It may showcase the advances in the industry and impress those in-the-know; but after the oohing and aahing stop, it does little to ease the disconnect between the user and the tool.

Accessibility in User-Centered Design: Personas

Personas are "hypothetical archetypes" of actual users. They are not real people, but they represent real people during the design process. A persona is a fictional characterization of a user. The purpose of personas is to make the users seem more real, to help designers keep realistic ideas of users throughout the design process.

User Group Profiles

Generally, user group profiles are not developed for all user groups, rather they are developed for the primary user groups and for user groups that designers don't know well. Because many designers start out with little or no knowledge of accessibility issues, adding accessibility considerations to user group profiles is particularly important.

Coming of Age in Ethnography

I first heard of ethnography in Sociology 101. In his sonorous voice, our professor regaled us with tales of intrepid anthropologists immersing themselves in little-known cultures in exotic settings. We discussed Margaret Mead's seminal work, Coming of Age in Samoa. We examined the rigors of fieldwork, the tension between observation and participation and the challenge of analysis. It was a great class and I even opted for Soc 102. And that was that. Ethnography faded into the recesses of my mind until reawakened with a start a few years ago when I began hearing it applied to Web design. And it scared me spitless.

Lather-Rinse-Repeat: A User-Centered Design Approach

User-Centered Design.hmm.seems intuitive, doesn't it? Obviously, if we're launching something onto the World Wide Web, we must be expecting someone to use it — duh. Though this may be true, many companies are missing the mark and their audience and, consequently, their business objectives by failing to successfully integrate the user. A User-Centered Design approach can create successes by merging business and user objectives to deliver a service that users value, while generating a benefit for the business.

User-Centered Design and Web Development

User Centered-Design (UCD) is a philosophy and a process. It is a philosophy that places the person (as opposed to the 'thing') at the center; it is a process that focuses on cognitive factors (such as perception, memory, learning, problem-solving, etc.) as they come into play during peoples' interactions with things. UCD seeks to answer questions about users and their tasks and goals, then use the findings to drive development and design.

Adapting the Design Process to Address More Customers in More Situations

While user-centered design (UCD) is a commonly used process for designing mainstream hardware, software, and web interfaces; design for accessibility is relatively uncommon in education and practice. As a result, the scope of users and the situations in which they operate products is not as inclusive as it could be. Designing for accessibility does not require a whole new process. Accessible design techniques fit well into established UCD processes for designing a range of products, from a handheld device, to office software, to a government web site. By integrating accessibility into the design process, designers can efficiently create products that work effectively for more people in more situations.

Making the Customer CEO

The key revolution of the Web is customer empowerment and engagement. The Web empowers the customer more than it empowers the organization. The implications are enormous.

When Kids Use the Web: A Naturalistic Comparison of Children's Navigation Behavior and Subjective Preferences on Two WWW Sites

This paper reports the results of scavenger-hunt usability tests conducted with 16 adolescent children (8 males and 8 females) in two age groups (12 years old and 16 years old), using two general-interest topical Web sites. The tests yield comparison data regarding both search performance and self-reported subjective preferences. The sole independent variable affecting search performance was the age of the subject, from which the authors conclude that children's domain knowledge may be a key component of their ability to retrieve information successfully from Web-based systems. Subjective preferences of children are systematically compared to previously reported preference data for adults who tested the same topical Web sites. Based on these data, as well as on insights based on subjects' verbal protocols, conclusions regarding both commonalities and differences in Web usability requirements between adults and children are suggested.

Brint.com: Why More is Not Better

Information architect Lou Rosenfeld never thought he'd criticize a website for being over-architected. Then he saw Brint.com and its 16 navigational systems.

Everybody Hates the Cable Guy

It's all too common for IT players to emphasize the technology and ignore the information that the technology exists to convey. Take my friendly local cable provider, MediaOne.

Why Users Can be Hard to Design For

To know the mind of others is one of the fundamental problems of being human. Much of our energy is spent trying to do so. For web designers, knowing the mind of users is complicated by having very little interaction with them. It is possible, on some projects, to design and redesign web sites without ever talking to one user.

Are Designers Focused Enough on User Needs?

I find that many designers give much more of their time to learning the latest standards trick than learning the latest “designing for users” trick. Here are a few reasons why this may be so.

Usability Evaluation of a University Portal Website

This article provides a summary of a usability evaluation of a university portal website. University faculty, staff, and student users were asked to complete representative search tasks and provide feedback on the portal usability. Several user interface design issues were found to impact user performance in terms of task success and perceived task difficulty, in addition to overall satisfaction. From these results, recommendations are made for university portal design related to the default 'home' page, channel customization and configuration, and placement of user-specific functions.

Does Advanced Search Sound Too Advanced?

Should advanced search be called something else to sound more friendly and inviting, and would it make more people to use it when they need to?

Examining Users on News Provider Web Sites: A Review of Methodology

This project implemented and reviewed several methods to collect data about users' information seeking behavior on news provider Web sites. While browsing news sites, participants exhibited a tendency toward a breadth-first search approach where they used the home page or a search results page as a hub to which they returned and then linked to other pages. Generally, they browsed before using search. Information seeking patterns were consistent within-user but varied somewhat across users. Most behaviors were characterized as visually scanning with users spending much time scrolling.

How Little Do Users Read?

On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

Web Interactivity: Connecting People and Knowledge

We humans are wired to seek interaction with other people. Complex language and reasoning powers support your interactive nature. Your brain can retrieve and store unlimited amounts of information from everyday interactions and use that information to think, analyze, and solve complex problems.

Internal Search: Seven Ways to Ensure Your Users Can Find Your Information

User Vision's top seven tips on how to ensure your internal search is capable of meeting the needs of your users.

Sign Up Forms Must Die

You load a new web service, eager to dive in and start engaging, and what's the first thing that greets you? A sign-up form. We can do better, says Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Via a technique of "gradual engagment," we can get people using and caring about our web services instead of frustrating them (or sending them to a competitor's site) by forcing them to fill out a sign-up form first.

When Geolocation Gets Too Clever

Geo-redirecting -- redirecting users to different parts of your website depending on their own geographical location -- is a neat trick. It is handy when your website has different messages or product offers for users from different countries or regions. But many website owners mistakenly assume that their geolocation software works every time. It doesn't!

Engagement: The Definition Debate

I know what engagement is (everyone does), but I don't know what it means or how to explain it, let alone how to measure it. In a digital marketing context, I think it's one of those words that everyone understands but can't define.

Web Analytics: Insights From the Front Line, Part 1

In many companies Web and Web analytics have been a silo that someone else is taking care of. Web sites are becoming the most important customer touch point and the most important revenue generator, even for businesses that are not first of mind.

Trinity: A Mindset and Strategic Approach

The goal of the Trinity mindset is to power the generation of actionable insights. Its goal is not to do reporting. Its goal is not to figure out how to spam decision makers with data. Actionable Insights and Metrics are the uber-goal simply because they drive strategic differentiation and a sustainable competitive advantage.

Path Analysis: A Good Use of Time?

Is doing Path Analysis a good use of time? In my humble opinion the answer is a rather emphatic no, except for one exception (which I'll discuss below). Almost always Path Analysis tends to be a sub optimal use of our time, resources and any money that is expended on buying tools that do 'great' Path Analysis.

Stop Obsessing About Conversion Rate

Perhaps there is no other single metric that is abused as much as conversion rate, none that is perhaps more detrimental to solving for a holistic customer experience on the website because of the company behavior it drives.

User Skills Improving, But Only Slightly

Users now do basic operations with confidence and perform with skill on sites they use often. But when users try new sites, well-known usability problems still cause failures.

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.

Customer Support on the Web: Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

Sometimes, when a customer looks for contact information for Customer Support, it is hidden from view or buried beneath layers of menus. Some companies even deliberately hide their contact information, because they simply don't want customers to contact them. So, what factors should you consider if your goal is providing more optimal customer support on the Web?

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?

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.

Informed Design: Understanding Your Web Audience

Although there are lots of elements to consider when designing compelling Web experiences (writing style, look and feel, information organization--to name just a few), there is one 'knowable' element that can be used to appraise the rest: audience.

