http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Information-Design/Usability A listing of the most recently indexed works about Design and Information Design and Usability in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Information-Design/Usability http://tc.eserver.org/34904.html http://tc.eserver.org/34904.html タスク成功率は、2004 年のユーザビリティ統計と比べると大きく上昇した。しかしそれにもかかわらず、ユーザがタスクを完遂できないケースがあり、その原因の大半は情報アーキテクチャ(IA)の出来の悪さにある。 http://tc.eserver.org/34908.html http://tc.eserver.org/34908.html 大きな二次元のドロップダウンパネルは、ナビゲーションの選択肢をグループ化することでスクロールの必要性を無くし、タイポグラフィやアイコン、ツールチップを使うことで、ユーザの選択できる内容をわかりやすく提示してくれる。 http://tc.eserver.org/34290.html http://tc.eserver.org/34290.html Task success is up substantially compared with usability statistics from 2004. Bad information architecture causes most of the remaining user failures. http://tc.eserver.org/34293.html http://tc.eserver.org/34293.html Given that regular drop-down menus are rife with usability problems, it takes a lot for me to recommend a new form of drop-down. But, as our testing videos show, mega drop-downs overcome the downsides of regular drop-downs. Thus, I can recommend one while warning against the other. http://tc.eserver.org/34046.html http://tc.eserver.org/34046.html Using a self-designation with a certain amount of specificity sacrifices practicality to accuracy. Individuals who have been hired as a single-function specialist may have the luxury of presenting as a “usability engineer” or “information architect”. For the independent consultant, this strategy can have definite negative consequences. http://tc.eserver.org/33840.html http://tc.eserver.org/33840.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33449.html http://tc.eserver.org/33449.html The distinction between information architecture and usability may seem like semantics, but there are significant differences between the two disciplines. Though they are often discussed interchangeably, and practitioners are often well-versed in both, information architecture and usability differ in their scope and areas of focus. http://tc.eserver.org/33417.html http://tc.eserver.org/33417.html This post is part of a series on usability and maintainability. At first, meeting the needs of content consumers through usability can seem at odds with meeting needs of technical communicators through maintainability. My purpose in these posts is to discuss how technical communication best practices can satisfy both needs. I’ll use Gurak and Lannon’s usability criteria of users being able to “find what they need, understand the language, follow the instructions, and read the graphics.” http://tc.eserver.org/33199.html http://tc.eserver.org/33199.html The words 'click here for...' and 'click here to...' serve no purpose within links. Unfortunately, many news sites still use them. According to Google, 'click here' is on about 8,970 pages at sptimes.com alone. http://tc.eserver.org/33200.html http://tc.eserver.org/33200.html These checklists pull together best practice in the disciplines of information design, usability and accessibility, into an easy to apply format. If you are already familiar with those topics, the checklists serve as a handy reminder that is easy to refer to and apply when planning navigation. If unfamiliar it's also a fast-track lesson - providing you with a head-start in getting it right and enables you to make better informed choices / compromises. http://tc.eserver.org/33202.html http://tc.eserver.org/33202.html An average person can deal with only 7-10 choices on a web page, according to Google research. That's why it's so hard to get a link on the Google home page. http://tc.eserver.org/33115.html http://tc.eserver.org/33115.html Readability, browsability, and searchability do not have to be equally represented in every information system. As your collection of information increases, different aspects of these qualities take on greater significance. Thus, the amount of readability, browsability, and searchability your information system exhibits depends on the type and quality of your collected data, as well as the information needs of your clientele. http://tc.eserver.org/30414.html http://tc.eserver.org/30414.html In this progression we will examine ways that technical communicators can improve both information usability and product usability. The presentation will center around two major points. http://tc.eserver.org/30191.html http://tc.eserver.org/30191.html Das kennt man: ein ahnungsloser Klick und plötzlich öffnet sich eine mega-lange PDF-Datei. Seitengestalter sind deshalb angehalten Links auf PDF-Dateien zu kennzeichnen. Selbstverständlich macht das inzwischen auch (fast) jeder. http://tc.eserver.org/30190.html http://tc.eserver.org/30190.html This article examines the claims of those PDF critics and argues that usability complaints about PDF documents are misdirected, and further, highlights some of the key reasons why PDF is the preferred electronic document format. http://tc.eserver.org/29821.html http://tc.eserver.org/29821.html Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) represents a mechanism for exhibiting temporal information instead of spatial information to overcome the limitations of small-screen devices. Previous studies examining this area focused only on information presented by RSVP displays and disregarded changes in the performance of accompanying tasks associated with such displays. Therefore, this investigation performed a dual-task experiment (a search task for static information and a reading task for RSVP display information) to examine the effects of presentation mode (character-by-character, word-by-word, and one-line format), speed (171, 260, 350, and 430 characters per minute, or cpm), and text-flow orientation (vertical and horizontal orientation) of RSVP display information on the visual performance of users during different stages of usage (whether current usage is the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or eighth day of usage) for a small screen. http://tc.eserver.org/29355.html http://tc.eserver.org/29355.