http://tc.eserver.org/publisher/Alertbox A listing of works published by Alertbox 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/Alertbox http://tc.eserver.org/35715.html http://tc.eserver.org/35715.html Agile projects aren't yet fully user-driven, but new research shows that developers are actually more bullish on key user experience issues than UX people themselves. http://tc.eserver.org/35305.html http://tc.eserver.org/35305.html Users hate change, so it's usually best to stay with a familiar design and evolve it gradually. In the long run, however, incrementalism eventually destroys cohesiveness, calling for a new UI architecture. http://tc.eserver.org/35306.html http://tc.eserver.org/35306.html Users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on social networks. http://tc.eserver.org/35307.html http://tc.eserver.org/35307.html From 0.1 seconds to 10 years or more, user interface design has many different timeframes, and each has its own particular usability issues. http://tc.eserver.org/35308.html http://tc.eserver.org/35308.html Simple user testing with 5 participants, paper prototyping, and heuristic evaluation offer a cheap, fast, and early focus on usability, as well as many rounds of iterative design. http://tc.eserver.org/35103.html http://tc.eserver.org/35103.html We made a timeline message more punchy, credible, and viral through 5 rounds of redesign. http://tc.eserver.org/35104.html http://tc.eserver.org/35104.html Hosting a company's content and services on 3rd-party social networking sites involves both tactical risks (lower usability) and strategic risks (less user loyalty). http://tc.eserver.org/35105.html http://tc.eserver.org/35105.html It's easy to bias study participants, whether in user testing or in card sorting, if they focus on matching stimulus words instead of working on the underlying problem. http://tc.eserver.org/35106.html http://tc.eserver.org/35106.html Websites that let users customize the UI have the same measured usability as regular sites. Sites for customizing products, however, score substantially worse due to complex workflow. http://tc.eserver.org/34891.html http://tc.eserver.org/34891.html Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures. http://tc.eserver.org/34893.html http://tc.eserver.org/34893.html Enemies of usability claim that because "the experts disagree," they can safely ignore user advocates' expertise and run with whatever design they personally prefer. http://tc.eserver.org/34895.html http://tc.eserver.org/34895.html In user testing, website use on mobile devices got very low scores, especially when users accessed "full" sites that weren't designed for mobile. http://tc.eserver.org/34896.html http://tc.eserver.org/34896.html Community features are spreading from "Web 2.0" to "Enterprise 2.0." Research across 14 companies found that many are making productive use of social intranet features. http://tc.eserver.org/34537.html http://tc.eserver.org/34537.html Even the tiniest amount of empirical facts (say, observing 2 users) vastly improves the probability of making correct UI design decisions. http://tc.eserver.org/34538.html http://tc.eserver.org/34538.html Individual investors are intimidated by overly complex IR sites and need simple summaries of financial data. Both individual and professional investors want the company's own story and investment vision. http://tc.eserver.org/34539.html http://tc.eserver.org/34539.html Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with search and across subsites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, and clumsy UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need. http://tc.eserver.org/34289.html http://tc.eserver.org/34289.html Precise communication in a handful of words? The editors at BBC News achieve it every day, offering remarkable headline usability. http://tc.eserver.org/34290.html http://tc.eserver.org/34290.html Task success is up substantially compared with usability statistics from 2004. Bad information architecture causes most of the remaining user failures. http://tc.eserver.org/34291.html http://tc.eserver.org/34291.html Testing how well people understand a link's first 11 characters shows whether sites write for users, who typically scan rather than read lists of items. http://tc.eserver.org/34292.html http://tc.eserver.org/34292.html User research finds significant deficiencies in non-profit organizations' website content, which often fails to provide the info people need to make donation decisions. http://tc.eserver.org/34293.html http://tc.eserver.org/34293.html Given that regular drop-down menus are rife with usability problems, it takes a lot for me to recommend a new form of drop-down. But, as our testing videos show, mega drop-downs overcome the downsides of regular drop-downs. Thus, I can recommend one while warning against the other. http://tc.eserver.org/34294.html