Effects of RSVP Display Design on Visual Performance in Accomplishing Dual Tasks with Small Screens  

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.

Chen, Chien-Hsiung and Yu-Hung Chien. International Journal of Design (2007). Design>User Interface>Information Design>Usability

Eight Guidelines for Usability Testing

Eight essential guidelines for usability testing, helping you to plan, run and analyse usability tests.

Fidgeon, Tim. Webcredible (2005). Design>Web Design>Usability>Testing

Eight Quick Tips for a More Usable E-Commerce Web Site

If you are a Web site developer and you want to create a safe, warm, and comfortable e-commerce environment for your users, then you will want to consider several issues. Start first by thinking about your own online shopping and purchasing concerns. What do you like? What don't you like? What do think are the indicators of online security and personal and financial privacy?

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Eight Web Usability Killers

Many web sites considered robust and healthy by their owners may be suffering from one of these eight life-threatening diseases.

Streight, Steven. Webcredible (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability

El Enlace: Forma y Función

Los enlaces, en la actual Web, tienen la función de representar un vínculo o conexión unidireccional entre dos nodos web. Son la unidad básica de interacción de los sistemas hipertexto, por lo que la interacción en la Web comúnmente es conocida como Navegación. En un espacio virtual compuesto por nodos y vínculos entre dichos nodos, si se entiende que la ubicación del usuario está en el nodo que se encuentra visualizando, la interacción sobre los enlaces con la posterior visualización de otros nodos se entiende como un desplazamiento o, en un océano de nodos, como navegación. Para que el usuario dentro de nuestro sitio web experimente una navegación eficiente, fácil y satisfactoria, los enlaces no sólo tendrán que conectar nodos con contenidos verdaderamente relacionados, sino además presentarse de tal forma que el usuario entienda sin ambigüedades que se trata de un enlace, comprendiendo consecuentemente su función.

Hassan Montero, Yusef. Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Usability

Elementos de Navegación y Orientación del Usuario

Los elementos de navegación y orientación tienen como función básica informar constantemente al usuario acerca de dónde se encuentra, que relación tiene el nodo web que está visualizando respecto al resto de la arquitectura del website, dónde ha estado y hacia dónde puede ir. El objetivo: no perder al usuario.

Hassan Montero, Yusef and Francisco Jesus Martin Fernandez. Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

The Elements of Interaction Design

Other design disciplines use raw materials. Communication designers use basic visual elements such as the line. Industrial designers work with simple 3D shapes such as the cube, the sphere, and the cylinder. For interaction designers, who create products and services that can be digital (software) or analog (a karaoke machine) or both (a mobile phone), the design elements are more conceptual. And yet they offer a powerful set of components for interaction designers to bring to bear on their projects.

Saffer, Dan. UXmatters (2006). Design>Usability>Interaction Design>

Eleven Common Web Page Design Frustrations And How To Cure Them

Information is the ultimate reason for your web site's existence. Your Web site should transparently communicate its content. Anything that interferes with the immediate and intuitive transfer of information between you and your web site visitor undermines your web site's success.

Parker, Roger C. NewEntrepreneur.com (2000). Design>Web Design>Usability

Emotion & Design: Attractive Things Work Better

Advances in our understanding of emotion and affect have implications for the science of design. Affect changes the operating parameters of cognition: positive affect enhances creative, breadth-first thinking whereas negative affect focuses cognition, enhancing depth-first processing and minimizing distractions. Therefore, it is essential that products designed for use under stress follow good human-centered design, for stress makes people less able to cope with difficulties and less flexible in their approach to problem solving. Positive affect makes people more tolerant of minor difficulties and more flexible and creative in finding solutions. Products designed for more relaxed, pleasant occasions can enhance their usability through pleasant, aesthetic design. Aesthetics matter: attractive things work better.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability>Emotions

The Emperor's New Web Site

'Viewability' on a Web site may not imply 'usability.' Real Websters know the difference. For example, a recent Web-mag cartoon shows a puzzled 'visitor' in front of a store front. A sign says 'Come on in.' However, the visitor fails to see any door. It's obscured by the Las Vegas pizzazz and animatronic geegaws soliciting attention willy-nilly. Have you seen such Web sites?

Schaffer, Eric M. Intranet Journal (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability

Empirical Evaluation of a Popular Cellular Phone's Menu System: Theory Meets Practice    

A usability assessment entailing a paper prototype was conducted to examine menu selection theories on a small screen device by determining the effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction of a popular cellular phone's menu system. Outcomes of this study suggest that users prefer a less extensive menu structure on a small screen device. The investigation also covered factors of category classification and item labeling influencing user performance in menu selection. Research findings suggest that proper modifications in these areas could significantly enhance the system's usability and demonstrate the validity of paper-prototyping which is capable of detecting significant differences in usability measures among various model designs.

Huang, Sheng-Cheng, I-Fan Chou and Randolph G. Bias. Journal of Usability Studies (2006). Articles>User Interface>Usability>User Centered Design

Employee Directory Search: Resolving Conflicting Usability Guidelines

Guidelines conflict on whether to limit intranet search to a single search box or dedicate an additional box to employee directory searches. There's theory to support both guidelines. What's up?

