#32952
Why Users Can be Hard to Design For 
To know the mind of others is one of the fundamental problems of being human. Much of our energy is spent trying to do so. For web designers, knowing the mind of users is complicated by having very little interaction with them. It is possible, on some projects, to design and redesign web sites without ever talking to one user.
Porter, Joshua. Bokardo (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#33002
What is the difference between user centered design and usability? Until writing this column I didn't have the faintest idea.
Koch, Peter-Paul. Digital Web Magazine (2002). Articles>User Centered Design>Usability
#33006
Designing for the "Average User"
User advocacy is one of the central goals of usability. User advocacy can be defined as the process an IT professional (with an interest in user experience) goes through in re-sensitizing herself to the world of the "average user."
Spillers, Frank. Demystifying Usability (2006). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design
#33112
Five Things to Know About Users
Over the years, we've studied the usability of hundreds of product and web site designs. We've seen designs that were incredibly effective for users and designs that fell tremendously short. One emerging pattern in our ongoing research is that design teams that know a lot about their users are more likely to produce user experiences that are usable, effective, and pleasing.
Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2002). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#33223
One of the most overlooked aspects of designing a Web site is how users get to it. Separate factions are often devoted to promoting, designing, and maintaining a Web site, and the lack of communication and involvement can lead to apathy or confusion. Too frequently is it assumed that visitors are knowledgeable about the company and Web site, and that they enter through the home page. False assumptions about visitor entry can plague even a well-planned, well-designed site.
Lash, Jeff. Digital Web Magazine (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#33581
Jared Spool on User Research Methods
Adaptive Path’s Peter Merholz recently talked to the founder of User Interface Engineering Jared Spool about user research.
Merholtz, Peter. Adaptive Path (2005). Articles>Research>Usability>User Centered Design
#33582
Everyone is mad for personas. They’ve permeated the highest and deepest levels of organizations, and have become a standard interaction design tool. Whole projects are now built around creating them, and there’s a feeling that once you get a half dozen or so, your design problems will be solved. Presumably, your personas solve them for you. The problem is, most teams build personas from the wrong kind of user information, or worse, base them on assumptions. It’s no surprise that a Web search for personas brings up an amazing variety of persona sets, and most of them are terrible.
Saffer, Dan. Adaptive Path (2005). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Personas
#34121
What is an End-User Software Engineer? 
To address the challenge of developing a shared understanding of the users that participate in each scenario we have developed a set of personas that describe the work styles, characteristics and motivations that are common to particular groups of people using our products. The personas help us communicate these characteristics by humanizing them, increasing the empathy that team members have for these fictional users.
Clarke, Steven. Microsoft (2008). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Personas
#34170
Bringing Holistic Awareness to Your Design
All of the members of the best teams could tell us, with relative ease, the top five business goals of their application, the top five user types the application was to serve, and the top five platform capabilities and limitations they had to work within. And, when questioned more deeply, each team member revealed an appreciation and understanding of the challenges and goals of their teammates almost as well as their own.
Selbie, Joseph. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Design>User Experience>Usability>User Centered Design
#34459
Out of Box Experience: Getting it Right First Time
The out of box experience (OOBE) describes the users first interaction with a product or service. In the technology sector this first experience invariably involves plugging stuff in, installing some software and crossing your fingers in the hope that the product will work. The problem is that, in far too many cases, it doesn’t.
Frontend Infocentre (2009). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design>Usability
#34622
Usability Spotter #5: HP Laptop Touch Pads with Scroll Zones- Absence of Tactile Cue
Summary The issue with HP laptops that have a touch pad with a scroll zone contained it (as shown in image A) is that they do not provide a tactile cue for the user to help interpret what section of the touch pad the finger is positioned at. In the absence of a tactile cue, it is difficult for the user to determine whether the finger is on touch pad or the scroll zone without looking at it, resulting in the accidental scrolling on the screen when actually the user simply wants to move the cursor. The issue and multiple solutions are discussed ahead.
Rautela, Abhay. Cone Trees (2009). Articles>Usability>Accessibility>User Centered Design
#34637
Documentation Usability: A Few Things I’ve Learned from Watching Users
Even though your customers may not read manuals, your tech support team probably does, which means someone is reading the manuals and using them to help others. But if your users find it easier to call someone, wait on hold for an agent, and then ask the agent a question rather than find the answer in the help, maybe your help materials aren’t very usable. Maybe increasing the usability of your company’s documentation could alleviate the need users feel to seek answers from another source.
Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Documentation>Usability>User Centered Design
#35578
This may sound a little harsh, but you'll see, when you do usability tests, that there are quite a few users who simply do not read words that you put on the screen. If you pop up an error box of any sort, they simply will not read it.
Atwood, Jeff. Coding Horror (2004). Articles>User Interface>User Centered Design>Usability
#35598
The Foundation of a Great User Experience
I’m part of the AEC User Experience Team at Autodesk. Our goal is to design a great user experience for our customers, but just what does that mean? Our definition of user experience focuses on all the touchpoints that current or new users have with our product. For example, the downloading of software trials is often the beginning of one’s user experience with a product. If you have to fill out forms that ask for too much information, (should “cell phone number” be a required field on a trial download form?) or present you with too many obstacles, the likelihood of a positive user experience will be low. Your interactions with technical support, documentation, the product, and even other products that you use, are all aspects of the user experience.
Wilson, Chauncey E. Designing the User Experience at Autodesk (2009). Articles>User Experience>Usability>User Centered Design