http://tc.eserver.org/34294.html Writing for Kindle is like writing for print, the Web, and mobile devices combined; optimal usability means optimizing content for each platform's special characteristics. http://tc.eserver.org/34295.html http://tc.eserver.org/34295.html Users often see online content out of context and read it with different goals than you envisioned. While you can't predict all such goals, you can plan for multiple uses of your text. http://tc.eserver.org/34299.html http://tc.eserver.org/34299.html Mobile phone users struggle mightily to use websites, even on high-end devices. To solve the problems, websites should provide special mobile versions. http://tc.eserver.org/34300.html http://tc.eserver.org/34300.html As three studies of journalists show, they use the Web as a major research tool, exhibit high search dominance, and are impatient with bloated sites that don't serve their needs or list a PR contact. http://tc.eserver.org/33596.html http://tc.eserver.org/33596.html Intranets are getting more strategic, with increased collaboration support. Team size is growing by 12% per year, and platforms are becoming integrated. Improving usability increased use by 106% on average. http://tc.eserver.org/33452.html http://tc.eserver.org/33452.html Users pay attention to details in a site's writing style, and they'll notice if you use the wrong variant of the English language. http://tc.eserver.org/33453.html http://tc.eserver.org/33453.html Usage goes down as interaction costs increase. User motivation determines how fast demand drops, following an elasticity curve. http://tc.eserver.org/33454.html http://tc.eserver.org/33454.html Agile methods aim to overcome usability barriers in traditional development, but pose new threats to user experience quality. By modifying Agile approaches, however, many companies have realized the benefits without the pain. http://tc.eserver.org/33455.html http://tc.eserver.org/33455.html Usability scores for 51 websites show some correlation between navigation, content, and feature quality, but no connections to other usability areas. http://tc.eserver.org/33456.html http://tc.eserver.org/33456.html Automated email can improve customer service, strengthen relationships, and help websites bypass search engines. But most messages fared poorly in user testing and didn't fulfill this potential. http://tc.eserver.org/33457.html http://tc.eserver.org/33457.html Modern day user experience research methods can now answer a wide range of questions. Knowing when to use each method can be understood by mapping them in 3 key dimensions and across typical product development phases. http://tc.eserver.org/33458.html http://tc.eserver.org/33458.html We found a 9% improvement in the usability of About Us information on websites over the past 5 years. But companies and organizations still can't explain what they do in one paragraph. http://tc.eserver.org/33459.html http://tc.eserver.org/33459.html Finding addresses and location information on company websites has gotten dramatically easier, but users increasingly turn to search engines first for this task. http://tc.eserver.org/33460.html http://tc.eserver.org/33460.html New user testing of site maps shows that they are still useful as a secondary navigation aide, and that they're much easier to use than they were during our research 7 years ago. http://tc.eserver.org/33461.html http://tc.eserver.org/33461.html Many winners employ dashboards to give users a single overview of complex information and use lightboxes to ensure that users notice dialogs. Also, the Office 2007 ribbon showed surprisingly strong early adoption. http://tc.eserver.org/33464.html http://tc.eserver.org/33464.html Established wisdom holds that good error messages are polite, precise, and constructive. The Web brings a few new guidelines: Make error messages clearly visible, reduce the work required to fix the problem, and educate users along the way. http://tc.eserver.org/33448.html http://tc.eserver.org/33448.html The fads and big deals that get the press coverage are not important for running a workhorse website. To serve your customers, it's far better to emphasize simplicity and quality than to chase buzzwords. http://tc.eserver.org/33352.html http://tc.eserver.org/33352.html User research offers a learning opportunity that can help you build an understanding of user behavior, but you must resolve discrepancies between research findings and your own beliefs. http://tc.eserver.org/33122.html http://tc.eserver.org/33122.html People rarely read web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In a study John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen found that 79 percent of test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. http://tc.eserver.org/33067.html http://tc.eserver.org/33067.html Over the last half year, it has