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Design>Usability>Style Guides

Enabling Extremely Rapid Navigation in Your Web or Document

This article presents information design techniques that apply to web sites, help systems, hardcopy, and online documentation. When the standard document navigation structures are provided, readers can rapidly survey the scope of a web or document and jump to the pages of greatest interest. This article explains the nature and benefits of detailed outlines and recommends that web authors provide a reasonably detailed and structured outline of their web site. Surfing the web can be speeded up greatly by loading fewer irrelevant pages and by giving users an (additional) alternative to page-by-page exploration, thus avoiding the lost-in-hyperspace syndrome. The distinctions between overviews, tables of contents, full-text searches, database keyword searches, and topical indexes are explained, to justify providing multiple approaches for the reader.

Hoffman, Michael. Hypertext Navigation (1997). Design>Web Design>Usability

The End of Homemade Websites

Web services will free individual site designers from having to program and design common features. This will decrease business costs, increase usability, and let designers focus on and improve features that are unique to each site.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2001). Design>Content Management>Web Design>Usability

The End of the Hit Parade

Once upon a time, if it was on the web, it was good. If it did tricks, so much the better. And how did a company know if its website was really good? Of course, by measuring traffic. The more traffic, the better, right?

Jaleshgari, Ramin. CIO Magazine (2000). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Log Analysis

The End of Web Design

Websites must tone down their individual appearance and distinct design in all ways: visual design; terminology and labeling; interaction design and workflow; and information architecture. These changes are driven by four different trends that all lead to the same conclusion.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2000). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Interaction Design

Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms

Google's cache offers users a copy of your website with their search terms highlighted. You can do the same thing and make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for — whether they're coming from an external search engine or your own site search — by making their search terms easy to spot.

Suda, Brian and Matt Riggott. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search

Entering Text Into Hand-Held Devices: Comparing Two Soft Keyboards

With the increasing demand for smaller more mobile devices (e.g., PDAs, pen tablets, etc.), manufacturers have been forced to consider alternative methods of input (other than a standard keyboard) such as pen-based input via handwriting recognition or on-screen, soft keyboards.  However, meeting the need for high-efficiency input in these physically constrained environments has proven to be a challenge for designers and researchers, particularly given the fact that they are designing for a “walk-up” market where consumers want to be able to begin using it without extensive practice.

Bohan, Michael. Usability News (2000). Articles>Usability>Design

The Essentials of a Database Quality Process    

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.

Blakeslee, Dorothy M. and John Rumble, Jr. Data Science Journal (2003). Articles>Information Design>Databases>Usability

Evaluating the Usability of Educational Websites for Children

This study examined the usability of educational websites for children. Children ages 7 - 11 performed seven search tasks with one of three websites. Overall, participants, especially those less than 10 years of age were not very successful. Terminology, number and organization of links, location of information above the fold, and length of individual pages all influenced performance on the tasks.

Naidu, Shivashankar. Usability News (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Children

Evaluating the Usability of Search Forms Using Eyetracking: A Practical Approach

The usability of forms is often massively important to the overall usability of a Web site. That's why we decided to subject some of these forms to a quick round of eyetracking tests and have analyzed the resulting data to better understand what makes Web forms usable--or unusable.

Penzo, Matteo. UXmatters (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>Eye Tracking

Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility

This document outlines approaches for preliminary review Web site accessibility, and for evaluation of conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. While it does not provide checkpoint-by-checkpoint testing techniques it does include general procedures and tips for evaluation during development of Web sites, and for monitoring of established Web sites. Other resources will be developed for in-depth compliance testing. The measures described here are intended to supplement an organization's existing procedures for content management and quality assurance on their Web sites. For information about why making Web sites accessible is important read the Introductions on the WAI Resources page.

W3C. Articles>Accessibility>Usability>Web Design

Evaluation of an Informational Web Site: Three Variants of the Think-aloud Method Compared    

To evaluate Web sites, usability experts often use methods that were originally employed for the evaluation of software applications. In doing so, they assume that these methods will work exactly the same for both types of test objects. However, there is a major difference between transactional software applications and informational Web sites, a difference that could have an effect on the workings of various usability methods. As such, we felt that it was valuable to repeat one of our previous studies in which we compared concurrent think-aloud protocols, retrospective think-aloud protocols, and constructive interaction to evaluate a Web application, this time using a Web site. The results of our study showed that in some respects, the methods did work differently depending on the test object they were applied to. However, we conclude that the three methods are largely interchangeable and that the decision to choose one variant of the think-aloud method over the other should be based on practical considerations.

van den Haak, Maaike J., Menno de Jong, D.T. and Peter JanSchellens. Technical Communication Online (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Methods

Evangelize with Usability: Using Invalid Users to Sell User Centered Design to a large organization

In larger technology companies it can often be difficult to develop an understanding of the advantages of doing good product design early. As Alan Cooper told us, 'The word 'design' is toxic in the world of business'. More so with Interaction Design and User Centered Design processes which require to be done early, close to the beginning of a project while the product is being defined and the requirements written. It is not unusual to find a number of very skeptical people around, who question, the time, budget and effort which must go into these activities. So how do you overcome this skepticism? How do you sell Interaction Design to a skeptical audience? The answer is to use Usability Testing as your early option for evangelizing your new principles and approach. By carefully selecting a set of 'invalid' test participants, you can sow the seeds for future success. This strategy is not without it's risks and it could easily backfire if your design is not good. This short paper seeks to advise you how to select the candidate evangelists and how to manage the risks of showing them the product early, so that you get the desired result - an influential band of company evangelists to your User Centered Design cause. People who will go forth and spread the word that your efforts, the budget and the time are not only necessary but essential for the future success of the business.

UIdesign (2000). Design>Usability>User Centered Design>Interaction Design