Should Designers and Developers Do Usability?

Having a specialized usability person is best, but smaller design teams can still benefit when designers do their own user testing and other usability work.

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

Show Prices for Common Scenarios

B2B sites often have overly complex pricing structures or can't show prices at all. To help prospects with early research, list representative cases and their prices.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Simple Tricks for More Usable Forms

Web developers loathe the task of building forms almost as much as users loathe having to fill them in. These are both unfortunate facts of the Web, but some smart JavaScript and intelligent CSS can go a long way to remedying the situation. In this article, I'll introduce a number of simple tricks for improving the usability of forms, and hopefully inspire you to improve on them and create your own.

Willison, Simon. SitePoint (2004). Design>Web Design>Forms>Usability

Simplicity

Simple web design delivers huge benefits to designer, client and user. When a design doesn't seem to work, ask what should be taken away before asking what's missing.

Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>Minimalism

Simplify and Sort for Better Searches

Nothing matters more to your Web site's success than a good search tool. More than 50 percent of visitors to a Web site head straight for the search button, according to Web site usability expert Jakob Nielsen. You may feel your Web site's logical layout obviates any need for a search tool, but chances are a first-time visitor won't agree. Even if it's a paragon of elegance and efficiency, too many users have been traumatized by poorly organized Web sites to even try browsing anymore. Users are task-focused and want to find specific information as fast as possible. That means using a search tool.

Peterson, Constance J. Smartisans (1997). Design>Web Design>Search>Usability

Site Comment: Yellow Page Search on Krak.dk

Too many required choices, too much mouse moving, too weak words, and less obvious options make address search hard on Krak.dk.

Bohmann, Kristoffer. Bohmann Usability (2000). Design>Web Design>Usability>Forms

Site Map Usability

One of the oldest hypertext usability principles is to visualize the structure of the information space to help users understand where they can go. On today's Web, site maps are a common approach to facilitating navigation. Unfortunately, they are often not very successful at it. We conducted a usability study of site maps on 10 websites, and our main conclusion is that users are reluctant to use site maps and sometimes have problems even finding them. Considering that site maps could be particularly useful to people who are lost, it is not good news that they are often hard to find.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Sitemaps

Site Navigation: A Few Helpful Definitions

Every site has structure, and visitors will form their first and most lasting impressions of that structure by looking at the links, buttons, tabs, and other controls that form the “navigation.” As designers, we’re very concerned with creating a navigation scheme and interface that makes it easy for the user to understand what they can do and where they can go. But collaborating with your team on the design of a navigation system can be difficult unless you all share the same vocabulary when talking about the different parts that make up the navigation UI.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Site Navigation: Keeping It Under Control

Site navigation is the structure of the site, and is presented as a globally present set of selections on your pages. These selections normally appear in a header, sidebar, or footer; the rest of the page displays content. Navigation is the section of the page that controls what appears in this content area. The beauty of this is that the page content is malleable. The architecture is not, and should represent a strong, extensible foundation that will last at least ten years. It's like building out floors in an office building. You can change the functionality of the floors as needed without changing the structure of the building. Global navigation is often divided into two or three sections: primary, utility, and footer navigation. Primary navigation supports the main tasks the user has in mind when he or she comes to the site. Utility navigation provides tools for the user that will support the main tasks, but are not tasks themselves. Footer navigation contains 'small print' and other links, defined by convention. Secondary navigation can appear when the user selects one of the global navigation items.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

Site Usability Must Guide Web Designers

Spend money on usability and the investment will be returned. Nielsen Norman Group's Jakob Nielsen tells Steve Barrett why site usability must be a factor from the outset, no matter what designers might say Jakob Nielsen is a man with a mission - a mission to convert digital businesses to the benefits and overriding importance of usability.

Barrett, Steve. Revolution Magazine (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Slash Forward

Some URLs are better than others. The effect of web addresses on usability and design. Short, sweet, simple, and useful.

List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Slash Forward (Some URLs are Better Than Others)

A frequently overlooked step in this process is the structure of your links--the actual URLs you’ll be using to point to items on your site. Here are a few handy tips.

Waferbaby. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Slate: Calculated Refinement or Simple Inertia

From an information architecture perspective, a daily web publication presents challenges and possibilities no newspaper editor ever had to face. As one of the longest-running daily publications on the web, Slate has dealt with these issues for years.

