Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy

Information foraging shows how to calculate your content strategy's costs and benefits. A mixed diet that combines brief overviews and comprehensive coverage is often best.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Writing

Low-End Media for User Empowerment

Fancy media on websites typically fails user testing. Simple text and clear photos not only communicate better with users, they also enhance users' feeling of control and thus support the Web's mission as an instant gratification environment.

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

Low-Fidelity Prototyping for Technical Communicators  

Technical communicators are responsible for a great deal of what the user sees and touches. This means that more technical communicators are becoming integrated members of product design teams, bringing their expertise into the group and taking the lead in designing and evaluating their information systems, Creating low-fidelity paper prototypes of software for customer feedback sessions is an effective methodfor gathering valuable user input early in development.

Rauch, Thyra L., Dana L. Gillihan and Paul Leone. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

Macromedia Director as a Prototyping and Usability Testing Tool

Efforts to understand user requirements commonly focus on the functionality and features of a product. However, it is important to analyze other product attributes, such as usability. A product may meet all of its functional requirements, but can fail if it has an interface that is difficult to navigate and learn. To address this problem, it is important to get feedback from users as early in the development life cycle as possible. A common technique is to develop a prototype or mockup of a product's interface to present to users.

Ludi, Stephanie. ACM Crossroads (2000). Design>User Interface>Usability

The Magical Number: Seven, Plus or Minus Two

Few of us know the details of the original research that produced the concept of this magical number. And still fewer of us choose to question its applicability to information design--it's far too convenient a rule of thumb to risk invalidating it!

Ellison, Matthew. STC Puget Sound (2006). Design>User Interface>Usability>Cognitive Psychology

Major User Interface Issues in the Near Future

A discussion of new technologies from the November 2002 COMDEX.

Bailey, Robert. Web Usability (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

Make It Usable

Usability is often the most neglected aspect of Web sites, yet in many respects it is the most important. If visitors can't use your site, they will leave and never become customers. The Web gives people too much freedom and too many choices; no one will suffer a poorly designed site. To make your site usable, you need to involve potential customers in its design.

Nielsen, Jakob, Kara Pernice Coyne and Marie Tahir. PC Magazine (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability

Make Testimonials Believable!

Testimonials are obviously an extremely important part of any website - be sure to maximise their effectiveness.

Geld, Scott F. Webcredible (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability

Making Do

Both Congress and the Bush administration have made more accessible Web sites a core mandate of e-government. The law known as Section 508 requires agencies to make information technology, including Web sites, accessible to people with disabilities. It forced many Webmasters to think seriously about Web design and usability for the first time. But talking about usability and making sure it happens are two different things. Usability means more than coming up with a good site design. It requires follow-through, and that's where many agencies — short-staffed and with little time or money for training — often come up short.

Robinson, Brian. Federal Computer Week (2002). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Section 508

The Making of a Discipline: The Making of a Title

Many people who work within the design field have had a hard time assimilating the full scope of Experience Design—and a harder time accepting their niches within it. The reasons for this resistance uncover much about the state of design as well as the state of identity.

Shedroff, Nathan. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Careers>Usability>User Centered Design

Making Research-Based Design Decisions: Results of Research Poll

Usability information is being published in a variety of different locations. Most of it is still paper-based, and most current, full articles are not readily available on the Internet. This makes it very difficult for many (most) practitioners to use this information in a timely way.

Bailey, Robert. Web Usability (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Making Research-Based Design Decisions: What is the Best Way to Get User-Centered Research Results to Practitioners?

There are about 1,000 usability-related articles published each year. My guess is that less than 5% ever have any practical, long-term value to most usability practitioners. In some cases, the topics being studied are of little interest to practitioners. In many cases the research results are simply too hard for practitioners to find.

Bailey, Robert. Web Usability (2002). Articles>Publishing>User Centered Design>Usability

Making Rich Web Application Architecture Usable

'Focus on the user and all else will follow' is a philosophy that can make or break a product. Software designers have become notorious for concentrating on implementation patterns and neglecting the user. It is easy to get lost in grand concepts at an abstract level and get excited over stuff that makes your work as a developer easier; thus, the needs and desires of the 'real' users may sometimes take a back seat. Identifying the usability constraints and designing within them keeps the focus on the user.

Gondi, Viswanath. SitePoint (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

Making URLs Predictable

URLs that are easy to predict make it easier for users to type in a URL and link to pages.

