永远伟大的设计

我正坐在百老汇的一间咖啡厅里写这篇文章。我坐在这里已经有一会了，写文章，回邮件，用手机和我的客户联系，看着窗外移动的世界，享受着 3美元一杯的咖啡。昨天晚上，我很荣幸作为嘉宾出席了在纽约市举行的的设计与营销的学术会议。那是一个美好的夜晚，我的演讲收到了很好的效果。会议结束后，组织部门的工作人员将我领到了离时代广场差不多一个街区远的一家非常棒的餐厅用餐。在享受美味的晚餐的同时，我们的话题自然地就转到了设计和推广出色的产品与服务上。谈了一会后，其中一个人问我，在我看来哪个设计是永远伟大的的设计。

Jordan, Pat. uiGarden (2005). (Chinese) Design>Usability>User Interface

The Art of User Interface Prototyping

It takes a certain craft to know how and when to build prototypes of web designs or software designs. This primer of prototyping explains when and how to build them.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (2000). Design>User Interface>Usability

Change Your Goal, Extend Your Role  

The author suggests expanding your role as a technical communicator to enhance software usability by creating better user interface labels and application messages. Henry bases his suggestions on an integrated user-centered information design (UCID) approach driven by product usability. He explains UCID, describes how to prepare for a new role as a 'designer of product usability,' and shows how to effectively design labels and develop application messages.

Henry, Pradeep. Intercom (2000). Design>User Interface>Usability

Common Automotive Interaction Design Mistakes

People spend a great deal of time driving their cars, so cars should be as easy to use, and as effective as possible. However, most cars are filled with common design mistakes that are annoyances at the least, and often downright dangerous.

Baker, Adam. Merges.net (2001). Design>User Interface>Usability

Common Principles: A Usable Interface Design Primer

When users perform a transaction or action, their cognition is often split between learning and operating the system or user interface (UI). A well-designed UI allows users to focus the majority of their cognitive energy on learning, and offers no operational complications. This most general principle of usability is often called the 'transparent interface.' The transparent interface is commonly defined as one that maximizes user task completion and minimizes interfering factors, such as unnecessary interface complexity or performance.

Oppedisano, Rick. Usability Professionals Association (2002). Design>User Interface>Usability

Design Study 2: Structured Selection with a Multi-Modal Extended Selection List  

The design of a special-purpose selection list is reviewed. As part of a performance-support application for classroom teachers, a means was needed for rapid selection from a large number of alternative words. By taking into account the inherent structure of the terms in the list, instead of treating it as a simple list of unspecified objects, a more efficient and more easily used design was achieved. By incorporating the structure of the alternatives, the design was also able to reflect and support best practices in classroom lesson planning.

Constantine, Larry L. and Lucy A.D. Lockwood. Constantine and Lockwood (2001). Design>User Interface>Usability

Designing Embraceable Change

It's not that people resist change whole-scale. They just hate losing control and feeling stupid. When we make critical changes, we risk putting our users in that position. We must take care to ensure that we've considered the process of change as much as we've considered the technology changes themselves. Only then will we end up with changes that our users embrace.

Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2005). Design>User Interface>Redesign>Usability

Designing the Handheld Maritime Communicator  

We present the process of designing the first prototype of the Handheld Maritime Communicator: a mobile computer system supporting communication and coordination of safety-critical work activities on large container vessels. Designing the user experience of the Handheld Maritime Communicator was a particular challenge because it targets a highly specialized context of use and because poor design could potentially become a safety hazard. Meeting this challenge, ethnographic field studies on board container vessels were conducted, detailed analyses were carried out, and iterative design was performed. The design produced replaces a large amount of present spoken communication with predefined textual messages on a handheld device. This facilitates persistency, partial automation, and possible integration with other computer-based data. Evaluating the prototype in a high-fidelity ship simulator, prospective users validated the overall design, but also identified a number of usability problems that need to be addressed.

Kjeldskov, Jesper and Jan Stage. AIGA (2003). Design>User Interface>EPSS>Usability

Effects of RSVP Display Design on Visual Performance in Accomplishing Dual Tasks with Small Screens  

Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) represents a mechanism for exhibiting temporal information instead of spatial information to overcome the limitations of small-screen devices. Previous studies examining this area focused only on information presented by RSVP displays and disregarded changes in the performance of accompanying tasks associated with such displays. Therefore, this investigation performed a dual-task experiment (a search task for static information and a reading task for RSVP display information) to examine the effects of presentation mode (character-by-character, word-by-word, and one-line format), speed (171, 260, 350, and 430 characters per minute, or cpm), and text-flow orientation (vertical and horizontal orientation) of RSVP display information on the visual performance of users during different stages of usage (whether current usage is the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or eighth day of usage) for a small screen.

Chen, Chien-Hsiung and Yu-Hung Chien. International Journal of Design (2007). Design>User Interface>Information Design>Usability

El Enlace: Forma y Función

Los enlaces, en la actual Web, tienen la función de representar un vínculo o conexión unidireccional entre dos nodos web. Son la unidad básica de interacción de los sistemas hipertexto, por lo que la interacción en la Web comúnmente es conocida como Navegación. En un espacio virtual compuesto por nodos y vínculos entre dichos nodos, si se entiende que la ubicación del usuario está en el nodo que se encuentra visualizando, la interacción sobre los enlaces con la posterior visualización de otros nodos se entiende como un desplazamiento o, en un océano de nodos, como navegación. Para que el usuario dentro de nuestro sitio web experimente una navegación eficiente, fácil y satisfactoria, los enlaces no sólo tendrán que conectar nodos con contenidos verdaderamente relacionados, sino además presentarse de tal forma que el usuario entienda sin ambigüedades que se trata de un enlace, comprendiendo consecuentemente su función.