become popular for large and medium sized companies to build portals to their intranets which have been spinning out of control for years. Still, many companies don't even have a single default starting page for all of their employees: some leave browsers set to boot with the browser vendor's page (an utter waste of bandwidth and time) and others have a smattering of department pages but no company-wide internal home page. http://tc.eserver.org/33089.html http://tc.eserver.org/33089.html Yes, it is possible for white-collar workers to work smarter and become more productive. While intranet usability provides substantial initial gains, workflow usability can go much further and will save millions of jobs. http://tc.eserver.org/33098.html http://tc.eserver.org/33098.html Your intranet and your public website on the open Internet are two different information spaces and should have two different user interface designs. It is tempting to try to save design resources by reusing a single design, but it is a bad idea to do so because the two types of site differ along several dimensions. http://tc.eserver.org/32903.html http://tc.eserver.org/32903.html When using websites, teenagers have a lower success rate than adults and they're also easily bored. To work for teens, websites must be simple -- but not childish -- and supply plenty of interactive features. http://tc.eserver.org/32904.html http://tc.eserver.org/32904.html Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation. http://tc.eserver.org/31914.html http://tc.eserver.org/31914.html Depending on how representative designers are of the target audience, a project might need more or less user testing. Still, usability concerns never go away completely. http://tc.eserver.org/31915.html http://tc.eserver.org/31915.html Typically, you should deemphasize your company's name in links, but a new guideline recommends frontloading the name for search engine links under certain conditions. http://tc.eserver.org/31905.html http://tc.eserver.org/31905.html The 1% of websites that don't suck can be made even better by strengthening exceptional user performance, eliminating miscues, and targeting company-wide use and unmet needs. 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/31908.html http://tc.eserver.org/31908.html Lists of links are an intermediate case between content-embedded links and menu items. Showing listed links in blue or in the site's main link color is the recommended design — and the one most intranets follow. http://tc.eserver.org/31913.html http://tc.eserver.org/31913.html Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year — mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties. http://tc.eserver.org/31907.html http://tc.eserver.org/31907.html Should the OK button come before or after the Cancel button? Following platform conventions is more important than suboptimizing an individual dialog box. 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/31910.html http://tc.eserver.org/31910.html Users scan lists by moving their eyes rapidly down the left edge. Menu items that are right-aligned make scanning more difficult. http://tc.eserver.org/31916.html http://tc.eserver.org/31916.html Application usability is enhanced when users know how to operate the UI and it guides them through the workflow. Violating common guidelines prevents both. http://tc.eserver.org/31911.html http://tc.eserver.org/31911.html Since I started in 1983, the usability field has grown by 5,000%. It's a wonderful job — and still a promising career choice for new people. http://tc.eserver.org/31903.html http://tc.eserver.org/31903.html TiVo ran 12 user tests in 12 weeks while designing its new website. As TiVo's experience shows, frequent and regular testing keeps the design usability focused. http://tc.eserver.org/31906.html http://tc.eserver.org/31906.html Linear vs. non-linear. Author-driven vs. reader-driven. Storytelling vs. ruthless pursuit of actionable content. Anecdotal examples vs. comprehensive data. Sentences vs. fragments. http://tc.eserver.org/30862.html http://tc.eserver.org/30862.html Designers of DVDs have failed to profit from the lessons of previous media: Computer software, Internet web pages, and even WAP phones. As a result, the DVD menu structure is getting more and more baroque, less and less usable, less pleasurable, less effective. It is time to take DVD design as seriously as we do web design. The field needs some discipline some attention to the User Experience, and some standardization of control and display formats. 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/30828.html http://tc.eserver.org/30828.html AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable. http://tc.eserver.org/30196.html http://tc.eserver.org/30196.html Applications can give users access to a richer feature set by using the same few commands to achieve many related functions. http://tc.eserver.org/30195.html http://tc.eserver.org/30195.html Computing the net present value (NPV) lets you estimate the most profitable level of usability investment. For big projects, expensive usability can pay off. http://tc.eserver.org/30194.html http://tc.eserver.org/30194.html Information foraging shows how to calculate your content strategy's costs and benefits. A mixed diet that combines brief overviews and comprehensive coverage is often best. http://tc.eserver.org/30198.html http://tc.eserver.org/30198.html Testing 5-10 users at once lets you conduct large-scale usability testing and still meet your deadlines. http://tc.eserver.org/30197.html http://tc.eserver.org/30197.html Active voice is best for most Web content, but using passive voice can let you front-load important keywords in headings, blurbs, and lead sentences. This enhances scannability and thus SEO effectiveness. http://tc.eserver.org/29997.html http://tc.eserver.org/29997.html Measured usability improved by 44% compared to our last large-scale intranet study. The new research identified 5 times the previous number of intranet design guidelines. http://tc.eserver.org/29941.html http://tc.eserver.org/29941.html Introductory text on Web pages is usually too long, so users skip it. But short intros can increase usability by explaining the remaining content's purpose. http://tc.eserver.org/29552.html http://tc.eserver.org/29552.html Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks. 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/29553.html http://tc.eserver.org/29553.html The more engaged users are, the more features an application can sustain. But most users have low commitment--especially to websites, which must focus on simplicity, rather than features. http://tc.eserver.org/28975.html http://tc.eserver.org/28975.html Having a specialized usability person is best, but smaller design teams can still benefit when designers do their own user testing and other usability work. http://tc.eserver.org/28974.html http://tc.eserver.org/28974.html To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers. http://tc.eserver.org/28951.html http://tc.eserver.org/28951.html A remarkable 80% of findings from the Web usability studies in the 1990s continue to hold today. http://tc.eserver.org/28952.html http://tc.eserver.org/28952.html Having a good designer doesn't eliminate the need for a systematic usability process. Risk reduction and quality improvement both require user testing and other usability methods. http://tc.eserver.org/28695.html http://tc.eserver.org/28695.html Breadcrumbs use a single line of text to show a page's location in the site hierarchy. While secondary, this navigation technique is increasingly beneficial to users. http://tc.eserver.org/28699.html http://tc.eserver.org/28699.html Although the gains don't fall into traditional profit columns, there are clear arguments for improving usability of non-commercial websites and intranets. In one example, a state agency could get an ROI of 22,000% by fixing a basic usability problem. http://tc.eserver.org/28696.html http://tc.eserver.org/28696.html Making users suffer a drop-down menu to enter state abbreviations is one of many small annoyances that add up to a less efficient, less pleasant user experience. It's worth fixing as many of these usability irritants as you can. http://tc.eserver.org/28700.html http://tc.eserver.org/28700.html The sooner you complete a usability study, the higher its impact on the design process. Slower methods should be deferred to an annual usability checkup. http://tc.eserver.org/28698.html http://tc.eserver.org/28698.html Schools should teach deep, strategic computer insights that can't be learned from reading a manual. http://tc.eserver.org/28697.html http://tc.eserver.org/28697.html Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website. http://tc.eserver.org/28511.html http://tc.eserver.org/28511.html The sooner you complete a usability study, the higher its impact on the design process. Slower methods should be deferred to an annual usability checkup. http://tc.eserver.org/28461.html http://tc.eserver.org/28461.html The 'digital divide' refers to the fact that certain parts of the population have substantially better opportunities to benefit from the new economy than other parts of the population. Most commentators view this in purely economic terms. However, two other types of divide will have much greater impact in the years to come. http://tc.eserver.org/28464.html http://tc.eserver.org/28464.html A study of the benefits of big monitors fails on two accounts: it didn't test realistic tasks, and it didn't test realistic use. Productivity is a key argument for workplace usability, but you must measure it carefully. http://tc.eserver.org/28462.html http://tc.eserver.org/28462.html Progressive disclosure defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone. http://tc.eserver.org/28463.html http://tc.eserver.org/28463.html User interfaces in film are more exciting than they are realistic, and heroes have far too easy a time using foreign systems. http://tc.eserver.org/28259.html http://tc.eserver.org/28259.html Small websites get less traffic than big ones, but they can still dominate their niches. For each question users ask, the Web delivers a different set of sites to provide the answers. http://tc.eserver.org/28260.html http://tc.eserver.org/28260.html The easier it is to find places with good information, the less time users will spend visiting any individual website. This is one of many conclusions that follow from analyzing how people optimize their behavior in online information systems. http://tc.eserver.org/28257.html http://tc.eserver.org/28257.html The early Web's explosive growth rate has slowed, but even the mature Web is still expanding and recently crossed the 100 million websites mark. http://tc.eserver.org/28261.html http://tc.eserver.org/28261.html Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation. http://tc.eserver.org/28258.html http://tc.eserver.org/28258.html How can a small company's website benefit from usability activities despite a minuscule budget? By integrating four simple and effective usability practices into the design process. http://tc.eserver.org/28108.html http://tc.eserver.org/28108.html In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. Your website's design undoubtedly influences participation inequality for better or worse. Being aware of the problem is the first step to alleviating it, and finding ways to broaden participation will become even more important as the Web's social networking services continue to grow. http://tc.eserver.org/28091.html http://tc.eserver.org/28091.html In analyzing 56 intranets, we found many common top-level categories, labels, and navigation designs, but ultimately, the diversity was too great to recommend a single IA. http://tc.eserver.org/28092.html http://tc.eserver.org/28092.html Don't run your studies for the benefit of the people in the observation room. Test to discover the truth about the design, even when user tasks are boring to watch. http://tc.eserver.org/28054.html http://tc.eserver.org/28054.html Lack of personalization made an email newsletter completely useless to the recipient, damaging long-term customer relationship efforts. http://tc.eserver.org/28053.html http://tc.eserver.org/28053.html When owners of the big money tree use their excess profits to subsidize unrelated services, independent software vendors (ISVs) are driven out of business. Although such behavior got Microsoft into trouble in the past, ISVs shouldn't expect relief from search-engine-sponsored software from the U.S. Justice Department or the European Commission any time soon. These government agencies are notoriously behind the times, as proven by the fact that they attacked Microsoft only after it had won the browser war by cutting off Netscape's air supply. http://tc.eserver.org/28052.html http://tc.eserver.org/28052.html Search engines extract too much of the Web's value, leaving too little for the websites that actually create the content. Liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites and software vendors. http://tc.eserver.org/28051.html http://tc.eserver.org/28051.html Eyetracking data show that users are easily distracted when watching video on websites, especially when the video shows a talking head and is optimized for broadcast rather than online viewing. http://tc.eserver.org/28049.html http://tc.eserver.org/28049.html Using a linear diagram to plot data from website traffic logs can lead you to overlook important conclusions. Sometimes advanced visualizations are worth the effort. http://tc.eserver.org/28050.html http://tc.eserver.org/28050.html Optimize Web pages for 1024x768, but use a liquid layout that stretches well for any resolution, from 800x600 to 1280x1024. http://tc.eserver.org/28048.html http://tc.eserver.org/28048.html Familiar words spring to mind when users create their search queries. If your writing favors made-up terms over legacy words, users won't find your site. http://tc.eserver.org/27939.html http://tc.eserver.org/27939.html On the Web, users have a clear mental model for a hypertext link: it should bring up a new page. Within-page links violate this model and thus cause confusion. 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/27941.html http://tc.eserver.org/27941.html 6% of task attempts are extremely slow and constitute outliers in measured user performance. These sad incidents are caused by bad luck that designers can -- and should -- eradicate. http://tc.eserver.org/27938.html http://tc.eserver.org/27938.html The relative popularity of a site's pages, the number of visitors referred by other sites, and the traffic from search queries continue to follow a Zipf distribution. 