Bohmann, Kristoffer. Bohmann Usability (2000). Design>Web Design>Usability

Making Usable Products: An Informal Process for Good User Interfaces

At Microsoft we have full-time employees, called usability engineers, who are trained to help product teams understand what the user's needs are, and analyze how well our product user interfaces match those needs. They do a great deal of work, and understand the discipline of UI design and data collection really well. They are critical to the success of our products. As I've learned from the e-mail I've been getting at hfactor@microsoft.com, most developers don't have the luxury of this kind of support, and are on their own to make good interface design decisions. This issue will introduce a basic development process that helps good UI make it into products. Word of warning: There is no magic recipe for good UI, or for writing good code, and I can't guarantee improved interfaces without some extra effort.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (1999). Design>User Interface>Usability

Making Use of User Research

By focusing on how a product performs in the lab without broader knowledge of the user's environment and goals, measurement alone may be misleading. To get the most value and meaning out of user feedback it is important to choose the appropriate method for conducting and analyzing user research.

Anderson, Gretchen. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

Making Web Advertisements Work

There are many reasons why advertisements don't work well on the Web, but it is most unsettling when an ad actually portrays something relevant to users and still fails. Why would this occur? Well, to start, we must consider why text ads work so well on search engines. Each user has a goal -- perhaps it is to learn about digital cameras, perhaps to purchase a book. In either case, users' attention is focused on whatever gets them to their goal; they ignore everything else. When users enter search queries, the targeted ads that the engine returns relate directly to what users are after. Hence, they look at and follow the ads. Indeed, such advertisements probably have an advantage over the plain search results because they show both that the advertiser is competent and has a direct interest in serving consumers.

Nielsen, Jakob and Donald A. Norman. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Marketing>Usability

Managing User Expectations

The more time you spend at a site, the easier it is to use. Your investment in that site pays higher and higher dividends. Here's another metaphor. Your site and your users form a relationship.

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

Marginalia of Web Design

Some details less profound than disabled access, international usability, and site structure, but still important for Web usability.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Design>Web Design>Usability

Market Maturity

Users' expectations of a product depend on the maturity of its market. Markets for software products go through some predictable stages, each with a different emphasis. By identifying what stage your product is in now, you can anticipate some of the pitfalls that lie ahead.

Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (1997). Design>User Centered Design>Usability

Más Allá de la Usabilidad: Interfaces 'Afectivas'

La creciente popularización de las nuevas tecnologías de la información obliga a que cualquier producto interactivo sea diseñado para una audiencia cada vez más heterogénea y menos tolerante con experiencias de uso frustrantes. Las técnicas, metodologías y prácticas propias de la Usabilidad y Accesibilidad, intentan hacer frente a este hecho, estudiando las necesidades, objetivos y comportamiento del usuario, y enfocando cualquier decisión sobre el diseño, así como la evaluación, en base a estos factores.

Hassan Montero, Yusef and Francisco Jesus Martin Fernandez. Nosolousabilidad.com (2003). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Usability>User Centered Design

Mazed and Confused

You ask the Web jockeys to pull the latest stats. Hits are growing. Page turns per visit are up. The search button has been getting lots of action too. But before you pass those numbers on to the CEO, think again: The search button's popularity could be a sign that customers can't tell where the site's navigation buttons will take them. Those hits and page turns could be a sign that customers are lost, testing link after link. You don't know because at your company, as at most companies, no one has ever asked customers whether your Web site is easy to use. And what you don't know can cost you.

Kalin, Sari. CIO Magazine (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability>Log Analysis

Measuring User Motivation from Server Log Files

Estimating user interest and motivation by just counting page requests from a World Wide Web server log (or 'hits') provides a distorted metric of user activity. Some of the reasons why this metric is unreliable are that the path dependent nature of hyperlink usability treats index and navigational aid pages as equal to the goal, because differenes in web browsers can determine how effectively users can percieve content and navigational alternatives, and because the poorly designed structure and content of the documents themselves can inhibit users from finding what they are looking for. This paper proposes that measures of how much time users spend looking at a page are better estimates of user interest than page hits, providing simple human factors principles have been applied. An extended example of how this method might be used to collect and analyze data is also included. The types of decisions that can be made by authors and system administrators based on a time-based metric of user interest is summarized.

Fuller, Rodney and Johannes J. de Graaff. Microsoft (1996). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Log Analysis

Merging Usability Practices with Document Design and Development    

Examines the phases of document development and describes how to incorporate them with usability techniques to ensure that your information products remain continually useful and valuable.

Filippo, Elizabeth G. Intercom (2007). Articles>Document Design>Usability

Million Dollar Web Usability Tips

What has long been a struggle for UEX professionals can actually be a great tool to demonstrate the importance of your role. We have found a way, using tools that you may already have, to support the users' needs that can positively impact your company’s bottom line.

Remus, Jacqueline and Jessyca Frederick. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Experience