Hassan Montero, Yusef. Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Usability

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

Facilitating Data Exploration with Query Previews: A Study of User Performance and Preference

Current networked and local data exploration systems that use command languages (e.g. SQL), menus, or form fillin interfaces do not give users an indication of the distribution of data in their databases. This often leads users to waste time, posing queries that have zero-hit or mega-hit results. Query previews are a novel visual approach for browsing and querying networked or local databases. Query previews supply users with data distribution information for selected attributes of a database, and give continuous feedback about the size of the result set as the query is being formed. Subsequent refinements might be necessary to narrow the search sufficiently. Because there is a risk that query previews are an additional step, leading to a more complex and slow search process, we ran a within subjects empirical study with 12 subjects who used interfaces with and without query previews and with no network delays. Even with this small number of subjects and minimized network delays we found statistically significant differences showing that query previews could speed up performance 1.6 to 2.1 times and lead to higher subjective satisfaction.

Tanin, Egemen, Amnon Lotem, Ihab Haddadin, Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant and Laura Slaughter. SHORE (1999). Design>User Interface>Usability>Search

Five Survival Techniques for Creating Usable Products

When we ask designers what stage they spend the bulk of their time in when launching a product, the majority of designers answer, the Implementation Stage. However, our research shows that the teams launching the most usable products on schedule and on budget spend the bulk of their time in the Measure and Learn stage.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2007). Design>Usability>User Interface>Methods

Formularios: Identificación de los Campos Opcionales

Completar formularios en los sitios web es uno de los procesos que requiere normalmente mayor esfuerzo por parte del usuario. No disponer de formularios 'usables' puede ser una de las causas de abandono más frecuente de un sitio web. Para conseguir formularios usables se deben tener en cuenta muchos aspectos. Uno de ellos, es diferenciar de forma fácil y clara los campos obligatorios de los opcionales[1]. En este artículo se muestran y valoran lo diferentes métodos que utilizan para ello las webs de banca de particulares españolas. El trabajo de campo realizado ha consistido en revisar los procesos de ejecución de transferencias y de registro de nuevos clientes (si lo hubiera) de los sitios web de los siguientes trece bancos: Patagon, Cajamadrid, Cam, Uno-e, eBankinter, CaixaCatalunya, BancoPopular-e, Santander Central Hispano, BBVA, La Caixa, El Monte, Ing-direct, Banesto.

Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Usability

The Greatest Design of all Time

After a while one of my dining companions asked me what I regarded as the greatest design of all time.

Jordan, Pat. uiGarden (2005). Design>Usability>User Interface

Icon Analysis: Evaluating Low Spatial Frequency Compositions

Icons that are difficult to tell apart can lead to disastrous consequences. Queen shows us how studying the way the human visual system encodes information can lead to more effective icon design.

Queen, Matt. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Design>User Interface>Usability

Interface Design as a Life or Death Proposition

While the FDA has always required thorough documentation of product development, recent initiatives have instituted a more prescriptive, design-focused procedure encouraging extensive user research at the beginning of the development process.

LeMoine, Doug. Cooper Interaction Design (2002). Design>User Interface>Usability>Biomedical

Macromedia Director as a Prototyping and Usability Testing Tool

Efforts to understand user requirements commonly focus on the functionality and features of a product. However, it is important to analyze other product attributes, such as usability. A product may meet all of its functional requirements, but can fail if it has an interface that is difficult to navigate and learn. To address this problem, it is important to get feedback from users as early in the development life cycle as possible. A common technique is to develop a prototype or mockup of a product's interface to present to users.

Ludi, Stephanie. ACM Crossroads (2000). Design>User Interface>Usability

The Magical Number: Seven, Plus or Minus Two

Few of us know the details of the original research that produced the concept of this magical number. And still fewer of us choose to question its applicability to information design--it's far too convenient a rule of thumb to risk invalidating it!

Ellison, Matthew. STC Puget Sound (2006). Design>User Interface>Usability>Cognitive Psychology

Making Usable Products: An Informal Process for Good User Interfaces

At Microsoft we have full-time employees, called usability engineers, who are trained to help product teams understand what the user's needs are, and analyze how well our product user interfaces match those needs. They do a great deal of work, and understand the discipline of UI design and data collection really well. They are critical to the success of our products. As I've learned from the e-mail I've been getting at hfactor@microsoft.com, most developers don't have the luxury of this kind of support, and are on their own to make good interface design decisions. This issue will introduce a basic development process that helps good UI make it into products. Word of warning: There is no magic recipe for good UI, or for writing good code, and I can't guarantee improved interfaces without some extra effort.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (1999). Design>User Interface>Usability

Más Allá de la Usabilidad: Interfaces 'Afectivas'

La creciente popularización de las nuevas tecnologías de la información obliga a que cualquier producto interactivo sea diseñado para una audiencia cada vez más heterogénea y menos tolerante con experiencias de uso frustrantes. Las técnicas, metodologías y prácticas propias de la Usabilidad y Accesibilidad, intentan hacer frente a este hecho, estudiando las necesidades, objetivos y comportamiento del usuario, y enfocando cualquier decisión sobre el diseño, así como la evaluación, en base a estos factores.

Hassan Montero, Yusef and Francisco Jesus Martin Fernandez. Nosolousabilidad.com (2003). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Usability>User Centered Design

Ode to Balloon Help

Perhaps we should look to the simplest elements of usability for inspiration. Perhaps it's time to recognize the contribution of a single humble helper. Yes, it's time for an ode to Balloon Help.

Cavanagh, Thomas B. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Design>User Interface>Usability

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

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

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