#11838
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
#27539
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
#20069
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
#23516
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
#19389
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
#31904
Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click
Different traffic sources imply different reasons for why visitors might immediately leave your site. Design to keep deep-link followers engaged through additional pageviews.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#25101
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
#23275
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
#21074
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
#20823
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
#27810
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
#18821
Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines
Resources in usable web design for publishing medical research.
#20612
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
#22372
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
#21023
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
#19127
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
#31910
Right-Justified Navigation Menus Impede Scannability
Users scan lists by moving their eyes rapidly down the left edge. Menu items that are right-aligned make scanning more difficult.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Typography
#20850
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
#19193
The Role of Online Surveys in the Usability Assessment Process
I have attended several conferences at which I witnessed a growing debate over the role of survey work in the field of usability. Some practitioners are of the opinion that 'usability is usability' and 'surveys are surveys', and only rarely do the two meet in a harmonious exchange. The more I have considered this viewpoint, the more convinced I am that it is probably valid, unless the usability specialist takes the lead in assimilating survey output into the process of evaluating the overall effectiveness of Web sites and online applications.
MacElroy, William. Usability Interface (2003). Design>Usability>Methods>Surveys
#19439
The Sanctity of Elements, or Why You Shouldn't Be Double-Clicking in a TEXTAREA
All-too-frequently an external client or an internal manager or co-worker demands interface changes. They usurp the design process -- taking the decision-making away from the experts -- and deign the interface by dictum rather than traditional development processes, to the detriment of the product.
Hourihan, Meg. O'Reilly and Associates (2002). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Usability
#14682
Leonard-Wilkinson describes how Web site designers can take advantage of the features of search engines to advertise their sites.
Leonard-Wilkinson, Theresa A. Intercom (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search
#30029
The Scott Adams Meltdown: Anatomy of a Disaster
A chain of five errors led to Scott Adams losing his work. Not one of those errors was his. They had been made months and even years before Scott Adams ever started work on his blog. His was an accident waiting to happen, an accident that has almost certainly befallen a large number of other individuals who have had the misfortune to use the same software.
Tognazzini, Bruce. Nielsen Norman Group (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>Forms
#28050
Screen Resolution and Page Layout
Optimize Web pages for 1024x768, but use a liquid layout that stretches well for any resolution, from 800x600 to 1280x1024.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability
#23121
The purpose of this experiment is to determine the effect of screen size on the speed of navigating common web pages. We performed the experiment on 12 students and concluded that the larger the screen size, the faster a typical web page is browsed.
DiPierro, Chris, George N. SHORE (1997). Design>Web Design>Usability>Web Browsers
#26641
Despite posing well-known risks, websites continue to feature poorly designed scrollbars. Among the ongoing problems that result are frustrated users, accessibility challenges, and missed content.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Web Design>Human Computer Interaction>Usability
