Universal usability refers to the design of information and communications products and services that are usable for every citizen. The concept of universal usability is closely related to the concepts of universal accessibility and universal design.
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What if something neither looks nor quacks like a duck, but users think it is a duck? The cranky user comments on baby duck syndrome and how it can trap users with systems and interfaces that don't really meet their needs.
Seebach, Peter. IBM (2005). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Usability
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Baby Steps Can Lead To Giant Leaps In the Way Your Organization Approaches Usability 
Until recently, Landmark Graphics’ UNIX Documentation Group had written user documentation based upon information that was gleaned from surveys, fellow workers, and personal experience. We had little contact with our users and little opportunity to see how our users worked. Last year, we expanded our efforts. We talked to User Groups, supervised a booth at the company’s trade show, and began to visit our clients on site. But we didn’t stop there... we reported the results of our study at our yearly developer’s conference, and we developed a company-wide Usability SIG (Special Interest Group). This paper focuses on our experiences.
Stark, Mary Jo and Mary Rio. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Usability
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Design and optimize products around basic features. The result--you will sell more products and improve the chances of people using secondary features (such as value added services).
Szuc, Daniel and Gerry Gaffney. Apogee (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability
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The Backlash Against Jakob Nielsen and What It Teaches Us
While you may not agree with everything Nielsen has to say, he's definitely provided a number of good tips on how to go about usability, and raised the awareness of user experience issues to a much broader audience - including those who sign the checques. The downside is that Nielsen's promoted 'usability' as being synonymous with 'user experience' to many people and we'll be clarifying the difference for years to come I fear.
Olsen, George. Usability News (2002). Articles>Usability
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A scrapbook of illustrated examples of things that are hard to use because they do not follow human factors principles.
Darnell, Michael J. baddesigns.com. Design>Human Computer Interaction>Usability
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Just what do we mean by usability? Before we can set out to achieve it, we need to understand what it is we are trying to achieve. It's not enough to declare that from here on, our software will be more user friendly or that we will now be customer focused.
Quesenbery, Whitney. Cutter IT Journal (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods
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Discusses the importance of usability testing as a final check on ballot layout and instructions text. Many of the problems in the report would likely have been caught with even an informal test. The report highlights a usability testing kit for local election officials, the LEO Usability Testing Kit.
Quesenbery, Whitney. Usability Professionals Association (2008). Articles>Usability>Government
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Banner Blindness, Human Cognition and Web Design 
Benway and Lane have studied 'Banner Blindness' – the fact that people tend to ignore those big, flashy, colorful banners at the top of web pages. This is pretty interesting stuff, for the entire reason they are so big and obnoxious is to attract attention, yet they fail. Evidently nobody ever studied real users before -- they simply assumed that big, colorful items were visible. This paper, shows once again the importance of observations over logic when it comes to predicting human behavior. People behave the way they behave, not the way our logical analyses and wishes would have them behave. People follow their interests, their needs, their customs. They are driven by curiosity, boredom, emotion. And the 'they' refers to 'we': us.
Norman, Donald A. JND.org (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Experience
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Banner Blindness: Web Searchers Often Miss 'Obvious' Links
Suppose you are designing a web page where one particular link among many is likely to be the most used by visitors. For example, perhaps you have a web page for sending text messages to pagers. 'Send a message' is likely to be a very popular link, and it is important that all users notice it. On a travel reservations page, the designer wants to be sure that users notice the link for 'make a reservation.' Web guidelines usually recommend that to make an important item stand out, it should be near the top, and be large and/or brightly colored.
Panero, Jan Benway and David M. Lane. Internetworking (1998). Design>Web Design>Usability
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Using web sites should be easy and pleasant, just like a great experience in a shop, hotel, or library. I believe that the all Web sites can be made lovable - easy, rewarding and pleasurable to use.
Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability
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Bazzmann|Mag si occupa di design molecolare, accessibilità, usabilità, web e UI design, standard W3C, semantic web e architettura dell'informazione.