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/27897.html http://tc.eserver.org/27897.html We can define usability in terms of quality metrics, such as learning time, efficiency of use, memorability, user errors, and subjective satisfaction. Sadly, few projects collect such metrics because doing so is expensive: it requires four times as many users as simple user testing. Many users are required because of the substantial individual differences in user performance. When you measure people, you'll always get some who are really fast and some who are really slow. Given this, you need to average these measures across a fairly large number of observations to smooth over the variability. http://tc.eserver.org/27813.html http://tc.eserver.org/27813.html Newsletter usability has increased since our last study, but the competition for users' attention has also grown with the ever-increasing glut of information. http://tc.eserver.org/27694.html http://tc.eserver.org/27694.html User testing shows that business-to-business websites have substantially lower usability than mainstream consumer sites. If they want to convert more prospects into leads, B2B sites should follow more guidelines and make it easier for prospects to research their offerings. http://tc.eserver.org/27701.html http://tc.eserver.org/27701.html When doing website tasks, the slowest 25% of users take 2.4 times as long as the fastest 25% of users. This difference is much higher than for other types of computer use; only programming shows a greater disparity. http://tc.eserver.org/27478.html http://tc.eserver.org/27478.html Over the last several years, entry-level salaries have dropped, while pay for experienced usability staff has been more stable. http://tc.eserver.org/27413.html http://tc.eserver.org/27413.html Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that user tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a huge budget and a lavish time schedule. Not true. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford. http://tc.eserver.org/27317.html http://tc.eserver.org/27317.html An organization that reaches the managed usability stage still has far to go to reach usability nirvana. Attaining these higher maturity levels requires many years of effort. http://tc.eserver.org/27166.html http://tc.eserver.org/27166.html As their usability approach matures, organizations typically progress through the same sequence of stages, from initial hostility to widespread reliance on user research. http://tc.eserver.org/27167.html http://tc.eserver.org/27167.html Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe. http://tc.eserver.org/27168.html http://tc.eserver.org/27168.html B2B sites often have overly complex pricing structures or can't show prices at all. To help prospects with early research, list representative cases and their prices. http://tc.eserver.org/26640.html http://tc.eserver.org/26640.html Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world's largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon's design. http://tc.eserver.org/26643.html http://tc.eserver.org/26643.html Most usability practitioners don't derive full value from their user tests because they don't systematically archive the reports. An intranet-based usability archive offers four substantial benefits. http://tc.eserver.org/26634.html http://tc.eserver.org/26634.html Once an online form goes beyond two screenfulls, it's often a sign that the underlying functionality is better supported by an application, which offers a more interactive user experience. http://tc.eserver.org/26639.html http://tc.eserver.org/26639.html Users from other countries have special needs related to entry fields for names and addresses, measurements and dates, and information about regional product standards. http://tc.eserver.org/26637.html http://tc.eserver.org/26637.html When using PC-native file formats such as PDF or spreadsheets, users feel like they're interacting with a PC application. Because users are no longer browsing a website, they shouldn't be given a browser UI. http://tc.eserver.org/26633.html http://tc.eserver.org/26633.html Search engine users click the results listings' top entry much more often than can be explained by relevancy ratings. Once again, people tend to stick to the defaults. http://tc.eserver.org/26638.html http://tc.eserver.org/26638.html Measuring the live impact of design changes on key business metrics is valuable, but often creates a focus on short-term improvements. This near-term view neglects bigger issues that only qualitative studies can find. http://tc.eserver.org/26641.html http://tc.eserver.org/26641.html Despite posing well-known risks, websites continue to feature poorly designed scrollbars. 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