#30668
Wikipedia, Champion of User-Generated Content
Encourage user contribution to your Web site by learning from Wikipedia. Wikipedia builds on open source and respects the geographical variety and potential accessibility needs of its users. It provides tools to help users contribute, but also fosters an atmosphere where contributions are verified and discussed by the broader community.
Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>Community Building>User Centered Design
#18789
Winning With Rapid Development: Incorporating Customer Needs into Fast-Paced Web Design 
This paper describes a case study of a challenging but successful rapid-development web project, which incorporated customer-centered design using multiple methodologies. Within ten weeks, we conducted field studies and focus groups, produced paper prototypes of three navigational concepts, conducted a usability test using paper prototypes, and performed heuristic evaluation on the resulting design. Keys to our success include: assembling a top-notch team, running many project phases concurrently, and good, ongoing team-client and intra-team communication.
Sova, Deborah Hinderer and Cory Knobel. STC Proceedings (2002). Design>User Centered Design>Methods>Web Design
#28237
Working with Others: Accessibility and User Research
After personally observing users with disabilities interacting with websites in unexpected ways, I have come to believe strongly in the value of user research--and to suspect that we really don't know quite as much about real-world accessibility as we think we do.
Boscarol, Maurizio. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>User Centered Design
#24109
Individual words are simply tools. Similarly, a particular color is a tool to a painter, and a given note to a musician. To write copy while focused on power words is like painting by numbers. You achieve a recognizable outcome with absolutely no creativity or life. No passion, no originality. Copywriting 'by numbers' may be good enough for some people. But if you have aspirations to write great copy, to make your mark -- you need to think beyond that.
Usborne, Nick. ClickZ (2003). Articles>Web Design>Writing>User Centered Design
#21251
Yahoo! Mail: Simplicity Holds Up Over Time
In many respects, email is the ideal web application: it's an application that people often need access to when they’re away from their 'home' environment, and the core user tasks (reading and writing) are easily accommodated with standard HTML interface elements.
Garrett, Jesse James. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>User Interface>User Centered Design
#24112
Your Home Page Is a Direct Response Page
Visitors don't come to our sites to 'browse' or 'surf' - they arrive with a set of questions in their minds. They have a task to achieve. They want to get something done. When a visitor's needs are that specific, you can't afford to ignore those needs and spend your first screen talking about your wonderful company or organization. You don't have time. Your visitors won't allow you the time.
Usborne, Nick. ClickZ (2002). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design
#28428
If you already have a web site, or you have a site project in mind, what needs does it fulfil? How many different needs are there? How strong are they? Your job as a web site designer is to craft a solution that meets all the most important needs.
Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2005). Design>Web Design>Planning>User Centered Design
#28430
Of course, the ideal solution is a win-win, where you achieve your goal at the same time as enabling your visitors to reach theirs. This section of the site introduces some tools to help find win-win situations.
Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2005). Design>Web Design>Planning>User Centered Design
#20867
Zipf Curves and Website Popularity
Much available data suggests that Web use follows a Zipf distribution. The figure shows the distribution of incoming page requests to www.sun.com during a one-month period last year. Each datapoint represents one page, with the x-axis showing pages sorted according to popularity: the first page is the most popular one (the home page), the second page is the one that received second-most requests that month, and so on until we reach page number 10,000 which was only requested a single time that month.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#32360
Examining Users on News Provider Web Sites: A Review of Methodology 
This project implemented and reviewed several methods to collect data about users' information seeking behavior on news provider Web sites. While browsing news sites, participants exhibited a tendency toward a breadth-first search approach where they used the home page or a search results page as a hub to which they returned and then linked to other pages. Generally, they browsed before using search. Information seeking patterns were consistent within-user but varied somewhat across users. Most behaviors were characterized as visually scanning with users spending much time scrolling.
Gibbs, William. Journal of Usability Studies (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design
#32452
Does Advanced Search Sound Too Advanced?
Should advanced search be called something else to sound more friendly and inviting, and would it make more people to use it when they need to?
Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2008). Articles>Web Design>Search>User Centered Design
#32686
Writing as an Asynchronous Conversation
Conversation is a theme that flows through all the work we do as technical communicators. Every use of your web site is a conversation started by a busy site visitor.
Redish, Janice C. 'Ginny'. STC Proceedings (2008). Presentations>Web Design>Writing>User Centered Design
#32735
Here’s a very quick, but very useful trick. You can catch 404 errors (page not found) on a static site and serve up a custom 404 page with a one-liner in your .htaccess file.