Garrett, Jesse James. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

The Slow Tail: Time Lag Between Visiting and Buying

Users often convert to buyers long after their initial visit to a website. A full 5% of orders occur more than four weeks after users click on search engine ads.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Web Design>E Commerce>Usability

So, What Size and Type of Font Should I Use on My Website?

By far the two most common types of fonts currently used on the Web are the serif font, Times New Roman (TNR) and the sans serif font, Arial. The question is, which one is more legible and at which size? In the past, it has been determined that serif fonts, which have ornamental strokes at the tip and base of each letter, are easier to read on paper than sans serif fonts, which do not have serifs. This is because it is believed that serifs help distinguished each individual letter (Albers, 1963). However, this benefit may be reduced or even eliminated on computer screens because of their display particularities, like poorer screen resolution and aliasing or 'jaggies,' as it is commonly known.

Bernard, Michael and Melissa Mills. Usability News (2000). Articles>Usability>Web Design

Split A/B Testing

Split A/B testing is ideal for testing two web page designs to find out which is the best. Find out how A/B testing works and when to use it.

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

Statistically Analyzing Success Rates in Web Usability Testing: The Cochran's Q Test

The Cochran's Q Test can be used to statistically analyze success rate data. It can be used even when only a small number of users are tested. This provides some indication that a vast amount of usability data can, and should be statistically analyzed

Griffith, Jamie. WebWord (2001). Articles>Web Design>Statistics>Usability

Staying Ahead of Competitors

Learn how to stay ahead of your competitors in the fast-paced ever-changing world of the Internet.

Claiborne, Scottie. Webcredible (2005). Design>Web Design>Usability

The Stench of Evil Users

Some users are out to destroy you. Some users want you to fail. Some users would like to crush your business. They hate you. They hate your web site. They don't like you. They don't like your company. They are poisonous, vengeful, and twisted. And they're smart.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability

Stop the Presses! Experts Offer Tips On Usability: News Sites Have a Lot To Learn

For all the hoopla of the last few years and the maturing of the online media business, this is still a medium where the practitioners have lots to learn. These are still the pioneer days. So as I look at news Web sites, in particular, I still see lots of room for improvement and experimentation. So do the self-appointed guardians of Web content quality, the usability experts and Web writing gurus. I recently asked several such individuals to make suggestions on how news-oriented sites can be improved -- how they can better serve their users and thus better evolve into viable independent enterprises. Here are some of their best ideas gleaned that might help you make improvements on your site(s) -- or help you to realize that there's a problem or need for improvement in the first place. I've added my ideas into the mix, as well.

Outing, Steve. Editor and Publisher (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Structuring Job Related Information on the Intranet: An Experimental Comparison of Task vs. an Organization-based Approach    

In this article, we present a usability experiment in which participants were asked to make intensive use of information on an intranet in order to execute job-related tasks. Participants had to work with one of two versions of an intranet: one with an organization-based hyperlink structure, and one with a task-based hyperlink structure. Efficiency and effectiveness were measured in terms of execution time and task accuracy, respectively. After the task execution, participants were asked to evaluate the task as well as the intranet. The results show that participants perform more efficiently with the organization-based structure, which is probably due to their familiarity with this structure. A post hoc analysis revealed, however, a learning effect in the task condition, which suggests that once users are acquainted with it, a task structure is at least as efficient.

Cozijn, Reinier, Alfons Maes, Didie Schackman and Nicole Ummelen. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2007). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Usability

Supporting Multiple-Location Users

About half of the users now access the Internet from more than one location. Despite the implications of this for service design, many systems assume that users remain bound to a single computer.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Surprises on the Web: Results from Usability Testing

We were surprised by how hard it was to compare simple facts on the web. We asked users to compare facts (Which vehicle has the better rebate: the Geo Tracker or the Isuzu Rodeo?) on sites that had all the necessary information. Users found these tasks frustrating; our randomly- chosen test sites were not designed to facilitate comparisons.

User Interface Engineering (1996). Articles>Usability>Web Design

The Table Ruler

Make your site easier to use by giving your visitors a virtual 'ruler' to guide and track their progress down long data tables. With a pinch of JavaScript and a dash of the DOM, your table rows will light up as your visitors hover over them.

Heilmann, Christian. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability

Tackling Usability Gotchas in Large-scale Site Redesigns

Redesigns can solve old usability problems while creating new ones that must be solved in turn. From the lessons of the ALA 3.0 redesign comes this quick study in remapping content without frustrating readers.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability