http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Web-Design/User-Centered-Design/Usability A listing of the most recently indexed works about Design and Web Design and User Centered Design and Usability in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Web-Design/User-Centered-Design/Usability http://tc.eserver.org/33223.html http://tc.eserver.org/33223.html One of the most overlooked aspects of designing a Web site is how users get to it. Separate factions are often devoted to promoting, designing, and maintaining a Web site, and the lack of communication and involvement can lead to apathy or confusion. Too frequently is it assumed that visitors are knowledgeable about the company and Web site, and that they enter through the home page. False assumptions about visitor entry can plague even a well-planned, well-designed site. http://tc.eserver.org/33112.html http://tc.eserver.org/33112.html Over the years, we've studied the usability of hundreds of product and web site designs. We've seen designs that were incredibly effective for users and designs that fell tremendously short. One emerging pattern in our ongoing research is that design teams that know a lot about their users are more likely to produce user experiences that are usable, effective, and pleasing. http://tc.eserver.org/32952.html http://tc.eserver.org/32952.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/32807.html http://tc.eserver.org/32807.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31912.html http://tc.eserver.org/31912.html Bad content, bad links, bad navigation, bad category pages... which is worst for business? In these examples, bad content takes the prize for costing the company the most money. http://tc.eserver.org/31909.html http://tc.eserver.org/31909.html On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely. http://tc.eserver.org/31904.html http://tc.eserver.org/31904.html Different traffic sources imply different reasons for why visitors might immediately leave your site. Design to keep deep-link followers engaged through additional pageviews. http://tc.eserver.org/31019.html http://tc.eserver.org/31019.html Geo-redirecting -- redirecting users to different parts of your website depending on their own geographical location -- is a neat trick. It is handy when your website has different messages or product offers for users from different countries or regions. But many website owners mistakenly assume that their geolocation software works every time. It doesn't! http://tc.eserver.org/30827.html http://tc.eserver.org/30827.html Users now do basic operations with confidence and perform with skill on sites they use often. But when users try new sites, well-known usability problems still cause failures. http://tc.eserver.org/29810.html http://tc.eserver.org/29810.html On your site, the content page is the user's most frequent final destination. This page contains the information the user came to the site to find. Sites often have hundreds, if not thousands (and in some cases, millions) of these critical pages. How can design teams be confident their content pages are understandable to users? How does a team ensure they've designed content pages that communicate the essential information effectively? http://tc.eserver.org/29551.html http://tc.eserver.org/29551.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28429.html http://tc.eserver.org/28429.html Once you've got a statement of purpose you're halfway to being ready to design. The next step is to understand who'll be looking at the page, and why. http://tc.eserver.org/28215.html http://tc.eserver.org/28215.html Since I've started developing websites I've been looking for the ideal layout. Today I got another hint on the direction to take. Jacob Nielsen calls it the 'F-Pattern.' http://tc.eserver.org/27942.html http://tc.eserver.org/27942.html Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less. http://tc.eserver.org/27940.html http://tc.eserver.org/27940.html When working on business problems, users flitter among sites, alternating visits to different service genres. No single website defines the user experience on its own. http://tc.eserver.org/27476.html http://tc.eserver.org/27476.html Research indicates that most users never find the majority of the functionality in any given application. Learning tends to reach a plateau early on, and is rarely expanded upon. And what that means is that most customers consistently undervalue the software products they purchase and use. http://tc.eserver.org/27107.html http://tc.eserver.org/27107.html Remember your site visitors won't find your website as easy to use as you do. Change your state of mind and you'll improve the user experience for all visitors. http://tc.eserver.org/26499.html http://tc.eserver.org/26499.html With a small budget to create a website, many small businesses bypass usability testing. While it is not always possible to do a full-blown usability test on a small website, there are steps that website developers can take to help make sure users are not ignored during the process. http://tc.eserver.org/24578.html http://tc.eserver.org/24578.html Here they come. Nightmare web sites that, from a usability perspective, are horrid monsters. When you're tired and in a hurry, you want a web site to quickly and easily provide relevant content to you, so you can solve a problem or perform some task. Discover common hideous impediments to web usability. WARNING: Not for the faint hearted! http://tc.eserver.org/24524.html http://tc.eserver.org/24524.html Users are repulsed by web sites that are narcissistic, egotistic, corporate-speak, hard to understand, and difficult to use. Users are attracted to and enjoy web sites that are altruistic, user-prioritized, user-focused, easy to understand, easy to use, and full of fresh, relevant content. http://tc.eserver.org/24136.html http://tc.eserver.org/24136.html The Web is interactive, whether you like it or not. And your customers are live participants in the marketing process, whether you like it or not. And as participants, they want something that most companies find hard to deliver. Your customers want you to listen. They want you to tune in and hear what is on their minds. http://tc.eserver.org/24111.html http://tc.eserver.org/24111.html Being sensitive to the fact that the user is in control, many sites simply present as many options as possible on their home pages. The thinking apparently being that the more choices you show on page one, the more likely you are to present something that connects with as many visitors as possible. http://tc.eserver.org/23299.html http://tc.eserver.org/23299.html Site visitors are more likely to finish Web tasks successfully, but site searches are still troublesome, according to a recent survey. http://tc.eserver.org/23120.html http://tc.eserver.org/23120.html The subjects that used the 155-link Web pages had a significantly faster search time using a three-column link arrangement, while the two-column link arrangement had the slowest search time. Results for the 30-link Web pages did not show a significant difference in search times for any specific link arrangement. http://tc.eserver.org/21767.html http://tc.eserver.org/21767.html Better prioritization, fewer interruptions, and concentrated information that's easy to find and manage helps people become more productive and stop wasting their colleagues' time. http://tc.eserver.org/21152.html http://tc.eserver.org/21152.html What do you really want your users to do once you get them to your site? What information do you want to get to them? How do you want to them to use your site? What responses do you want from your users? http://tc.eserver.org/21155.html http://tc.eserver.org/21155.html Everyone loves free stuff. Capitalize on this and you can make your site more user-centered. It can also drive up sales, profits, and user satisfaction. http://tc.eserver.org/21048.html http://tc.eserver.org/21048.html One of the worst elements of the web from a user interface standpoint is the URL. However, if they're short, logical, and self-correcting, URLs can be acceptably usable. http://tc.eserver.org/20850.html http://tc.eserver.org/20850.html Web users need structure to make sense of the many and varied information spaces they navigate. The fundamental nature of the Web does not support any structure beyond the individual page which is the only recognized unit of information. For information spaces that cannot easily be hierarchically structured, the subsite can be used as a helpful additional structuring mechanism. Subsites can also be used in hierarchical information spaces to give particular prominence to a certain level of the hierarchy which is used as the subsite designator. http://tc.eserver.org/20869.html http://tc.eserver.org/20869.html The Internet is still much too difficult to use for novice users. Specialized information appliances like WebTV reduce complexity but still involve considerable risk of user error. http://tc.eserver.org/20867.html http://tc.eserver.org/20867.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/20847.html http://tc.eserver.org/20847.html Suggests lessons from bricks-and-mortar retailers that can be applied to web design. http://tc.eserver.org/19475.html http://tc.eserver.org/19475.html As Technical Communicators, we’re often added as members of software and web site development teams merely as an afterthought. Executives, managers, programmers, and other team members frequently view the results of our work—manuals, online help systems, tutorials, and other documents—as 'nice-to-have' additions to products. This pervasive attitude is certainly not healthy for the profession of technical communication... but it’s not good for the applications our organizations and clients produce either. When Technical Communicators working in an e-business unit as user advocates are given more responsibility and more authority over the 'user experience' of a web-based application, for instance, they affect the bottom-line. They increase hits, product buzz, and completed transactions. By moving beyond manuals, beyond help, and into the new role of User Experience Designer, we increase the value we add to services and products and increase our professional status within organizations. http://tc.eserver.org/19428.html http://tc.eserver.org/19428.html Having designers guess the best way of achieving optimal user performance is very difficult. Their design decisions can be improved by ensuring that designers are familiar with the research literature, and by effectively using performance-based usability testing. http://tc.eserver.org/19261.html http://tc.eserver.org/19261.html Companies are beginning to conduct readability studies to determine how to provide customers with usable sites. Results have been inconclusive, conflicting, and often contradicting results of printed text studies. To discover how users use web sites, two pilot studies were designed to examine users, their purposes, and their reading processes. Many results parallel those of previous studies. In addition, new results indicate we need to examine several new variables, including amount of usage, site-specific knowledge, conventionalization, print bias, gender and age. http://tc.eserver.org/14191.html http://tc.eserver.org/14191.html Site visitors crave the sense that someone is there, within and behind your Web pages, your emails and newsletters. Dealing with the bare technology of online interactions is a cold experience for many, or even most of us. It makes us feel anxious. Technology isn't warm. It has no heart. It neither understands us, nor cares for us. For many Web sites, whether for businesses or organizations, we simply plug in and play the bare technology - the super-duper means of information delivery. All the site visitor sees and feels is the design, the interface, the links and the clicks. The experience is about as warm and human as banking with an ATM machine.