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.
#14621
Change Your Goal, Extend Your Role 
The author suggests expanding your role as a technical communicator to enhance software usability by creating better user interface labels and application messages. Henry bases his suggestions on an integrated user-centered information design (UCID) approach driven by product usability. He explains UCID, describes how to prepare for a new role as a 'designer of product usability,' and shows how to effectively design labels and develop application messages.
Henry, Pradeep. Intercom (2000). Design>User Interface>Usability
#19935
Changing the Process of Institutional Review Board Compliance 
In the past two years I have submitted proposals for the same study to eleven IRBs at colleges and universities across the country. While I strongly support the need for obtaining IRB approval, I believe as a discipline and as individuals we need to work to revise the IRB process. As it is now practiced at many institutions, the IRB process positions composition researchers and composition research in potentially problematic ways.
McKee, Heidi. CCC (2003). Articles>Usability>Workplace
#25064
Characteristics of Web Site Content
Web site content must be recrudescent, repositorial, refluent, and rectilinear. What? Here's an innovative treatment of the essential attributes of online text. Find out why great web site content generally has these 14 characteristics that start with a "R".
Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Usability
#10407
This article is intended to make Web designers more aware of the qualities of heuristics by presenting a framework for analyzing the characteristics of heuristics. The framework is meant to support Web designers in choosing among alternative heuristics. We hope that better knowledge of the backgrounds, potentials, and limitations of heuristics will contribute to the professional expertise in the field. Our second goal is to make those who develop and present heuristics more aware of the information their users need. Thus, we try to increase the usability of heuristics.
de Jong, Menno D.T. and Thea van der Geest. Technical Communication Online (2000). Design>Web Design>Assessment>Usability
#20802
Check Your Website's Usability Quickly and Cheaply
Anybody who hasn't done a usability study desperately needs to. No one knows yet how to design the perfect user interface, so even simple do-it-yourself studies often show you serious problems.
#20042
In het boek zijn vanaf pagina 375 in appendix A een aantal checklists opgenomen die kunnen dienen als controle bij het ontwerp van uw eigen gebruikersvriendelijke pagina's. U kunt deze checklists hier downloaden.
van Rijswijk, Oskar. HandboekUsability.nl. (Dutch) Resources>Usability>Methods>Forms
#13797
A multi-screen GUI has become a favourite amongst designers aiming at a wider and less experienced user community. It is widely held that multiple overlapping windows can be confusing and visually cluttered for the novice user. Another common motivation is that a predominantly data intensive business application must provide simple, fast and by implication 'a-modal' navigation across large sections of the problem domain. This is a common requirement when user task analysis and interviews indicate that the user is often interrupted or must frequently switch between incomplete tasks. It is also common to prefer an a-modal design when it is impossible to predict in advance what the user will prefer to view and when. Particularly true of applications for the World Wide Web where the user community can be unknown or undefined and prior research into their needs and preferences has not been done. It is proposed to provide a single (almost) full screen presentation of a single view, whilst allowing the user to quickly navigate to other related data through no more than two mouse clicks / navigation choices or selections.
UIdesign (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability
#18442
The Internet today is a part of kids' natural environment. Most children have access to the Internet at school and/or at home. In 2000 there were 55,475,000 U.S. households with personal computers. 99 percent of public schools have access to the Internet. The number of Internet users worldwide is expected to grow to 300 million by 2005, from roughly 150 million currently, according to an estimate by IDC. The greatest growth will be in Asia and South America. The number of online users will rise 61 percent to 95 million in the US, more than double to 88 million in Europe and quadruple to 118 million in the rest of the world. NUA Internet Survey, on the other hand, estimated total number of people online to be 407.1 million in November 2000. In November 2000 almost 20 percent of all digital media users were children. A recent National School Boards Foundation telephone survey of 1,735 randomly-chosen households showed that children predominantly use Internet at home and in school. In a survey of 10,000 students aged 12 to 24, from 16 countries, Ipsos-Reid Group found Internet to be widely available to Swedish and Canadian students. 78 percent of students in Sweden and 74 percent in Canada are able to go online at school. 80 percent of Swedish children and 71 percent of Canadian students have web access at home. Taiwan ranked third, with 63 percent accessibility at school, followed by the UK, US, Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, Mexico, Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Brazil, and Urban China.
Demner, Dina. Universal Usability (2001). Articles>Usability>Accessibility>Children
#27961
Chinese Banks Homepage Usability Research Report
The homepages of three leading Chinese retail banks are assessed for their usability.
Zhao, Ming. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce
#27027
Chinese Home Site Visits: Tips and Hints
You may only get one opportunity in a home visit and good planning and preparation is important. Here are some tips and hints from recent home site visits in both China and Taiwan.
Wong, Josephine. Apogee (2005). Articles>Usability>Regional>China
#24874
Choosing Understandable Folder Labels
Improve your department's messy folder structure by following Kratts' advice on choosing meaningful folder names.
Kratts, Aimee. Intercom (2004). Design>Usability
#13740
Jared Spool goes out of his way to position himself as anything but a user-interface designer. Yet through his company, User Interface Engineering (UIE), he is a frequent keynote speaker on effective Web design, produces a monthly publication reviewing Web sites for effectiveness, and runs a series of workshops of effective Web design. Founded in 1988, UIE is an independent research, training, and consulting firm specializing in user-interface design and product usability issues. It has grown into one of the United States' leading usability research practices, conducting more than 400 usability tests each year on software and Web sites.
Spool, Jared M. Builder.com (2001). Articles>Usability>User Interface
#13458
Cinderella’s Slipper—Does It Fit Americans and Europeans?
This paper represents an international study of IBM customers in the U. S., England, and Germany to see what effect the layout of a technical document has on usability for an audience of Americans and Europeans. The results indicate that while Americans and Europeans want most of the same usability features, they do not agree on all features. Communicating effectively with readers from different countries requires that writers work closely with international readers who represent the readers of their document; interview people who represent their audience; work with a document designer before starting the first draft; and test the draft document on representative users.
Ryan, Suzanne V. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Usability>Publishing
#25744
Usability, user experience, technology, ethnography, design, the workplace, e-government and public policy, from a UK perspective.
Ferguson, Louise. City of Bits. Resources>Usability>User Experience>Blogs
#28102
Contrasts the unique aspects of expert reviews and usability testing. The usability goals they address are different. Know when to use which one, and when to use both.
Straub, Kathleen. Usability Professionals Association (2006). Articles>Usability>Methods>Testing
#25068
Once in a while a client will tilt their head and look at me with one of those smiles. “You want to do expert review and then also usability testing?” they say. “Is this one of those consulting tricks? Why would I need to do both?” It’s a fair question. To the casual observer, usability testing and expert review probably look very similar.
Straub, Kathleen. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods
#30436
Clustering for Usability Participant Selection
User satisfaction and usefulness are measured using usability studies that involve real customers. Given the nature of software development and delivery, having to conduct usability studies can become a costly expense in the overall budget. A major part of this expense is the participant costs. Under this condition, it is desirable to reduce the number of participants without sacrificing the quality of the experiment. If a company could use a smaller participant pool and get the same results as the entire pool; this would result in significant savings. Given a participant pool of size N, is there a subset of N that would yield the same results as the entire population? This research addresses this question using a data-mining clustering tool called Applications Quest.
Gilbert, Juan E., Andrea Williams, and Cheryl D. Seals. Journal of Usability Studies (2007). Articles>Usability>Testing>Methods
#19191
Cognitive Behavior Learning Disabilities: Being Different Shouldn't Mean Being Discriminated Against
I view my son's early school years in the 90s as a nightmare. I asked if my son could submit homework done on the computer due to his awful handwriting - weren't his ideas the key issue? - and 'NO!' was the reply.
Mardahl, Karen. Usability Interface (2003). Design>Usability>Accessibility
#13940
Cognitive Strain as a Factor in Effective Document Design 
People have a limited amount of cognitive resources. Coping with the increasing amount of information presented via a software interface strains a user’s cognitive resources. If a person has to use documentation, whether on-line or paper, additional cognitive resources are consumed, often overloading the user. Using several windows or multi-media elements can compound the problem. Unfortunately, as Wickens (1992) states, humans are unable to manage excessive cognitive strain and they respond by getting frustrated, committing errors, shedding tasks, or reverting to known methods.
Albers, Michael J. ACM SIGDOC (1997). Presentations>User Centered Design>Usability>Cognitive Psychology
#18626
Cognitive walkthrough is a review technique where expert evaluators construct task scenarios from a specification or early prototype and then role play the part of a user working with that interface--'walking through' the interface. They act as if the interface was actually built and they (in the role of a typical user) was working through the tasks. Each step the user would take is scrutinized: impasses where the interface blocks the 'user' from completing the task indicate that the interface is missing something. Convoluted, circuitous paths through function sequences indicate that the interface needs a new function that simplifies the task and collapses the function sequence.
#26122
I have participated in, led, and suffered major website redesign efforts. Whether at process-heavy consultancies, notable product companies, or design studios, all teams experience the same points of pain: late feedback, lack of common design vision, and complaints that individuals or teams didnt have enough input.
Verhage, Sasha. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Usability>User Centered Design
#22001
Collecting Feedback From Users of an Archive (Reader Challenge)
The collective brainpower of the Internet is an awesome beast that used to manifest itself on Usenet newsgroups. Most of these groups have degenerated into spam, flames, and newbie ignorance. The Web has not yet evolved good ways of utilizing this power, since most so-called 'community' sites are equally degenerate.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1999). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#10386
Collecting Information: Qualitative Research Methods for Solving Workplace Problems
There is evidence that technical communicators are not well prepared to collect information designed to answer workplace problems with systematic methods. Because mastering the use of qualitative collection methods such as observation, artifact searches, and interviews is often incorrectly assumed to require little expertise, my goal is to show how much thought has gone into the systematic use of such methods in the social sciences, including business. Thus, I focus on the basic considerations involved in collecting information using qualitative methods, especially (though not exclusively) targeted for technical communicators within industry. To that end, I cover two broad areas: (a) fundamental issues, such as formulating researchable questions and addressing credibility and practicality in workplace research, and (b) the details of collecting qualitative information and also determining the specifics of an information collection plan. The topic of analyzing information after it is collected is not covered
Campbell, Kim Sydow. Technical Communication Online (1999). Articles>Usability>Workplace
#18439
Color blindness is mostly neglected, even most of the people do not consider this as a serious problem. However, color blindness can be a problem that disrupts many tasks.
Karagol-Ayan, Burcu. Universal Usability. Design>Usability>Accessibility>Color
#14998
Combining Usability Research with Documentation Development for Improved User Support
Describes two case studies where Tec-Ed leveraged usability research and documentation activities to create solutions that met the needs of both our clients and their customers.
Keirnan, Timothy, Lori Anscheutz and Stephanie L. Rosenbaum. Tec-Ed, Inc. (2002). Articles>Documentation>Usability