Trevisan, Marco. Bazzmann. (Italian) Resources>Web Design>Usability>Blogs
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Depending on which research report you read, roughly 25% to 75% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts before consummating the deal. Despite the disparity in numbers, all the research firms agree on one thing: that's way too many.
Greenwood, Wayne. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce
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Beautiful Evidence is Edward Tufte's fourth and latest book and both follows and diverges from the directions established with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Tufte, 1983), Envisioning Information (Tufte, 1990), and Visual Explanations (Tufte, 1997). Visual Display examined pictures of numbers, Envisioning explored pictures of nouns, and Visual Explanations addressed pictures of verbs. Beautiful Evidence foregoes the 'pictures of' approach and instead establishes the role of evidence as the foundation of reasoning. In some ways, this latest book might have been better positioned as the first book because of its efforts to explain interplays of understanding and reasoning.
Penrose, John M. JBC (2007). Articles>Reviews>Graphic Design>Usability
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We demand more and more from the stuff in our lives--more features, more function, more power--and yet we also increasingly demand that it be easy to use. In an Escher-like twist, the technology that's simplest to use is also, often, the most difficult to create.
Tischler, Linda. Search-This (2006). Articles>Usability>Technology
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Becoming a Usability Professional
To reach the goal of making technology truly suited for humans, the world will need about half a million new usability professionals over the next 20 years. The sooner their training begins, the better off we'll all be. People frequently ask me what it takes to become a usability professional and get a job in the field. The answer lies in characteristics that all great usability professionals share.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Careers>Usability
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Behavioral Concepts: Effectiveness and User Response
What are hazards and why do we need them? Best practices for key elements of hazards.
Guren, Leah. In Other Words (2006). Presentations>Usability>User Centered Design
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Find out how to become a trusted expert on your website and watch your online credibility soar!
Usborne, Nick. Webcredible (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability
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We humans are biological animals. We have evolved over millions of years to function well in the environment, to survive. We are analog devices following biological modes of operation. We are compliant, flexible, tolerant. Yet we people have constructed a world of machines that requires us to be rigid, fixed, intolerant. We have devised a technology that requires considerable care and attention, that demands it be treated on its own terms, not on ours. We live in a technology-centered world where the technology is not appropriate for people. No wonder we have such difficulties.
Norman, Donald A. JND.org (2002). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Usability
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Being User-Centered When Implementing a UCD Process
For those who are interested in usability – whether long-time advocates or newly introduced – this is a good time to introduce a user-centered design process.
Quesenbery, Whitney. WQusability (2001). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Usability
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The benefits of usability include: increased productivity; decreased training and support costs; increased sales and revenues; reduced development time and costs; reduced maintenance costs; increased customer satisfaction.
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The Best of Both Worlds: Combining Usability Testing and Documentation Projects
Describes two cases in which usability testing and documentation projects were performed in conjunction with one other. It describes how usability testing affected the design and content of the documentation and how follow-on usability studies added significant new data not revealed in the initial tests.
Kantner, Laurie, Stephanie L. Rosenbaum and Connie Leas. Tec-Ed, Inc. (1997). Articles>Documentation>Usability
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The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes
In Eyetrack III, we observed 46 people for one hour as their eyes followed mock news websites and real multimedia content. In this article we'll provide an overview of what we observed.
Outing, Steve and Laura Ruel. Eyetrack III. Articles>Usability>Methods>Eye Tracking
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Better Invoices for Better Business
Invoices that obfuscate information, incorrectly state terms or arrive incomplete can be a massive headache for all parties. These mistakes will only delay the payment process, so it is critical you produce invoices that clearly deliver information your client will need.
Potts, Kevin. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Forms>Usability
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Better Reports: How to Communicate the Results of Usability Testing
You've spent several days setting up a usability test, recruiting the participants and running it. Then you've pored over the data. What next? If you are doing usability testing as part of user-centred design within a business setting, then there are many ways that you can communicate the results. This paper looks at reports and then considers presentation and observation as alternatives to reports.
Jarrett, Caroline. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Usability>Testing>Reports
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Beware of Opening Links in a New Window
Find out why opening a link in a new window is not generally a good idea.
Turner, Neil. Webcredible (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability
