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

Preparing for User Research Interviews: Seven Things to Remember

Interviewing is an artful skill that is at the core of a wide variety of research methods in user-centered design, including stakeholder interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing, and focus groups. Consequently, a researcher’s skill in conducting interviews has a direct impact on the quality and accuracy of research findings and subsequent decisions about design. Skilled interviewers can conduct interviews that uncover the most important elements of a participant’s perspective on a task or a product in a manner that does not introduce interviewer bias. Companies hire user researchers and user-centered designers because they possess this very ability.

Hawley, Michael. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Interviewing>Usability>User Centered Design

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

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

Publish or Perish: Create an Out-of-the-Ordinary Booklet

Though form and function does not necessarily improve the content of your message it can improve the ease with which it is accessed--and design can effect how well it is understood.

Chuck Green. Ideabook.com (2005). Design>Publishing>Usability

Putting a Face on B2B Websites

How do you lead your business-to-business clients down the right path without sacrificing every design, usability, and information design principle you’ve ever learned? And how do you make these websites engaging for users? Nancy Carl offers advice for creating successful B2B websites.

Carl, Nancy. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Putting Content in Context

Digital asset management (DAM) software stores and organizes images, audio, video and other digital objects, making them easier to find, transform and reuse. And many companies are using DAM to provide a centralized way for employees and partners to locate and manipulate content-a big time-saver for all.

Kalin, Sari. CIO Magazine (2002). Design>Content Management>Usability

A Question of Interface Design: How Do Online Service GUIs Measure Up?

Online services have redesigned their old command-based software into graphical user interfaces for the same reason that fledgling stars get their noses fixed. GUIs, as these software versions are commonly called, are a natural choice of interface because they are user-friendly, colorful, window-based interfaces that rely on icons and natural language processing.

Head, Alison J. InfoToday (1997). Design>User Interface>Usability

Quickness and Usability Keys to Successful Web Sites

Three clicks and that's it. Most Web site users allow only three clicks to be impressed with your product. Most people don't surf the Web; they have an agenda. In specialized fields such as banking, users will stay with sites that give them information quickly and pleasantly. The challenge is to produce a positive Web site experience the first time around. It boils down to one word: usability. Is your Web site user friendly? With 80% of current Web sites falling by the wayside, your home page must be easily accessible as well as eye-catching and informative. The imperatives are point, click and find the right department.

Schaffer, Eric M. TechWeb (2001). Design>Web Design>User Experience>Usability

Rapid Prototyping

The idea of rapid prototyping as it applies to instructional design, is to develop learning experiences in a continual design-evaluation cycle that continues throughout the life of the project. This cycle, known as the spiral cycle or layered approach, is considered to be iterative, meaning that products are continually improved as they cycle continues.

InstructionalDesign.org. Articles>Usability>Instructional Design>Methods

RBC Royal Bank’s Online Banking Initiatives: Usable Design Now and in the Future

Discuss their initiative to make user-centered design a central part of RBC Royal Bank's Online Banking.

Schaffer, Eric M., Carolyn Burke and Nicole Poirer. Human Factors International (2006). Presentations>Usability>Web Design>E Commerce

Readability

Everyone benefits from clear, readable text content. People with visual impairments benefit particularly.

Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>Typography