Helping Businesses Evaluate Their Internet Presence  

To ensure that their Web sites are conveying the intended image, a growing list of businesses, including Avis Rent A Car System, McDonald's, Staples and Holiday Inn, are turning to companies that test usability and brand opinion for help. These companies conduct surveys and focus groups and even use high-technology eye-tracking devices to uncover how customers use a Web site and how their experiences affect feelings about the parent company.

Bannan, Karen. New York Times, The (2002). Design>Usability>Assessment>Eye Tracking

Helping Low-vision and Other Users with Web Sites That Meet Their Needs: Is One Site for All Feasible?    

For this study, we recruited low-vision users with a variety of vision problems who need software to magnify computer text. Although we did not systematically recruit for specific vision problems, the fact that our users had different needs gave us one of the most critical insights in this study: The needs of low-vision users are too diverse for simple solutions to Web accessibility and usability. We show a few ways in which today’s Web sites are missing the needs of all low-vision users and provide guidelines for fixing those problems. However, the diversity of vision needs and the resulting adaptations that low-vision users require mean that there are no simple solutions to making Web sites work for everyone. In this article, therefore, you will not find many simple guidelines. Instead, we raise a critical issue and suggest a 'vision of the future' solution.

Theofanos, Mary Frances and Janice C. 'Ginny' Redish. Technical Communication Online (2005). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Universal Usability

Helping Users Find Physical Locations

When we asked users to find a nearby store, office, dealership, or other outlet based on information provided at a parent company's website, users succeeded only 63% of the time. On average, the 10 sites we studied complied with less than half of our 21 usability guidelines for locator design.

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

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

Helping Your Visitors: A State of Mind

Remember your site visitors won't find your website as easy to use as you do. Change your state of mind and you'll improve the user experience for all visitors.

Usborne, Nick. Webcredible (2006). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability

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

Hiding Behind the User

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

Highlighting Functionality

Research indicates that most users never find the majority of the functionality in any given application. Learning tends to reach a plateau early on, and is rarely expanded upon. And what that means is that most customers consistently undervalue the software products they purchase and use.

Farrell, Tom. Frontend Infocentre (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design

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

Homepage Real Estate Allocation

On average, sample sites evenly distributed valuable screen space between content, navigation, fluff, blank areas, and system overhead. Areas of user interest should occupy more than the current 39%.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

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

How Can You 'Insure' Usability? – Achieving Routine User-Centered Design for Anthem's 12 Million Members Worldwide

Discusses how Anthem attained the training, standards, and resources they needed to create a sustained usability effort.

Weinschenk, Susan and Kyle Tolar. Human Factors International (2006). Presentations>Usability>User Centered Design

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

How Good are Designers at Predicting User Performance?

Having designers guess the best way of achieving optimal user performance is very difficult. Their design decisions can be improved by ensuring that designers are familiar with the research literature, and by effectively using performance-based usability testing.

Bailey, Robert. Web Usability (2001). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability

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

How Important is Visual Feedback When Using a Touch Screen?

From check station point-of-sale devices (restaurants, grocery stores, etc.) to information kiosks, to the cars we drive (navigation systems), touch screens have become the input device of choice.  While the versatility of the touch screen is highly desired, the poor performance it achieves relative to the mechanical keyboard has been something that users have been forced to deal with.  Empirical research studies have found that touch screens consistently produced slower and less accurate performance when compared with keyboards  (Barrett & Krueger, 1994; Wilson, Inderrieden, & Liu, 1995). Schneiderman (1998) outlines the many advantages and disadvantages to using a touch screen.

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

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.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design

How Much Information?  

Bradley Dilger writes that making computers 'easy' may also make them less useful. 'Ease is never free: its gain is matched by a loss in choice, security, privacy, health, or a combination thereof,' he says. He urges professors to understand the inimical effects of ease and explore pedagogical practices that can counter those effects.

Dilger, Bradley. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2000). Design>Usability>Technology

How Not to Make Your Site Accessible

Web sites are designed by people with fast, powerful computers, modern browsers, IT staff to keep verything running, their choice of software, and local disk storage -- or at worst, a fast network. They are browsed by people with any of a variety of computers, whatever browser the machine shipped with, software that may have been installed by an IT department that thinks Web browsing is counterproductive, and modems. In fact, it's so easy to ignore this gap that it's easier to offer advice for how to flaunt it than it is to give advice for closing it. Following is a set of principles for doing just that -- making your site as inaccessible as possible.

Seebach, Peter. IBM (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability

How the Process and Organization Can Help or Hinder Adding Value    

Do better information products result when technical communicators are well integrated into product development teams?

Pieratti, Denise D. Technical Communication Online (1995). Design>Documentation>Information Design>Usability

How to Avoid Being Blinded By Your Own Design: Seeing the Forest for the Trees

If you design something for your company, organization or department, or help influence the direction of a design, it regularly can become very difficult for you to separate yourself from the design. And chances are, you are not even aware of it most of the time! This entry looks at why this seems to happen and what you can do about it (if anything at all).

Spillers, Frank. Demystifying Usability (2005). Design>Usability>Assessment

How to Embed Usability and UCD Internally

Integrating usability into any organisation can be a difficult and isolating experience. Get the lowdown on how to achieve this within your organisation.

Ismail, Ismail. Webcredible (2007). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

How to Improve Your Site Search (...or ‘looking for jamie oliver’)

Site search engines should always allow for common user errors. By taking these errors into account, users should be able to always find what they're looking for through the site search.

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

How to Make URLs User-Friendly

One of the worst elements of the web from a user interface standpoint is the URL. However, if they're short, logical, and self-correcting, URLs can be acceptably usable.

Baker, Adam. Merges.net (2001). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability