Pervasive Usability - Planning For an Uncertain Future

Usability is a phenomenon that has dramatically changed the way the products, including Websites, are designed and manufactured.

Kheterpal, Suneet. SitePoint (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

Photo Study

Users take photos to highlight important aspects of their lives and context. The photos are assembled into collages and studied to highlight opportunities for new technologies and barriers to their acceptance.

. Usability Body of Knowledge (2007). Design>Usability>Photography>Methods

Planning a Usable Website: A Three-Step Guide

Learn how to involve usability from the start of the web design process.

Moss, Trenton. Webcredible (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability

Pliant Response for Websites

Users need feedback from websites. Buttons, links, and other interactive elements should respond to elementary user input. All web designers probably try to account for user feedback, especially in controls like buttons and links, but a lot of websites have strange ways of letting the user know what he can or can't do. There are some de facto standards from the software visual interface world that apply to web design, as well as a few guidelines that make pliant response more effective.

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

Pop-ups Usables en JavaScript

Para la mayoría de las personas resulta confuso que, al hacer click en un link o botón, la página responda lanzando una nueva ventana del navegador. Añade otra dimensión a la complejidad de la navegación. Sin embargo, muchas veces nuestro cliente necesita un pop-up, o nosotros mismos decidimos que el visitante de la página podrá manejarlo. Más allá de las discusiones acerca de usar o no un pop-up, hay un problema que los corrompe sistemáticamente, que los hace perversos, que agrede a usuarios avanzados y principiantes en su navegación, confunde a los buscadores, y genera ruido en el código. Este problema es que, existiendo varias formas de lanzar un pop-up con código Javascript, las más usadas son las incorrectas.

Razzari, Manuel. Nosolousabilidad.com (2003). (Spanish) Design>Web Design>Usability>DHTML

The Post Disciplinary Revolution: Industrial Design and Human Factors—Heal Yourselves

The fault lies with the separation of powers. There are four legs to product development. Four equal legs are required for good product design, all sitting on the foundation of the business case.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (2000). Design>Human Computer Interaction>Usability

The Power of Defaults

Search engine users click the results listings' top entry much more often than can be explained by relevancy ratings. Once again, people tend to stick to the defaults.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search

The Power of the Usability Lab

You cannot build a useful product or Web site without usability testing. If you have never watched someone use your designs in a usability lab, you are taking shots in the dark. You can't possibly know whether your hard work is making things better or worse. The features you are focusing on may be things that no one really needs, or could never figure out. Without regular sessions in the usability lab during the development cycle, projects are guaranteed to head in directions that do not benefit the users of the product. As a developer, you should have deep interest as to whether your hard work is making the product better. It's in your interest to make sure your work gets examined in the labs, so that you can make adjustments and ensure that you are making the best possible product for your users.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (1999). Design>Usability>Methods

Practical Tips for Improving Web Site and Intranet Usability  

There's a large body of theory available to guide Web and intranet design, but concentrating too much on theory sometimes leads designers to overlook basic things they can do to improve the usability of sites. This article presents, in no particular order, seven simple ways to make your Web site or intranet more usable.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2003). Design>Web Design>Intranets>Usability

Practice Human Factors for Document Design  

Writers of performance- and response-oriented documents, such as instructions, procedures, proposals, and grant applications, need to consider the interaction of human factors with conventional document design factors such as accessibility, readability, legibility, consistency, style, language, and suitability to audience. This session explores that relationship, based upon a summation and synthesis of previous Annual Conference presentations as modulated by this presenter's extensive technical communication experience. It will be of particular interest to newcomers to the profession who seek to broaden their grasp of its intricacies.

Peterson, Dart G., Jr. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Document Design>Usability

Practicing Persona Development: an In-House Case Study  

As Technical Communicators, many of us were initiated into this industry with the oft-cited cliche, 'know thy audience.' But what does this really mean? To what extent must we 'know' our audience in order to deliver effective information products? The critical questions are, 'what tools and means can I use to sufficiently understand the needs of my audience? Rather than relying on the directives of Engineering and Marketing, how can I discover the true needs of my audience and develop a user-centered design? And how do I hone my skills at gathering and applying this crucial data?' One of the emerging trends in Technical Communications is to develop user 'personas' as a design tool. This paper presents 'real-world' advice and 'best practices' on using the persona methodology to design information products.

Leritz-Higgins, Sarah E. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Personas

Praktisk Aestetik

Først og fremmest er der i relation til æstetik opstillet et ideal i form af princippet om helhed. Konsekvensen af dette princip skulle gerne tegne et portræt af et noget mere alment kendt teoretisk felt; Usability. Det vil herefter være kendetegnet for usability, at det kan afkodes som en bevægelse mod et højere ideal: princippet om helhed.

Quark, The (2002). (Danish) Design>Web Design>Usability

Preference Does Not Equal Performance

People will swear up and down that they love a particular product. They will tell you that the colors are right, the size is perfect, and the information is exactly what they needed. However, until you watch and test users you will not see how well the product works. You will not find out if they really would continue using the product, in the right amount, at the right time, under the conditions you expected. People have a funny way of deciding when, where and how they will using something.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (2000). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

A Preliminary Report on Two Pilot Readability/Usability Studies  

Companies are beginning to conduct readability studies to determine how to provide customers with usable sites. Results have been inconclusive, conflicting, and often contradicting results of printed text studies. To discover how users use web sites, two pilot studies were designed to examine users, their purposes, and their reading processes. Many results parallel those of previous studies. In addition, new results indicate we need to examine several new variables, including amount of usage, site-specific knowledge, conventionalization, print bias, gender and age.

Boiarsky, Carolyn. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability

Preparing for the Holiday Shopping Season

Reduce the bounce rate for organic landing pages, collect data to manage PPC for maximum ROI, and take five other steps to maximize your site's holiday sales potential before it's too late.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Principles for Usable Design

A well designed user interface is comprehensible and controllable, helping users to complete their work successfully and efficiently, and to feel competent and satisfied. Effective user interfaces are designed based on principles of human interface design. The principles listed below are consolidated from a wide range of published sources (Constantine & Lockwood, 1999; Cooper & Reimann, 2003; Gerhardt-Powals, 1996; Lidwell, Holden & Butler, 2003; Nielsen, 1994; Schneiderman, 1998; Tognazzini, 2003) and are based on a long history of human-computer interaction research, cognitive psychology, and design best practices.

Usability Body of Knowledge. Design>Usability>User Interface

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

Product Complexity Driving You Crazy? Learn Where to Cut

The more complex your product is, the harder it will be to use. And the harder your product is to use, the more your customers will rely on your technical support department, which tends to increase your costs and decrease your customers' overall satisfaction with the product. The good news is that one of the most simple and effective ways to reduce complexity is to cut unnecessary features from your product. But how do you know which features to cut?

Greenwood, Wayne. Cooper Interaction Design (2002). Design>Project Management>Usability

Product Design Ideas Center

The Product Design Ideas Browser is a reference tool that focuses on design strategies used to address the Telecom Act Accessibility Guidelines. Select an item from the list of Accessibility Guidelines in the navigation pane to find ideas and strategies that will be helpful in the design of more accessible and usable products.

University of Wisconsin. Design>Usability>Accessibility

Progressive Disclosure

Progressive disclosure defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

Prototyping Techniques for Interactive Design  

Almost all design methodologies call for a prototyping stage, but it can be difficult to decide where to put scarce time and resources for the most impact on the final project. To make a decision, it is important to understand the different types of prototypes and their strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, the larger and more complex a project, the more complete each prototype must be, but even with small projects the right prototype can help ensure that you and your clients have a chance to see and test the design before it is too late to make changes. If you do your work right, each step builds on the previous one, and there are no surprises at the end of the project.

Quesenbery, Whitney. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Usability>Interaction Design

Prototyping Your Process, Team and Tools Improving the Usability of Work  

This paper explores prototyping the process, team, and tools comprising the work environment within which technical communicators operate when creating documentation. If you create a prototype of your documentation through a prototype of your work environment, you can uncover numerous flaws in your process, team, and tools. Iterative prototyping encourages adjusting the work environment to meet constantly changing requirements. If we consider how programmatic much of our work has become, especially with online help systems or the World Wide Web, prototyping our process, team, and tools can be invaluable toward improving the usability of our working lifestyle.

Mobley, Karen L. and Judith R. Fisher. STC Proceedings (1999). Design>Usability>Methods

Providing "Skip Links"

Once the information on a web page has been made, strictly speaking, accessible to assistive technologies, the question then becomes whether or not that site is 'easy-to-use' for people with impairments. It is not always enough to retrofit accessibility features to a pre-existing site that was designed without considering the needs of these users.

Frontend Infocentre (2001). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Usability

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

Public Relations on Websites: Increasing Usability

Compared with a similar 2001 study, a new study of journalists as they looked for information on corporate websites' PR areas showed significant usability improvements: a 5% higher success rate and 15% increased guidelines compliance. Why has guidelines compliance improved so much more than the success rate for actual task completion? Obviously there is more to usability than simply following the letter of a guideline. It's also necessary to follow its spirit, and company websites are still not sufficiently forthcoming: they often fail to use plain language that simply says what they're doing and gets to the point quickly.

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