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 Navigation in Online Documents

A site dedicated to the design of documents and viewers to support structured hypertext and easy skimming. The site covers information structuring, rapid navigation, and designing Help, Web pages, and documents. The intended audience for this site includes UI designers, technical writers, Web developers, Help authors, usability testers, and hypertext theorists.

Hoffman, Michael. Hypertext Navigation (2003). Design>Web Design>Hypertext>Usability

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

Reader's Questions: Severity Scales

It is important for the Usability Engineer to attend meetings where development and product managers review bugs, decide if the severity is appropriate, and choose which bugs will be fixed. I've been able to convince development and product management to consider some usability bugs as critical bugs.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Usability Interface (1999). Design>Usability>Assessment

Reading Online Text with a Poor Layout: Is Performance Worse?

This study examined the effects of enhanced layout (headers, indentation, and figure placement) on reading performance, comprehension, and satisfaction. Participants read text passages with and without enhanced layout. Results showed that reading speed and comprehension were not affected by layout, however, participants were more satisfied with the enhanced layout and reported it to be less fatiguing to read.

Chaparro, Barbara S., A. Dawn Shaikh and J. Ryan Baker. Usability News (2005). Design>Web Design>Typography>Usability

Reading to Decide: Designing for Usability with a Needs, Users, and Learnings (NUL) Analysis  

Information products that help users make decisions are a challenge to design, develop, and test for usability. We can begin to formulate a strategy for producing such documents effectively by doing a comprehensive preassessment of the specific project and by adapting testing methodologies from studies of creative thinking processes and expert system design.

Knodel, Elinor L. STC Proceedings (1995). Design>Usability>Methods>Testing

Reality Check

Many would-be e-businesses, seduced by the lure of the emerging 'virtual-world' on the web, have ignored 40 years of accumulated wisdom in how to design usable information systems, and have seemingly forgotten that a satisfying 'user experience' is key to the successful implementation of any information system.

Macefield, Ritchie. UIdesign (2004). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Usability

Recommended Readings for Web Usability and Site Design

A list of online and printed materials related to the issues of usability, information architecture, and user-centered design.

Benfatto, Elaine. Harvard University (2000). Design>Web Design>Usability

Reflections on Site Usability and the State of Flow

Although the general performance of commercial sites is poor at the moment, increasing awareness of Web-user behaviour and the importance of site usability will improve this situation.

Hudson, Roger. Usability.com.au (1998). Articles>Web Design>Usability

Remote Control Anarchy

The six remote controls required for a simple home theater illustrate the problems caused by complexity and inconsistency in user interfaces.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>User Interface>Usability

Removing the Ws from URLs

In September 1999, John Rhodes published Are You Creating a Path of Resistance? on WebWord. In the article, John discussed the problem with the Ws - the www prefix before domain names. John rightly recommended that all web sites should be set up to work the same with or without the Ws. In this article, however, I will go one step further and recommend that sites should be set up to work with or without the Ws, but also have the Ws automatically removed from the URL using a server-side technique I will henceforth refer to as 'removing the Ws'. I will detail why I feel this is a more appropriate solution and explain how this can be done.

Lash, Jeff. WebWord (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Report From a 1994 Web Usability Study

This reports summarizes results of a usability study of several Web sites I conducted in the beginning of December 1994. Users were observed as they browsed the Web sites of Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Time Warner. The report has only been very lightly edited and thus represents my thinking about Web usability in 1994. In fact, the report was originally written for distribution to the rest of the Web team on paper since we were not heavy intranet users in 1994, despite having designed SunWeb a few months before this study.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1994). Articles>Web Design>Usability

Report on the Seminar Understanding Web Readers (and Non-Readers): Creating Usable and Effective Web Content

A report on a presentation by Ginny Redish where she discussed how research from linguistics, as well as cognitive psychology, reading studies, writing studies, and other disciplines could contribute to useful and usable Web sites.

McDaniel, Scott M. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability

Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines

Resources in usable web design for publishing medical research.

Usability.gov. Design>Web Design>Usability

Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines: A Report

The Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines were developed by the Communication Technologies Branch (CTB) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Guidelines were developed to assist those involved in the creation of websites base their decisions on the current and best available evidence. The Guidelines are particularly relevant to the design of information-oriented sites, but can be applied across the wide spectrum of websites.

Usability.gov (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

Response Time Still Matters

Slow response time remain an issue on the Web even for users with high-speed Internet connections.

Bohmann, Kristoffer. Bohmann Usability (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability

Rethinking User-Centered Information Development  

Often in the computer industry there is a tendency to provide information about the features of a system. However, customers usually purchase the system based on knowledge of its features, when they receive the product they need information on how to accomplish tasks. Developing task-oriented information requires a shift in perspective from what the computer technology can do, to what your customers want to do with the technology. The resulting information must be usercentered rather than feature-driven. These types of customer requirements demand afresh development approach.

Stertzbach, Lori A. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Usability

Revising Letters to Veterans    

A discussion of the process of making letters for veterans easier to understand.

Daniel, Reva. Technical Communication Online (1995). Articles>Writing>User Centered Design>Usability

The Rise of the Subsite

Web users need structure to make sense of the many and varied information spaces they navigate. The fundamental nature of the Web does not support any structure beyond the individual page which is the only recognized unit of information. For information spaces that cannot easily be hierarchically structured, the subsite can be used as a helpful additional structuring mechanism. Subsites can also be used in hierarchical information spaces to give particular prominence to a certain level of the hierarchy which is used as the subsite designator.

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