#19590
The problem with wearing the technical support hat, I discovered, is that it tends to slip over your ears. Over time, you stop hearing the shrill cries of the users you're supporting, then you stop listening so carefully, then you stop speaking the same language as they do. And since you're busy putting out fires all over the building, who has time to start listening again? Problem is, once you no longer empathize with 'them,' you forget that they've got their own unending stream of crises to deal with. But if you want to tame those devils, you're going to need to take the time to understand their needs as well as you understand your own, and find a solution that meets both sets of needs. More often than you'd suspect, the result is a win-win solution.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. TECHWR-L (1999). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design
#25661
Digital Libraries, Knowledge Networks, and Human-Centered Information Systems
One of the most dramatic changes in the ongoing information revolution is the rapid convergence of computing, communications and content industries. Digital content, especially in the form of large, distributed, heterogeneous collections of electronic objects - text, voice, images, graphics, video, and others - is fueling the growth of the computing and communications in each other. This paper discusses the role of digital libraries, and knowledge networks in general, in this process, in the context of human-centered information systems.
Chien, Y.T. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online>User Centered Design
#27175
Dimensions of Usability: Defining the Conversation, Driving the Process
Have you ever wondered if your colleagues or clients really understand usability? Too often, standards or guidelines substitute for really engaging our business, technical and design colleagues in a discussion of what usability means. By looking at usability from five dimensions, we can create a consensus around usability goals and use that definition to provide the basis for planning user centered design activities.
Quesenbery, Whitney. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design
#20923
Dimensions of Usability: Defining the Conversation, Driving the Process 
Have you ever wondered if your colleagues or clients really understand usability? Too often, standards or guidelines substitute for really engaging our business, technical and design colleagues in a discussion of what usability means. By looking at usability from five dimensions, we can create a consensus around usability goals and use that definition to provide the basis for planning user centered design activities.
Quesenbery, Whitney. WQusability (2003). Articles>Usability>Consulting>User Centered Design
#24104
El Diseño Estratégico de Competencias
Sería necio de mi parte pensar que yo inicio aquí lo dicho con mis palabras. Esta charla ha empezado en ustedes mucho antes que mi intervención. Existe ya en el reconocimiento del formato 'Congreso' sentidos asociados, y por todos nosotros sostenidos, y expectativas en relación a lo que es, o debe ser, una 'ponencia' en general y en este medio ámbito en particular. Estructuras y estilos asociadas a 'Ser ponencia en Congreso de diseño' en las que todos nos incluimos, para confirmar, una vez más, aquella promesa de que este espacio social es lo que todos nosotros esperamos.
Pujol, Mónica. University of Alberta (2003). (Spanish) Design>User Centered Design>International
#18739
Diseño Hipermedia Centrado en el Usuario
La hipermedia surge como resultado de la fusión de dos tecnologías, el hipertexto y la multimedia. El hipertexto es la organización de una determinada información en diferentes nodos, conectados entre sí a través de enlaces. Los nodos pueden contener sub-elementos con entidad propia. Un hiperdocumento estaría formado por un conjunto de nodos conectados y relacionados temática y estructuralmente. La tecnología multimedia es la que permite integrar diferentes medios (sonido, imágenes, secuencias...) en una misma presentación.
Hassan Montero, Yusef. Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Design>User Centered Design>Hypertext
#23562
Do Students Really Feel Integrated With Computers?
This paper reports the results of a survey of senior Business and Engineering majors conducted at the University of Cincinnati. The survey's goal was to examine whether or not students felt integrated with computers yet, since the technological trend is towards a human-computer interface.
Stibravy, John A. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>User Centered Design>Human Computer Interaction
#29770
Technical writers make distinctions between the types of documents they create: user guides, reference manuals, tutorials. But do users really understand these document types? How do users look for different kinds of information--and how do we, as technical writers, make it clear to them what types of information are available? This paper presents results of usability evaluations of documentation for electronic design automation software, showing how a writing team tried to improve the categorization and presentation of document types.
Heninger, Barbara L. and Michael J. Miller. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Genre
#23289
Do Your Manuals Put Children in Danger? A Survey of Juvenile Products Consumers
What can manufacturers do to improve the readability of manuals that accompany juvenile products?
Manual Labour (2003). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Children
#22878
Document Design: A Brief Primer
Today's documentation must be designed with information retrieval as its key objective. When information is organized and mapped into a consistent, logical structure that uses retrievability aids such as labels that facilitate scanning, blocks of information, advance organizers for the information, keywords, meaningful indexes, and a hierarchical organization, readers can quickly locate and use the information that they need.
Flanders, Melanie G. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Documentation>Document Design>User Centered Design
#23141
Document to the Question: Understanding What Users Ask and Where They Look for the Answers 
The user's idea of the problem is often very different than the help or program designer's. The online help topics often reflect the designer's viewpoint, not the user's.
STC India (2003). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Help
#23646
Driving Product Improvements through Customer Surveys: A Case Study
IBM WebSphere Commerce is a software product that enables merchants to sell goods and services online. The user audience who has the task to understand the product complexities and build stores for the customers consists of store developers - a large group of users from external companies or within IBM. Conducting a survey to gather their feedback on store development proved to be a powerful method for understanding the various store development scenarios and identifying areas for product improvement. Some of the techniques that helped us create a successful customer survey involved using a multidisciplinary group to create the survey questions, tirelessly communicating the results, and following up on the issues.
Markova, Uliyana. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods
#22196
ecommUSE user experience strategy
The first objective of this research was to build up substantive knowledge about which specific factors make customers trust e-commerce websites. The second objective was to build up and validate methodological knowledge in the form of tools that HCI practitioners can use to design and evaluate trust-shaping factors in e-commerce websites. On the basis of literature on trust and e-commerce surveys, a first model of trust in e-commerce (MoTEC) was developed. Through user tests, the initial model was refined to increase its descriptive power. The final MoTEC model contains four main dimensions, containing components and subcomponents.
Egger, Florian N. Eindhoven University (2003). Books>Web Design>User Centered Design>E Commerce
#25382
Unanticipated events on building sites are inevitable. The frequency of unanticipated events is usually high due to the inherent complexity and dynamics of construction projects.
Magdic, Ales, Danijel Rebolj and Natasa Suman. ITcon (2005). Articles>Knowledge Management>User Centered Design
#19321
State-of-the-art usability engineering should eliminate user errors. But in the real world, those users (the majority) who do not read instructions and prefer to 'figure things out as they go' are inevitably going to come unstuck occasionally. In these situations, interface designers must ensure that the feedback provided is as helpful as possible in setting the user back on the right track. Unclear and unhelpful error messages tend to mean that errors will recur, or take longer to resolve. The resultant frustration can lead users to mistrust the interface or even abort the task in question. This result can be disastrous, if for example it happens during the course of an online reservation or purchasing process.
Gaine, Frank. Frontend Infocentre (2000). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design
#23120
Effects of Link Arrangement on Search Efficiency
The subjects that used the 155-link Web pages had a significantly faster search time using a three-column link arrangement, while the two-column link arrangement had the slowest search time. Results for the 30-link Web pages did not show a significant difference in search times for any specific link arrangement.
Dietrich, Jon, Karen Gordon and Marc Wexler. SHORE (1997). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#27704
The Effects of Motivational Elements in User Instructions 
Should instructional texts be purely technical, with a focus on effectiveness and efficiency, or should they also focus on satisfying and motivating users? Good arguments have been made for paying attention to motivational aspects. But only analyses of existing instructions have been published so far, and guidelines for making user instructions motivational have not yet been studied carefully. This article presents motivational strategies and an experiment to test their effects. The results show that motivational elements have little effect on users’ effectiveness and efficiency in performing tasks, their product appreciation, and their self-efficacy, but they do increase users’ appreciation for the instructions.
Loorbach, N., Steehouder, M., Taal, E. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2006). Articles>Documentation>Rhetoric>User Centered Design
#29091
The Effects of Using Colored Paper to Boost Response-Rates to Surveys and Questionnaires
Many people have speculated over the last 80 years or so about the possibilities of using colored paper to boost response-rates to surveys and questionnaires, and several studies have been carried out. Most of these enquiries report no significant effects from using colored paper, although there have been some exceptions. In this investigation we pooled together the results from all of the experimental studies known to us on the topic and we carried out a meta-analysis to see if there might be a positive effect for colored paper overall. The results indicated that this was not the case, for we found no significant differences between the response rates to white and to colored paper in general. However, when we considered separately the most common colors used, it appeared that pink paper had the greatest effect. "One of the first considerations [to obtain a high response-rate] is the color of paper used in mail questionnaires. United States government officials who are responsible for the mailing of several million questionnaires every year have definitely determined that yellow paper gives the highest percentage of returns, with pink next in effectiveness, while all dark colors give much smaller returns" [1, p. 142].
Hartley, James and Andrew Rutherford. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Articles>Document Design>User Centered Design>Color
#18731
Elementos de Navegación y Orientación del Usuario
Los elementos de navegación y orientación tienen como función básica informar constantemente al usuario acerca de dónde se encuentra, que relación tiene el nodo web que está visualizando respecto al resto de la arquitectura del website, dónde ha estado y hacia dónde puede ir. El objetivo: no perder al usuario.
Hassan Montero, Yusef and Francisco Jesus Martin Fernandez. Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Articles>Usability>User Centered Design
#23832
Review: The Elements of User Experience
By advocating a balanced blend of usability, creativity, and business sensibility, this book is a worthwhile introduction—or re-introduction—to the process of creating successful user experiences.
Boxes and Arrows (2002). Resources>Reviews>User Centered Design
#28018
Empirical Evaluation of a Popular Cellular Phone's Menu System: Theory Meets Practice
A usability assessment entailing a paper prototype was conducted to examine menu selection theories on a small screen device by determining the effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction of a popular cellular phone's menu system. Outcomes of this study suggest that users prefer a less extensive menu structure on a small screen device. The investigation also covered factors of category classification and item labeling influencing user performance in menu selection. Research findings suggest that proper modifications in these areas could significantly enhance the system's usability and demonstrate the validity of paper-prototyping which is capable of detecting significant differences in usability measures among various model designs.
Huang, Sheng-Cheng, I-Fan Chou and Randolph G. Bias. Journal of Usability Studies (2006). Articles>User Interface>Usability>User Centered Design
#24884
The Empowered User: A New Approach To Software Documentation
User empowerment offers a strategy for addressing the software end user's needs. The definition of user empowerment emphasizes a user-driven, informationmanagement oriented approach in response to changes that have taken place in the modern workplace after computers and computer software arrived. Working with software requires a significant shift in thinking and learning, responding to increased abstraction, isolation, and information volumes. Computermediated work demands that users develop new skills and job roles, and that documentation writers develop new techniques for manuals.
Barker, Thomas. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design
#30682
These days, the idea of customer engagement is almost as hot as Web 2.0--and almost as controversial. As busy UX professionals, should we invest our time and energy in caring about engagement, or is it just another buzzword? I think we do need to understand customer engagement, so that, at a minimum, we can respond intelligently to questions about it from marketers or executives. We might even glean some useful insights from thinking about engagement. This column aims to cut through the hype and reveal the potential value of engagement.
Jones, Colleen. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis
#30882
Engagement: The Definition Debate
I know what engagement is (everyone does), but I don't know what it means or how to explain it, let alone how to measure it. In a digital marketing context, I think it's one of those words that everyone understands but can't define.
Mason, Neil. ClickZ (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design
#30635
Engaging User Creativity: The Playful Experience
With so many choices as to how we can spend our time in the digital age, attention is becoming the most important currency. In today's splintered media environment, new digital products and services must compete with everything under the sun, making differentiation key to developing an audience that cares, invests, and ultimately drives value.
Follett, Jonathan. UXmatters (2007). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design
