Voters Learn the Importance of Usability

It has been an exciting few months, what with the usability flaws in the 'butterfly ballot' in Florida possibly changing the course of history. The good news is that the controversy put usability into the public conversation with news articles, press releases, and even new research articles. It was an opportunity to explain 'what we do' to friends, relatives, and associates. Some of the lessons from the 2000 Presidential election are the basics of Usability 101.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Usability Interface (2001). Articles>Documentation>Help>Usability

Washington DC: Panel Discussion about Usability in Healthcare

The Washington D.C. Usability Special Interest Group teamed up with the local Usability Professionals Association to present a panel discussion about usability in healthcare. Did you know that rising costs, an aging population and pressure to adopt new technologies increasingly strain the healthcare system? At the same time, patients and their families have ever-more access to health information, and many want healthcare to become more patient-centered.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>Usability>Biomedical

A "Way Last Resort"?

I recently made a career transition from technical writing to usability engineering. In my new position, I have been conducting site visits with customers in the area. During a recent visit, I found an opportunity to query a user, 'Mike,' about using online Help. Join Molly on her first experience watching a user try to work with documentation, an experience both illuminating and alarming.

Malsam, Molly. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

Web Accessibility Initiative

It might be easy to dismiss the WAI as another mouthful of acronyms for yet another Web standard but that would be a mistake. Their goal is to, '…make Web content more available to all users, whatever user agent they are using (e.g., desktop browser, voice browser, mobile phone, automobile-based personal computer, etc.) or constraints they may be operating under (e.g., noisy surroundings, under- or over-illuminated rooms, in a hands-free environment, etc.).'

Quesenbery, Whitney. Usability Interface (1999). Articles>Web Design

What Happened to Usability Interface

User Interface has been on sabbatical, but I am happy to announce that we have returned. Starting with this issue, the newsletter is online and ends our traditional newsletter format.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>Publishing>Online>Usability

What I Learned as a Writer from Doing Usability and Interface Testing

Usability testing was an important success factor in a recent project on designing an online interactive help system. As a group of graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University, we had widely ranging backgrounds, but none of us had experience with usability testing or user observations. Involvement with our users provided a great deal of expected and unexpected feedback to the group, and helped us tremendously to learn more about our users, and ourselves as writers and information designers. As a writer, I hadn’t had any experience with usability testing. When I recently returned to graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University, however, I worked with a team of other writers to create a prototype of an interactive online interactive help system. Part of our work included user interviews and observations, and usability testing for our prototype. Although this was a rich learning environment overall, our team felt strongly that we learned the most from our experiences working directly with our users. Maybe the reason is because we thought that we knew our users and what they wanted.

Jackson, Anne F. Usability Interface (2002). Articles>Usability>Writing

What We Learned Evaluating the Usability of a Game

How do you test a game? Rather than look at background issues like differences between games and applications, this article focuses on the methods employed for the usability testing of Ion Storm’s game Thief: Deadly Shadows.

Lucas, Shannon and Denise Fulton. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Usability

What’s in a Number?

Whereas 7 (plus or minus 2) is the mantra for structured writing and other methods for organizing information, 5 (plus or minus 2) is the mantra for the number of participants needed in a usability test. Recent articles have looked at what Miller, who introduced the research on short-term memory, really meant regarding the 7 + or – 2 number (Doumont 2002; Kolbach 2002), and a similar re-examination is now a much-discussed topic regarding the viability of applying the number 5 to web usability testing. Two widely-publicized usability studies of Web users, one directed by Rolf Molich and the other by Jared Spool, are fueling the discussion. At the most recent meetings of CHI and UPA, panels addressed this specific topic, and the first question directed to Jakob Nielsen at the CHI session entitled 'Ask Jakob' was, How many users does it take? Knowing something about the research studies and the issues raised gives you the ammunition to decide where you stand. So, here’s a brief overview of what the controversy is based on, and, if you want to learn more, you can read the whole story in the original sources.

Barnum, Carol M. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>Theory>Cognitive Psychology

When Testing for Ease of Use and Testing for Functionality Diverge

This article was inspired by a question I posed to two electronic communities on the merits of combining the functions of usability and quality assurance (QA) into one group. The first community was a mailing list primarily serving usability and human factors professionals; the second community was the comp.software.testing news group. This question spawned a discussion of the similarities and differences between usability and quality assurance functions, working environments, requirements, and behavior.

Seidel, Erica J. Usability Interface (1998). Articles>Usability

Why Game Documentation is Essential to a Satisfying User Experience

Documentation and information organization are an integral part of video game construction. The video game industry may be one of the directions technical communicators will move toward in the near future.

Peterson, Martin. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Documentation>User Experience>User Centered Design

Why Users Don't Complain About Unusable Forms

The email lists have been abuzz with discussions of the usability issues in the Florida ballot. A common question asked was why a ballot design with so many obvious ways of failing its users attracted no attention before the recent U.S. Presidential election.

Jarrett, Caroline. Usability Interface (2001). Articles>Usability

The World is Ready for Usability. Is Usability Ready for the World?

User-centered design is being systematically integrated into the Web, application and product development process. It's the tipping point usability specialists have been waiting for. But are we ready? Does the field have the tools, and resources -- or for that matter the people -- to keep up with the need?

Straub, Kathleen. Usability Interface (2005). Articles>Usability>Professionalism