#10262
Modeling Information for Three-Dimensional Space: Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design 
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.
Carliner, Saul. Technical Communication Online (2001). Design>Information Design>Usability
#18661
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.
Cooper, Alan. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#19619
Navigation: An Often Neglected Component of Web Authorship
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.
Jerz, Dennis G. Seton Hill University (2000). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#10429
On Beyond Help: Meeting User Needs for Useful Online Information
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.
Quesenbery, Whitney. Technical Communication Online (2001). Articles>Usability>Information Design
#21689
Papers and Presentations from STC India Learning Sessions
View and download papers presented at STC India's learning sessions.
STC India. Presentations>Information Design>Communication>Usability
#30191
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.
Lennartz, Sven. Dr. Web (2007). (German) Articles>Usability>Information Design>Adobe Acrobat
#30190
PDF Usability: Debate and Reality 
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.
Johnson, Duff. Adobe (2006). Articles>Usability>Information Design>Adobe Acrobat
#14210
Personas: Matching a Design to the Users' Goals
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.
Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2001). Articles>Information Design>Usability
#10257
Prioritize: Good Content Bubbles to the Top
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.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1999). Articles>Usability>Information Design
#14153
The Psychology of Menu Selection: Designing Cognitive Control at the Human/Computer Interface
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.
Norman, Kent L. University of Maryland (1991). Books>Information Design>Usability>Cognitive Psychology
#10399
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.
Zimmerman, Beverly B. and Jessica R. Schultz. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Information Design>Usability
#19339
Web Navigation: Resolving Conflicts between the Desktop and the Web
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.
Fellenz, Carola, Jarmo Parkkinen and Hal Shubin. ACM SIGCHI (1998). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#23261
Web Page Design: Implications of Memory, Structure and Scent for Information Retrieval 
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.'
Czerwinski, Mary and Kevin Larson. Microsoft (1998). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#20870
Although users tend to navigate websites by search mechanisms or by links embedded in actual content, website navigation serves useful purposes.
Baker, Adam. Merges.net (2001). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#21362
What an Information Architect Should Know About Prototypes for User Testing
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.
Farnum, Chris. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design>Usability
#20927
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.
Quesenbery, Whitney. WQusability (2001). Articles>Information Design>Professionalism>Usability
#33115
Readability, Browsability, Searchability Plus Assistance
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.
Morgan, Eric Lease. Infomotions (2004). Articles>Information Design>Usability>Search
#33199
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.
Ashby-Kuhlman, Nathan. ashbykuhlman.net (2002). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#33200
Essential Navigation Checklists for Web Design
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.
Eleniak, Marta. SitePoint (2003). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#33202
How Google Manages its Home Page
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.
McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#33417
Usability and Maintainability: Navigable Information
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.”
Gryphon Mountain (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Usability
#33449
Information Architecture is Not Usability
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.
Lash, Jeff. Digital Web Magazine (2002). Articles>Information Design>Usability>Semantic
#33840
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
#34046
User Experience Designer or ...? What You Call Yourself Matters
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.
Bailie, Rahel Anne. Intentional Design Inc. (2009). Careers>Usability>User Experience>Information Design
#34290
Information Architecture Task Failures Remain Costly
Task success is up substantially compared with usability statistics from 2004. Bad information architecture causes most of the remaining user failures.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Information Design>Usability>Assessment
