Comparing the Usability of Three Dual-Language School Websites

This study evaluated the usability of three websites for Spanish-English Dual Language K-8 schools. Twelve participants (6 parents, 6 teachers) reviewed and performed tasks on the three public school websites. Site usability was determined through both objective and subjective measures, including task completion time, first-click, total number of pages visited, task success, perceived task difficulty, user satisfaction, and overall ranked preference. Results indicated that one site was preferred more than the others by both user groups and resulted in more efficient search behavior. Clear navigation, link terminology, and proper use of both languages were found to be critical factors contributing to the sites’ usability.

Naidu, Shivashankar, Veronica D. Hinkle and Sav Shrestha. Usability News (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Localization

Competitive Usability

Many online services on the Internet are about to enter the third stage of market maturity, where the key competitive differentiator will be usability. While many existing services are going to face costly re-designs if they what to meet the demands of the third stage, new Web projects have the opportunity to overtake competitors by making usability top priority.

Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Componentes Problemáticos de Interacción Web

A continuación se exponen los que, desde mi punto de vista, considero componentes problemáticos a la hora de hacer uso de ellos en nuestras webs.

Hassan Montero, Yusef. Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Design>Web Design>Interactive>Usability

Composition and Usability

Since the advent of the Web, we've seen a myriad of design schemas evolve--from the simple navigation/content style of site to the cluttered portal. And as this evolution has progressed, so did the war between UI designers and usability experts. On one side, there are usability experts who want to make every website look exactly like Yahoo because users know Yahoo and so they will automatically know how to use the site. On the other side, there are UI designers who want to design entire sites in Flash and Shockwave just because it's cool. Overly dramatic? Well, yes, maybe a little--but it's not entirely a false analysis. Many UI designers that work with usability folk complain that their creativity is hampered, whereas many usability gurus complain that designers are confusing a site's user with their visual semantics. But are the goals of UI designers and the usability folk that far apart?

Cecil, Richard F. Digital Web Magazine (2000). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Semantic

Concise, Scannable, and Objective: How to Write for the Web

Studies of how users read on the Web found that they do not actually read: instead, they scan the text. A study of five different writing styles found that a sample Web site scored 58% higher in measured usability when it was written concisely, 47% higher when the text was scannable, and 27% higher when it was written in an objective style instead of the promotional style used in the control condition and many current Web pages. Combining these three changes into a single site that was concise, scannable, and objective at the same time resulted in 124% higher measured usability.

Morkes, John and Jakob Nielsen. Alertbox (1997). Design>Web Design>Writing>Usability

Conducting Usability Tests to Upgrade Your Web Sites  

Usability testing can be planned and executed at various levels of complexity to enhance your Web site throughout stages of development. Include usability testing in the front-end planning and set Web site usability goals. Test early prototypes and then test again to quantify improvements. Assemble a team to plan the testing even if it is just two people. If you follow a planning and testing checklist, you should be rewarded with valuable data to analyze and upgrade your Web site. The process and outcome can enhance your company¶s reputation or improve your credibility as an information designer or developer.

Lester, Susan M.J. STC Proceedings (1999). Presentations>Web Design>Usability

The Constant Design Balance

Usability is about understanding your users, and designing and testing with and for those users. However, there are other competing needs that need to be considered to ensure product success. In architectural and technical drawings, different layers or transparencies are often overlaid to assemble the complete design solution. A similar "design transparency" approach can ensure that product teams are working towards a common goal, gaining a balanced view, and increasing the chance of success.

Szuc, Daniel and Gerry Gaffney. Apogee (2005). Design>Web Design>Usability

Constructing User-Centered Websites: Design Implications for Content Organization

The designer can construct and place the contents on the website with a good degree of confidence that it will reflect the mental model of the representative user. The placement of the content on the website, however, is critical to a site's eventual success. For this reason, this article is intended to address some of the more important human factors issues in the design of the content within a website.

Bernard, Michael. Usability News (2000). Design>Web Design>Usability

Content with Style

Content with Style will try to find balance between specifics and inspiration and keep you on track with what we feel is a good approach to our daily business: Styling up information for the web!

Content with Style. Design>Web Design>Usability>Blogs

Converting Visitors to Buyers

Converting visitors to buyers can be easily achieved by following some basic rules of conversion.

Townes, Frederick. Webcredible (2007). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Correlating Web-User Data

Everything served to a visitor -- from the first page through marketing, sales, and product fulfillment -- generates data about the customer. Web marketers can tap into this 'free' source of profile data for just the cost of converting existing data into a format that can be used by a data-analysis program.

Allen, Cliff. ClickZ (2001). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Log Analysis

Cost-Effective Website Acceleration

This three-part series outlines a common sense, cost-effective approach to Website acceleration according to the two simple laws of Web performance.

Powell, Thomas A. and Joe Lima. SitePoint (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>Bandwidth

Create credibility for online success

Read about what it takes to create credibility for your online business.

Dixon, Nicholas. Webcredible (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability

Creating a Sales Page That Converts

Anyone can put up a web page, but putting one up that actually sells requires some skill. Discover exactly what you need to do!

Beckert, Loren. Webcredible (2005). Design>Web Design>Marketing>Usability

Creating a Unified Web Site Design for the School of Technology at Purdue University  

The problem with any poorly designed web site is inconsistency. As a web designer or developer, one must create a web site as a finite, predictable universe with a specific set of standards and design specifications. When visitors go to any given page on a site, they should be able to recognize that they’re in the same site. The main focus of this paper outlines how a unified web site design was created for the School of Technology at Purdue University. In developing unified web sites it is important to have visual hints throughout a given site such as consistent typefaces for specific needs, consistent color palettes, and consistent placement and layout.

Miller, Susan G. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Web Design>Usability

Creating a Usable Electronic Newsletter In House

Many organizations are opting to convert existing print publications into electronic newsletters (e-newsletters)—and for good reason. E-newsletters can be developed for a fraction of the cost of their print counterparts and delivered to a global audience instantly. While marketers are discovering the ease of reaching a target audience with e-mail, many e-mail users are frustrated by the barrage of e-newsletters that muddle their inboxes monthly, weekly, or even daily. An onslaught of unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) has made readers wary of marketing attempts. To reach these wary readers, companies need to create e-newsletters that respond to their audience’s specific needs—namely usability and trust. By following a few guidelines, you can launch a usable and successful e-newsletter.

Lawless, Amy. Usability Interface (2003). Design>Publishing>Web Design>Usability

Creating Good Websites: Usability

Usable Web sites are those which help users to accomplish a goal (e.g. to obtain some information) easily, quickly, and pleasantly.

Marshall, Samuel. Leaf Digital (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability

Creating Usable, Search Engine Friendly URLs

There are many reasons to use mod_rewrite to create informative, useful URLs for your website. Most dynamic websites use some form of PHP or ASP to pull the data from the database and often times use that data in the URL as a string. This is not only a potential security flaw, it also gives the user and search engine alike a very uninformative destination for your website.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>Usability

Customisable Websites - The Definitive Guide

Customisable websites have recently become more and more popular - get the lowdown on when and why you should and shouldn't allow users to change pages on your website.

Warsi, Abid. Webcredible (2008). Design>Web Design>Usability>Personalization

dConstruct 2007 Podcasts

dConstruct is an affordable, one-day conference aimed at those building the latest generation of web-based applications. The theme for this year's conference is Designing the User Experience. The 2007 conference was held in September. This page aggregates recordings of all of the speakers or you can visit the link to download the podcasts.

Catalyze (2007). Design>Usability>Web Design

Deceivingly Strong Information Scent Costs Sales

Users will often overlook the actual location of information or products if another website area seems like the perfect place to look. Cross-references and clear labels alleviate this problem.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Deep Linking is Good Linking

Links that go directly to a site's interior pages enhance usability because, unlike generic links, they specifically relate to users' goals. Websites should encourage deep linking and follow three guidelines to support its users.

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

Depth vs Breadth in the Arrangement of Web Links

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of depth and breadth of web site structure on the user response time.

Mtei, Lianaeli and Panayiotis Zaphiris. SHORE (1997). Design>Web Design>Human Computer Interaction>Usability

Design Effective Navigation in Ten Steps

Designing your site's navigation can be quite a tricky task at first. You need to research the number of categories you'll account for, where your visitors are most likely to click, the colour schemes that will best satisfy users, and many other aspects. With so many variables, navigation design can seem like a situation in which there's no right answer. Today, we'll discuss the task of designing navigation -- and hopefully give you a head start in creating a navigation system that works the best for your users.

Hastings, Sam. SitePoint (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Design for Rapid Navigation and Easy Visual Scanning

The philosophy of designing for usability.

Hoffman, Michael. Hypertext Navigation. Design>Web Design>Hypertext>Usability