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/29357.html http://tc.eserver.org/29357.html Describes the effect of bookmark naming on bookmark recognition. The purpose was to provide empirically-determined guidelines for web producers on how to title pages in order to optimise the recognition of bookmarks by users, and to increase the rate of revisitation as a result. http://tc.eserver.org/28267.html http://tc.eserver.org/28267.html Learn practical ways to influence members of your company’s product engineering group with usability testing data. Putting the authors’ tips into practice will help you improve the design of your company’s products. http://tc.eserver.org/28217.html http://tc.eserver.org/28217.html Information design is supposed to be done from the very beginning, as it's not a cosmetic but a substantial discipline. You are much faster if you hire an information designer in the beginning. http://tc.eserver.org/27286.html http://tc.eserver.org/27286.html Many steps are involved in the process of turning an initial concept for a database into a finished product that meets the needs of its user community. In this paper, we describe those steps in the context of a four-phase process with particular emphasis on the quality-related issues that need to be addressed in each phase to ensure that the final product is a high quality database. The basic requirements for a successful database quality process are presented with specific examples drawn from experience gained in the Standard Reference Data Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. http://tc.eserver.org/27259.html http://tc.eserver.org/27259.html This site is a consolidation of publicly available and privately submitted job postings in HCI, Usability, User Experience, Interaction Design, Information Architecture and Ergonomics. http://tc.eserver.org/24206.html http://tc.eserver.org/24206.html Information, once rare and valuable, is now as plentiful as it is meaningless. The constant accessibility rendered by various 'networking' technologies has led to a veritable glut of information. Deluged with data and flooded with facts, we are drowning in a river of communication with no clear direction or purpose. Media-mesmerized and stimuli-saturated, we are caught up in the murky current, making it increasingly more difficult to keep our heads above water. Whether we sink or swim will depend on how effective we are at controlling and managing the flow, how efficient we are at fishing for essence and meaning, and how adept we are at preserving the ecology between man and this digital morass. http://tc.eserver.org/23985.html http://tc.eserver.org/23985.html The term mapping describes the relationship between a control, the thing it affects, and the intended result. Poor mapping is evident when a control does not relate visually or symbolically with the object it affects, requiring the user to stop and think, 'what's going to happen when I turn this knob?' http://tc.eserver.org/23816.html http://tc.eserver.org/23816.html A presentation about whether an underlying spatial metaphor aids information design usability. http://tc.eserver.org/23301.html http://tc.eserver.org/23301.html Recent studies have shown that while the use of breadcrumb trails to navigate a website can be helpful, few users choose to utilize this method of navigation. This study investigates the effects of 'mere exposure' and training on breadcrumb usage. Findings indicate that brief training on the benefits of breadcrumb usage resulted in more efficient search behavior. http://tc.eserver.org/23261.html http://tc.eserver.org/23261.html The authors describe an experiment to see if large breadth and decreased depth is preferable, both subjectively and via performance data, while attempting to design for optimal scent throughout different structures of a web site. This work is testing the theories of Miller in his classic 'The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.' http://tc.eserver.org/23034.html http://tc.eserver.org/23034.html Findability refers to the quality of being locatable or navigable. At the item level, we can evaluate to what degree a particular object is easy to discover or locate. At the system level, we can analyze how well a physical or digital environment supports navigation and retrieval. This website is a selective, seriously incomplete, and perpetually evolving collection of links to people, software, organizations, and content related to findability. http://tc.eserver.org/23053.html http://tc.eserver.org/23053.html What is the relationship between information architecture design and usability engineering? This is a loaded question, and I wade into dangerous waters by addressing it, but the answer has significant implications for a variety of audiences. http://tc.eserver.org/22810.html http://tc.eserver.org/22810.html Cadius es una iniciativa al servicio de la comunidad de profesionales de la Arquitectura de Información y la Usabilidad. http://tc.eserver.org/22672.html http://tc.eserver.org/22672.html Discusses the intersection of information architecture (IA) and usability. http://tc.eserver.org/21886.html http://tc.eserver.org/21886.html Explains that specific, measurable objectives and post-launch measurements are crucial for successfully achieving ROI (return on investment) goals. He also provides several examples aligning business and design initiatives, and prioritizing design projects relative to their ROI. http://tc.eserver.org/21689.html http://tc.eserver.org/21689.html View and download papers presented at STC India's learning sessions. http://tc.eserver.org/21362.html http://tc.eserver.org/21362.html There are several important factors to consider when you are planning to do prototyping for user testing. You will want to make careful choices about fidelity, level of interactivity and the medium of your prototype. Chris Farnum offers descriptions and best use scenarios to help you make the best prototype decision for your tests. http://tc.eserver.org/20927.html http://tc.eserver.org/20927.html In defining a field, each person seems to look at the world and place themselves in the center of the circle, giving their specialty top billing as the summation of all the others. What exactly is gained by this political one-upmanship? In the face of this inflation, I find myself pulling back to the simplest craft title I can find. Or avoiding titles altogether. http://tc.eserver.org/20870.html http://tc.eserver.org/20870.html Although users tend to navigate websites by search mechanisms or by links embedded in actual content, website navigation serves useful purposes. http://tc.eserver.org/20543.html http://tc.eserver.org/20543.html Bowie urges technical communicators to spend less time creating documentation and more time designing products that people can use intuitively. http://tc.eserver.org/19619.html http://tc.eserver.org/19619.html Web authors should follow web design conventions that account for the variety of ways users will try to navigate through their pages. While usability testing is the best way to ensure your site is really operating as you intend it to, this page offers a basic overview of basic navigation principles that most visitors will expect on most pages that they visit. http://tc.eserver.org/19437.html http://tc.eserver.org/19437.html A discussion of the common pitfalls of web usability and information architecture, and the state of the web industry today. http://tc.eserver.org/19339.html http://tc.eserver.org/19339.html This paper summarizes a workshop at CHI98 that focused on navigational problems caused by differences in navigational models between the desktop and the Web. The goal of this workshop was to identify usability problems encountered when users move from the 'traditional' desktop to the Web and to identify ways to minimize transfer-learning problems between the two platforms.Workshop papers will soon be available online. http://tc.eserver.org/19126.html http://tc.eserver.org/19126.html Do better information products result when technical communicators are well integrated into product development teams? http://tc.eserver.org/18661.html http://tc.eserver.org/18661.html The artless Websites created during the Web's infancy were of necessity built only with simple HTML tags, and were forced to divide up their functionality and content into a maze (a web?) of separate pages. This made a navigation scheme an unavoidable component of any Website design, and of course, a clear, visually arresting navigation scheme was better than an obscure or hidden one. But many Web designers have incorrectly deduced from this that users want navigation schemes. Actually, they'd be happy if there were no navigation at all. http://tc.eserver.org/14210.html http://tc.eserver.org/14210.html We hear all the time from designers that they're faced with the huge challenge of designing products and web sites for a large number of different users. Many designers tackle this problem by making the functionality of the web site or product as extensive as possible. To do this, they outline all of the goals of each user, identify any commonalities between these goals, and add all of the functionality needed to satisfy these common goals. http://tc.eserver.org/14153.html http://tc.eserver.org/14153.html Menu selection is emerging as an important mode of human/computer interaction. This book, the first entirely devoted to this important form of human/computer interaction, provides detailed theoretical and empirical information of interest to software designers and human/computer interaction specialists and researchers. A new theoretical approach to menu selection is taken by developing a psychological theory of cognitive control by the user. A comprehensive review of empirical research on menu selection is presented in an organized fashion to aid in the design and evaluation of systems. Finally, information is given on how to protype and evaluate menu selection systems using both performance data and user ratings. http://tc.eserver.org/13905.html http://tc.eserver.org/13905.html What was intended to be an Interview immediately became an audience with the master. It became difficult to slide in the questions as Cooper began to tear up the rulebook for the technology industry and throw it out. He discusses why Interaction Design is about complete systems architecture and he hits on what's wrong with relational databases; what's wrong with file systems; why Interaction Design is a lot more than Interface Design; and why he really doesn't like Usability much either. http://tc.eserver.org/13658.html http://tc.eserver.org/13658.html For the most part, information architects are communicators and strategists. While others merely tolerated the mishmash of responsibilities, they relished it. Designers often put up with having to write HTML but jumped at the chance to 'just do design.' Programmers were forced to meet with clients and work on strategy, but all along probably wanted to just write code. When these two ends of the spectrum split off, the empty middle was a perfect place to be. At the same time, there was an increased (but still hidden) need for information architecture. As the average web project process matured, more problems arose. Formal documentation was needed, business objectives were taking on increased importance, and, as the size increased exponentially, information organization became a much more important role. (The fact that this evolution took place during the 'dot.com fallout' is not insignificant, as this led to the placement of web projects under the same microscope as other business endeavors.) Some of these positions could be filled by existing disciplines; project managers, business analysts, and usability specialists transitioned from 'traditional' work and were added to web teams. Still, there was something missing. The connection between 'the big picture' (business strategy, high-level user tasks, basic structural architecture) and the nitty-gritty (categorization, labeling, bottom-up information hierarchies) often wasn't being made. This is where information architects fit in. http://tc.eserver.org/13357.html http://tc.eserver.org/13357.html Search engine ads are one type of Web advertising that can actually work. To create the best ads, do quick experiments and redesign ads based on usability principles for online writing. Doing so helped us increase ad click-through by 55 to 310 percent. http://tc.eserver.org/10429.html http://tc.eserver.org/10429.html It is well accepted that understanding the users and a thorough analysis of their goals and tasks is a prerequisite for usability. To produce a document, online information, or knowledge base that is truly usable, the designer and writer must also consider different user approaches to the information to create it in a form that meets those needs. The underlying technology must also be considered, as it affects the presentation of the information as well as the functionality available to users. To meet user needs for useful online information, all these elements must be factored into the design—and technical communicators must master the skills necessary to make the right choices. http://tc.eserver.org/10399.html http://tc.eserver.org/10399.html This study investigates the effectiveness of information design principles and feedback-based usability testing in the development of clinical questionnaires, with the goal of increasing the amount of data collected in the Breast Cancer Lymphatic Mapping Database at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute. It finds that although both the Control and Study forms were generated using the same form design software, the Study form developed using information design principles collected significantly more data than the Control form developed by a systems analyst. The article observes that information designers face conflicts between the needs of users, general information design guidelines, constraints of the software, and misunderstandings by medical researchers and health professionals over the role of information designers. http://tc.eserver.org/10352.html http://tc.eserver.org/10352.html Why do players of computer games seem to approach those applications without fear, eagerly exploring and learning as they go, while users of business applications will go out of their way to keep from using the tools? Why do business applications require volumes of documentation when the most complex games come with a brief tutorial and a strategy guide for exploration? Why can games teach pilots to fly multi-million-dollar jets better than books and classroom training? These questions have led us to ask another question: Why can’t business applications be more like games? In this article, we attempt to lay the ground work for future research by defining seven design principles found in games that we believe contribute to the creation of more usable applications. http://tc.eserver.org/10286.html http://tc.eserver.org/10286.html Much discussion in web usability in recent years has revolved around designing web sites which are intended to be easily accessible by even the least technologically advanced user. This attempt to attract the highest number of visitors is especially appropriate for promoting and selling goods and services. The inexperienced user unaccustomed to reading text displayed on monitors and unable to efficiently download multimedia files should not be alienated by highly detailed or stylized web writing or a lack of bandwidth. Yet, there are more-advanced users on the web that designers should consider when appropriate. http://tc.eserver.org/10262.html http://tc.eserver.org/10262.html Perhaps these concerns sound familiar: visitors complain that they cannot find information of interest. One observes, 'I know there's information about that type of robotics here, but darned if I can find it;' visitors enter the site but don't stay particularly long. Some might even express an interest in the subject; let's say it's modern art. But they leave almost as quickly as they enter without paying much attention to the artwork that the designers painstakingly displayed; other visitors spend hours at the site but never seem to notice particular sections. For example, a visitor might be thoroughly familiar with the content on radios but oblivious to the section on industrial hardware. These observations could describe visitors to Web sites. Actually, these observations describe museum visitors. The connections between the two are discussed in this article. http://tc.eserver.org/10257.html http://tc.eserver.org/10257.html If everything is equally prominent, then nothing is prominent. It is the job of the designer to advise the user and guide them to the most important or most promising choices (while ensuring their freedom to go anywhere they please). On today's Web, the most common mistake is to make everything too prominent: over-use of colors, animation, blinking, and graphics. Every element of the page screams 'look at me' (while all the other design elements scream 'no, look at me'). When everything is emphasized, nothing is emphasized.