Coyier, Chris. CSS-Tricks (2008). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design
#32807
Usability Evaluation of a University Portal Website
This article provides a summary of a usability evaluation of a university portal website. University faculty, staff, and student users were asked to complete representative search tasks and provide feedback on the portal usability. Several user interface design issues were found to impact user performance in terms of task success and perceived task difficulty, in addition to overall satisfaction. From these results, recommendations are made for university portal design related to the default 'home' page, channel customization and configuration, and placement of user-specific functions.
Chaparro, Barbara S. Usability News (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#32905
This paper reports the results of scavenger-hunt usability tests conducted with 16 adolescent children (8 males and 8 females) in two age groups (12 years old and 16 years old), using two general-interest topical Web sites. The tests yield comparison data regarding both search performance and self-reported subjective preferences. The sole independent variable affecting search performance was the age of the subject, from which the authors conclude that children's domain knowledge may be a key component of their ability to retrieve information successfully from Web-based systems. Subjective preferences of children are systematically compared to previously reported preference data for adults who tested the same topical Web sites. Based on these data, as well as on insights based on subjects' verbal protocols, conclusions regarding both commonalities and differences in Web usability requirements between adults and children are suggested.
Sullivan, Terry, Cathleen Norris, Martha Peet and Elliot Soloway. Conference on Human Factors and the Web (2000). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Children
#32926
Brint.com: Why More is Not Better
Information architect Lou Rosenfeld never thought he'd criticize a website for being over-architected. Then he saw Brint.com and its 16 navigational systems.
Rosenfeld, Louis. CIO Magazine (2000). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>User Centered Design
#32927
It's all too common for IT players to emphasize the technology and ignore the information that the technology exists to convey. Take my friendly local cable provider, MediaOne.
Rosenfeld, Louis. CIO Magazine (2000). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Case Studies
#32952
Why Users Can be Hard to Design For 
To know the mind of others is one of the fundamental problems of being human. Much of our energy is spent trying to do so. For web designers, knowing the mind of users is complicated by having very little interaction with them. It is possible, on some projects, to design and redesign web sites without ever talking to one user.
Porter, Joshua. Bokardo (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#32956
Are Designers Focused Enough on User Needs?
I find that many designers give much more of their time to learning the latest standards trick than learning the latest “designing for users” trick. Here are a few reasons why this may be so.
Porter, Joshua. Bokardo (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>User Centered Design
#32981
I first heard of ethnography in Sociology 101. In his sonorous voice, our professor regaled us with tales of intrepid anthropologists immersing themselves in little-known cultures in exotic settings. We discussed Margaret Mead's seminal work, Coming of Age in Samoa. We examined the rigors of fieldwork, the tension between observation and participation and the challenge of analysis. It was a great class and I even opted for Soc 102. And that was that. Ethnography faded into the recesses of my mind until reawakened with a start a few years ago when I began hearing it applied to Web design. And it scared me spitless.
Rogers, David J. GotoMedia (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Ethnographies
#32992
Lather-Rinse-Repeat: A User-Centered Design Approach
User-Centered Design.hmm.seems intuitive, doesn't it? Obviously, if we're launching something onto the World Wide Web, we must be expecting someone to use it — duh. Though this may be true, many companies are missing the mark and their audience and, consequently, their business objectives by failing to successfully integrate the user. A User-Centered Design approach can create successes by merging business and user objectives to deliver a service that users value, while generating a benefit for the business.
#32993
User-Centered Design and Web Development
User Centered-Design (UCD) is a philosophy and a process. It is a philosophy that places the person (as opposed to the 'thing') at the center; it is a process that focuses on cognitive factors (such as perception, memory, learning, problem-solving, etc.) as they come into play during peoples' interactions with things. UCD seeks to answer questions about users and their tasks and goals, then use the findings to drive development and design.
Katz-Haas, Raissa. STC Usability SIG (1998). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design
#32996
Adapting the Design Process to Address More Customers in More Situations
While user-centered design (UCD) is a commonly used process for designing mainstream hardware, software, and web interfaces; design for accessibility is relatively uncommon in education and practice. As a result, the scope of users and the situations in which they operate products is not as inclusive as it could be. Designing for accessibility does not require a whole new process. Accessible design techniques fit well into established UCD processes for designing a range of products, from a handheld device, to office software, to a government web site. By integrating accessibility into the design process, designers can efficiently create products that work effectively for more people in more situations.
Henry, Shawn Lawton. UIaccess (2001). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design
#33013
The key revolution of the Web is customer empowerment and engagement. The Web empowers the customer more than it empowers the organization. The implications are enormous.
McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>User Experience
#33015
Accessibility in User-Centered Design: Personas
Personas are "hypothetical archetypes" of actual users. They are not real people, but they represent real people during the design process. A persona is a fictional characterization of a user. The purpose of personas is to make the users seem more real, to help designers keep realistic ideas of users throughout the design process.
UIaccess (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Personas