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.

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.

Users Interleave Sites and Genres

When working on business problems, users flitter among sites, alternating visits to different service genres. No single website defines the user experience on its own.

RSS Will Replace E-mail for Marketing Purposes: What You Need to Build Right Now to be Ready

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (depending on who you believe). If you don't know what it is, you had best grow a brain about it tout de suite.

Social Web Application Design

Luke has made some great slides about Social Web Application Design, saying some very sensible things very well. I particularly like the 'System' diagram that shows how, when thinking about a simple photo, how it can be connected to other entities and related, aggregated and re-presented.

When Getting the Job Done Isn't Enough

Interface designers today are swirling within a blizzard of data. How many types of user data does your Web team collect?

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Relinquish Control

How could there be a successful business model in actively sending people away from your site? Seven years and a $75 billion market capitalization later, that question has obviously been answered.

Fast Surfing, Broad Scanning and Deep Diving: The Influence of Personality and Study Approach on Students' Information-Seeking Behavior

To explore information behavior from a psychological perspective by relating information seeking to personality traits and study approaches. Fast surfing could be related to a surface study approach and emotionality, as well as to low openness to experience and low conscientiousness. Broad scanning was linked to extraversion, openness, and competitiveness, whereas deep diving was a search pattern typical of analytical students with a deep and strategic study approach.

An Introduction to User Journeys

User journeys are a method for conceptualising and structuring a website's content and functionality. These journeys allow us to shift away from thinking about structure in terms of hierarchies or a technical build; instead you create a narrative around your user's needs.

Server-Side Usability

Most usability professionals don't have a driver's licence to servers and are not aware of the steps that can be taken to make them behave in a user-friendly way. In this article, we'll take a look at how to avoid that server technology becomes an obstacle to usability.

Eyes Top Left: Lessons from Eyetrack III

Where do your eyes go when you read articles on the Web? What do you notice, and what do you miss? The upper left quarter of the screen gets the most attention, according to the Eyetrack III research of The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools.

How to Create and Promote a Blog in Eight Easy Steps

A new buzzword you should know about is 'blog' or 'web log', meaning web log, digital journal, or online diary. Blogs are the Next Big Thing to hit the Internet, after conventional Web Sites.

Information Architecture through Web Analytics

Is your website structured according to the needs of your users? Does it deliver on your website objectives? Use Web Analytics to redesign it.

Web Analytics: The Voice of Users in Information Architecture Projects

How to use web analytics in designing web information architecture.

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.

Tacit Knowledge, Knowledge Management, and Active User Participation in Web Site Navigation

One of the reasons that people who seek out information on web sites often feel powerless is that when they do not find what they are looking for, their own tacit sense of what they know is not validated. If tacit knowledge is not calculated for in the design of a web site, it puts the people navigating the site in the position of passive observers. The primary reason for this can be found in the rigid organization schemes in place on many sites. Even the most sophisticated manuals that offer methods for designing web site architectures fail to suggest how they can replicate what is known in knowledge management circles as an “enabling environment.”

Afraid So: Horrible Web Monstrosities

Here they come. Nightmare web sites that, from a usability perspective, are horrid monsters. When you're tired and in a hurry, you want a web site to quickly and easily provide relevant content to you, so you can solve a problem or perform some task. Discover common hideous impediments to web usability. WARNING: Not for the faint hearted!

Altruistic vs. Narcissistic Web Sites

Users are repulsed by web sites that are narcissistic, egotistic, corporate-speak, hard to understand, and difficult to use. Users are attracted to and enjoy web sites that are altruistic, user-prioritized, user-focused, easy to understand, easy to use, and full of fresh, relevant content.

Web Credibility Destroyers

When users visit your web site, their immediate impression of its credibility is based on appearance, colors, text fonts. Then, as they explore your site, other factors contribute to its credibility impact. Lose users here, and they probably will never return.

The Writing, not the Words

Individual words are simply tools. Similarly, a particular color is a tool to a painter, and a given note to a musician. To write copy while focused on power words is like painting by numbers. You achieve a recognizable outcome with absolutely no creativity or life. No passion, no originality. Copywriting 'by numbers' may be good enough for some people. But if you have aspirations to write great copy, to make your mark -- you need to think beyond that.

Weblogs Enable User-Centric Sites

Weblogs give users information from multiple sources in one page.

Printing the Web

Despite predictions to the contrary, it doesn't seem that the advent of networked information sharing has reduced human consumption of paper. In fact, given the amount of printouts modern offices and homes produce, one is inclined to say that even more paper is generated today than ever before.

Tech-Support Tales: Internet Hard to Use for Novice Users

The Internet is still much too difficult to use for novice users. Specialized information appliances like WebTV reduce complexity but still involve considerable risk of user error.

Zipf Curves and Website Popularity

Much available data suggests that Web use follows a Zipf distribution. The figure shows the distribution of incoming page requests to www.sun.com during a one-month period last year. Each datapoint represents one page, with the x-axis showing pages sorted according to popularity: the first page is the most popular one (the home page), the second page is the one that received second-most requests that month, and so on until we reach page number 10,000 which was only requested a single time that month.

User Experience Design for Working Web Sites and Applications

As Technical Communicators, we’re often added as members of software and web site development teams merely as an afterthought. Executives, managers, programmers, and other team members frequently view the results of our work—manuals, online help systems, tutorials, and other documents—as 'nice-to-have' additions to products. This pervasive attitude is certainly not healthy for the profession of technical communication... but it’s not good for the applications our organizations and clients produce either. When Technical Communicators working in an e-business unit as user advocates are given more responsibility and more authority over the 'user experience' of a web-based application, for instance, they affect the bottom-line. They increase hits, product buzz, and completed transactions. By moving beyond manuals, beyond help, and into the new role of User Experience Designer, we increase the value we add to services and products and increase our professional status within organizations.

A Preliminary Report on Two Pilot Readability/Usability Studies

Companies are beginning to conduct readability studies to determine how to provide customers with usable sites. Results have been inconclusive, conflicting, and often contradicting results of printed text studies. To discover how users use web sites, two pilot studies were designed to examine users, their purposes, and their reading processes. Many results parallel those of previous studies. In addition, new results indicate we need to examine several new variables, including amount of usage, site-specific knowledge, conventionalization, print bias, gender and age.

Web Shui: Borrowed Brilliance

Widely utilized in the West to make environments more beneficial to occupants, the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui aligns the forces of chi (energy) to create balance, harmony, and prosperity. I've adapted a sort of feng shui for Web sites.

Web Shui: Working the Guidelines

Design conventions represent the dominant and successful methods of Web site planning and creation and give you a clear set of dos and don'ts for your own site.

The Art of Being Human

Site visitors crave the sense that someone is there, within and behind your Web pages, your emails and newsletters. Dealing with the bare technology of online interactions is a cold experience for many, or even most of us. It makes us feel anxious. Technology isn't warm. It has no heart. It neither understands us, nor cares for us. For many Web sites, whether for businesses or organizations, we simply plug in and play the bare technology - the super-duper means of information delivery. All the site visitor sees and feels is the design, the interface, the links and the clicks. The experience is about as warm and human as banking with an ATM machine.

Synthesis of Results of 'Interview with Designer': Goals of the Designer and Implications for Research and Re-Design

In order to gain a better understanding of the designer’s intentions with the Arthritis Source, we conducted an interview with the designer, Rick Matsen, on November 15, 1999. Further, we wanted to gather more information that would generate potential research questions for the PETTT team as well as re-design ideas for the D3 team. Below is a summary of Rick’s interview compiled from observations of four researchers, followed by the implications for re-design and research questions.

Guidelines for Web Data Collection: Understanding and Interacting with Your Users

The global growth of the World Wide Web challenges technical communicators to reconsider the methods we use to create designs that meet the goals and needs of our users. This article focuses on taking advantage of the Web's potential for interactivity between designers and users. It offers strategies for getting data from users of Web sites and using it for two main purposes: (1) analyzing audience and patterns of use to support continuous redesign, and (2) building a relationship or sense of community on a Web site.