The End of Homemade Websites

Web services will free individual site designers from having to program and design common features. This will decrease business costs, increase usability, and let designers focus on and improve features that are unique to each site.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2001). Design>Content Management>Web Design>Usability

The End of the Hit Parade

Once upon a time, if it was on the web, it was good. If it did tricks, so much the better. And how did a company know if its website was really good? Of course, by measuring traffic. The more traffic, the better, right?

Jaleshgari, Ramin. CIO Magazine (2000). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Log Analysis

The End of Web Design

Websites must tone down their individual appearance and distinct design in all ways: visual design; terminology and labeling; interaction design and workflow; and information architecture. These changes are driven by four different trends that all lead to the same conclusion.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2000). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Interaction Design

Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms

Google's cache offers users a copy of your website with their search terms highlighted. You can do the same thing and make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for — whether they're coming from an external search engine or your own site search — by making their search terms easy to spot.

Suda, Brian and Matt Riggott. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search

Enterprise Portals Are Popping

A usability analysis of 23 intranet portals finds strong growth, increasing collaboration features, and cross-functional governance.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Design>Web Design>Intranets>Usability

Evaluating the Usability of Educational Websites for Children

This study examined the usability of educational websites for children. Children ages 7 - 11 performed seven search tasks with one of three websites. Overall, participants, especially those less than 10 years of age were not very successful. Terminology, number and organization of links, location of information above the fold, and length of individual pages all influenced performance on the tasks.

Naidu, Shivashankar. Usability News (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Children

Evaluating the Usability of Search Forms Using Eyetracking: A Practical Approach

The usability of forms is often massively important to the overall usability of a Web site. That's why we decided to subject some of these forms to a quick round of eyetracking tests and have analyzed the resulting data to better understand what makes Web forms usable--or unusable.

Penzo, Matteo. UXmatters (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>Eye Tracking

Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility

This document outlines approaches for preliminary review Web site accessibility, and for evaluation of conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. While it does not provide checkpoint-by-checkpoint testing techniques it does include general procedures and tips for evaluation during development of Web sites, and for monitoring of established Web sites. Other resources will be developed for in-depth compliance testing. The measures described here are intended to supplement an organization's existing procedures for content management and quality assurance on their Web sites. For information about why making Web sites accessible is important read the Introductions on the WAI Resources page.

W3C. Articles>Accessibility>Usability>Web Design

Evaluation of an Informational Web Site: Three Variants of the Think-aloud Method Compared    

To evaluate Web sites, usability experts often use methods that were originally employed for the evaluation of software applications. In doing so, they assume that these methods will work exactly the same for both types of test objects. However, there is a major difference between transactional software applications and informational Web sites, a difference that could have an effect on the workings of various usability methods. As such, we felt that it was valuable to repeat one of our previous studies in which we compared concurrent think-aloud protocols, retrospective think-aloud protocols, and constructive interaction to evaluate a Web application, this time using a Web site. The results of our study showed that in some respects, the methods did work differently depending on the test object they were applied to. However, we conclude that the three methods are largely interchangeable and that the decision to choose one variant of the think-aloud method over the other should be based on practical considerations.

van den Haak, Maaike J., Menno de Jong, D.T. and Peter JanSchellens. Technical Communication Online (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Methods

Evolution Trumps Usability Guidelines

'Use a Search Box instead of a link to a Search page.' This is one guideline from the plethora of recently created usability guidelines to help designers produce more usable web sites. It makes sense. After all, there are more than 42 million web sites on the Internet. It should be simple to study these sites and put together a list of 'do's' and 'don'ts' that, when followed, will produce easy-to-use sites. But...

Spool, Jared M. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>Standards>Web Design

Evolution Trumps Usability Guidelines

'Use a Search Box instead of a link to a Search page.' This is one guideline from the plethora of recently created usability guidelines to help designers produce more usable web sites. It makes sense. After all, there are more than 42 million web sites on the Internet. It should be simple to study these sites and put together a list of 'do's' and 'don'ts' that, when followed, will produce easy-to-use sites. Designing a web site, either usable or unusable, is hard work. There are many details that designers need to take into account, such as browser differences, content management, information architecture, and graphic design. Providing proven guidelines to developers can reduce their already overburdened workload, making one aspect of design that much simpler. However, we are assuming the guidelines actually result in more usable sites. This is where things start to get murky.

Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Evolution, Usability, and Web Design

The purpose of this article is to explain how evolution and natural selection relate to the web development process. It is suggested that it is wise to encourage designers to create many quick and dirty designs over many short intervals. This is in contrast to asking designers to create a lower number of better designs over fewer intervals. The ideas of failure, prototyping, usability testing, and iterative design are explored.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Examining Tolerance for Online Delays

In this study, user tolerance for delays for three common WWW tasks, including information retrieval, purchasing, and downloading a text file was examined. These tasks were selected since the file sizes differ significantly among the three tasks, so it was expected that tolerance may be higher for those tasks with smaller file sizes. For example, tolerance for delays would be higher for downloading a text file than purchasing or information retrieval, since users may have an expectation that the task should take longer so they may be more willing to wait. End-users may be more tolerant of delays while purchasing online, since information must be exchanged to process the transaction, whereas information retrieval does not require information exchange.

Selvidge, Paula. Usability News (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

Examining Web Design Conventions Across Site Types

This study examined the viability of a Category-Based Usability Theory, which indicates that usability of websites should be accounted for on the basis of the category the website is in. While Web design experts have provided general design guidelines, it is believed that with different site types, design guidelines may differ.

Patel, M.R. Usability News (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

Examining World Wide Web Designs--Lessons from Pilot Studies

Since 1994, our faculty and graduate students have studied a variety of design issues critical to enhancing the effectiveness of World Wide Web (WWW) sites. Guided by earlier literature from such wide-ranging disciplines as information design, text legibility, hypertext, multimedia, interface design, human computer interaction, and communication science, we have completed five studies. Further, we developed a research protocol designed to enhance the effectiveness of WWW sites for education and information delivery. Our research protocol was guided by Berger and Chaffee's (1987) communication science orientation where communication science seeks to understand the production, processing, and effects of symbol and signal systems by developing testable theories, containing lawful generalizations, that explain phenomena associated with production, processing and effects.

Zimmerman, Donald E., Michel Muraski, Michael Palmquist, Emily Estes, Catherine McClintoch and Linda Bilsing. Microsoft (1996). Design>Web Design>Usability

Excuse-ability

Without innovative solutions that are imaginative and that promote the talents of the producer, the designer is left solving narrow, piecemeal issues that don't add up to much. Which is why Nielsen and Tahir reduce everything to the banal. They accept that the interface is the most critical aspect of the product, losing sight of the possibilities of the product itself.

Perks, Martyn. Spiked Online (2002). Articles>Usability>Web Design>CRM

Expert Usability Review vs. Usability Testing

Article outlining the difference between the two usability evaluation methods: The expert usability review and usability testing.

Halabi, Lisa. Webcredible (2007). Design>Web Design>Usability

Extreme Usability: How to Make an Already-Great Design Even Better

The 1% of websites that don't suck can be made even better by strengthening exceptional user performance, eliminating miscues, and targeting company-wide use and unmet needs.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability

An Eye on User Data: An Interview with Jared Spool, Founding Principal of User Interface Engineering

Our most striking finding is how bad web sites are in general. We have yet to find a site where, if you choose questions at random based on information the developers have placed on the site, users can find the answers more than 50% of the time. (The best we've found is 42% of the time.)

Spool, Jared M. WebWord (1999). Articles>Usability>Web Design

Eyetools, Enquiro, and Did-it uncover Search's Golden Triangle

The vast majority of eye tracking activity during a search happens in a triangle at the top of the search results page indicating that the areas of maximum interest create a 'golden triangle.'

Edwards, Greg. Eyetools (2005). Design>Web Design>Usability>Eye Tracking

F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content

Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Eye Tracking

Facts and Opinion About Fahrner Image Replacement

Fahrner Image Replacement and its analogues aim to combine the benefits of high design with the requirements of accessibility. But how well do these methods really work? Accessibility expert Joe Clark digs up much-needed empirical data on how FIR works (and doesn’t) in leading screen readers.

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Usability

Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored

One site did most things right, but still had a miserable 14% success rate for its most important task. The reason? Users ignored a key area because it resembled a promotion.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability

Feature Richness and User Engagement

The more engaged users are, the more features an application can sustain. But most users have low commitment--especially to websites, which must focus on simplicity, rather than features.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Design>Web Design>Usability

Filter and Sort: Improving Ecommerce Product Findability

Filtering and sorting are essential for helping users find the products they're looking for. Find out how to make best use of this essential functionality.

Webb, Jonathan. Webcredible (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce