Don't Feed the Subject Matter Experts

I found myself wondering; was there any statistically significant relationship between feeding and cooperation?

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Collaboration

Don't Forget the Power User

Most usability studies focus on ease-of-learning rather than on long-run efficiency. Ease-of-learning is an appropriate goal for products that are used infrequently, like many commercial Web sites, automatic teller machines (ATMs), or Microsoft PowerPoint. However, ease-of-learning should not be the primary goal for products like corporate accounting and purchasing software or CAD software that are used many times a day, often by 'power users'. For products where most users soon become experts and use the products daily, efficiency should be the primary usability attribute, with ease-of-learning a secondary attribute.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Usability Interface (1997). Articles>Usability>Personalization

Don't Get Angry

An article in the Washington Post, June 7, 1999, called Terminal Tantrums; 'Computer Rage' Is Widespread, a Study of Users Concludes describes research out of Britain, that we were among the victims of Technology Related Anxiety (TRA), specifically, 'computer rage.' The study reported high levels of PC-related abuse by colleagues 'as a result of frustration' with information technology. The abuses included 'swearing at their PC,' kicking it, and 'bullying the IT department'.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (1999). Articles>Technology>Usability

Electronic Voting: Usability, Communication, Trust

Beyond just the undeniable importance of a usable form and voting mechanism, is the need to consider the comfort and satisfaction of voters dealing with sometimes radically changed voting systems, especially when the move is from paper-based voting systems to electronic systems.

Bachmann, Karen L. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Civic

Epiphany in the Trenches

Recognize the many paths to success and be prepared to forge your own if needed. You may find at the end of your 'wrong way' happy clients, satisfied users, and a successful and delivered system.

Bachmann, Karen L. Usability Interface (2006). Careers>Consulting>Usability

EPSS: What Does It Mean to You

Electronic Performance Support System(s), or EPSS, automates three types of traditional performance support for software users: training, documentation, and help desks. Integrating these support mechanisms into software--using wizards, clear and simple interfaces, and various forms of embedded user assistance--allows novice users to perform competently with minimal help from training, documentation or calls to help desks.

Marion, Craig. Usability Interface (1999). Careers>Usability>Help

Evaluating Online Help

Online help excels in providing quick access to concise information - but only when the users choose to access it. Delivering high-quality online help that satisfies all users is a hard task. Several good help authoring tools make help generation and maintenance easier, but to create good content that is highly effective is still a huge challenge. Experience shows that even after following quality guidelines or best practices, the final output may still not be good enough to satisfy the needs of your users. Heuristic evaluation of an online help system provides an initial assessment of both quality and usability. This article presents a summary of key points for evaluating online help, though you will likely want to expand the heuristics with company or product-centric metrics suitable to your application.

Dalvi, Meghashri. Usability Interface (2008). Articles>Documentation>Help>Assessment

Field Trials: Trials and Tribulations of a Field Visit

I dutifully and eagerly prepared myself for the visit. I read books and STC articles on field visits and questionnaires. I was on a quest, and dangerously close to realizing a dream. At last, I would be able to define my audience, and gage the usability of the online help and hard copy manual. I would finally get the answers to my questions directly from a group of users.

Gunn, Robi. Usability Interface (1998). Articles>Usability>Audience Analysis

Focus Groups to Study Work Practice

My definition of focus groups is very broad. I consider focus groups to occur whenever a group of people are invited to participate in a moderated discussion on a specific topic. I usually use focus groups very early in the design, to better understand potential users of a product or service. This differentiates usability focus groups from marketing focus groups, which often seek to learn reactions to a finished product. Focus groups differ from usability studies in that the participants are not asked to use a product. They differ from participatory design sessions because the participants are not asked to contribute or comment on design ideas. In a focus group, all I want participants to do is talk.

Ede, Meghan R. Usability Interface (1998). Articles>Usability>Methods>Focus Groups

From the SIG Manager's Desk--Technical Communicators and Usability

Why technical communicators and usability? Both writers and software development managers have asked me that question. In both cases, it springs from a narrow view of communicators as 'just writers.' It is a point of view that fails to see the many activities, from learning the subject matter to organizing the information or creating good document design, that are hidden behind that final task of writing the words.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Usability Interface (2000). Articles>Usability

Getting Corporate Approval

Shared Medical Systems Corporation (SMS) recently combined its 66-person technical writing group and six-person performance-centered design team to form a new department called User Performance. With more and more clinicians—often novice users—interacting with SMS systems, SMS recognized the need to place an increased focus on usability.

Drake, Frederic and Frances L. Fleek. Usability Interface (2000). Careers>Usability

Getting Started With Usability

Practical experience and training helps me to go beyond usability fundamentals. I have learned about usability from books, news groups on the Internet, and university courses. Putting usability to practice means applying the lessons I have learned to small projects that have minimal impact on systems and services, but provide me with an opportunity to gain experience.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (1998). Articles>Usability

Giveaways to Thank Helpful Users--What's Best?

What is the best way to thank helpful users for participating in a usability study? Carl Myhill asked this question to a popular discussion group of the Usability community. The following are some of the replies.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Usability>Testing

Global Online Card Sort for World Usability Day 2006

World Usability Day has come and gone for 2006, and the results of the global online card sort are in. About five hundred people in 19 or 20 countries participated in the exercise. Find out what's next.

Bailie, Rahel Anne. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

Review: GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design DON'Ts and DO's

GUI Bloopers 2.0 describes common user-interface mistakes found in today's software products and services, and provides design rules and guidelines to avoid them. Johnson describes the design decisions that lead to misuse of controls, poor navigation, prose-riddled labels, bad design and layout, faulty interaction, and poor responsiveness. GUI Bloopers 2.0 is well illustrated with hundreds of examples from real products and online services, and stories from his own experience.

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

GUI Bloopers: How Not to Design Software

Why are so many software products, electronic appliances, and online services difficult to learn and frustrating to use? Here’s one reason: most are designed and developed with little or no guidance from people professionally trained in making products and services usable. As a user-interface consultant, I am often called in to review or test software and suggest improvements. The problems I find are usually the result of the software having been designed by people who may be professionals at software engineering and programming, but are amateurs at user-interface design. Consequently, the software contains design errors that make it difficult to learn and use. Many of the errors are extremely common and can easily be avoided.

Johnson, Jeff. Usability Interface (2000). Articles>Usability>Software

Guidance on Style Guides: Lessons Learned

This article highlights some of the lessons that I’ve learned about the process of creating style guides and implementing processes for ensuring that a product is consistent in a number of dimensions. I discuss the purposes and benefits of a style guide, a process for creating a style guide, the many types of consistency, reasons why style guides fail, methods for ensuring consistency, and some references that discuss these issues in more detail.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Usability Interface. Articles>Style Guides

Guidelines for Writing Accessible Online Help

This article describes how to write effective on-line help for blind and low vision users of text based readers. The authors draw on their collective experience in both using text (screen) readers like JAWS to access web applications as well as preparing accessibility help for web pages and applications. This article doesn't include specific information about building web interfaces or sites, use of controls for accessibility within web sites, Section 508 or WAI Standards and Guidelines, or specific information about hardware or software. We include JAWS instructions as an example because it is commonly used in the United States. Also, we don't include information about actual language used within an interface and how to write it to make the interface more accessible. We are only discussing how to write Help pertaining to the interface itself.

Reed, Will, Everyl Yankee and Wendi Fornoff. Usability Interface (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Visual

Hardware Heuristics - Testing Your Hardware Design

The following response to a question about heuristic usability testing techniques appeared recently on a popular mail list for usability professionals.

Wilson, Chauncey E. and Dick Miller. Usability Interface (1998). Articles>Usability

The Harmonics of Usability: A Trio of Implications for Software Interface Design  

In the world of usability, Thomas Gilbert, human performance engineer; John Bowie, information engineer; and Genichi Taguchi, quality engineer, are singing a three-part harmony. Exemplifying different generations as well as three distinct but overlapping domains, these experts converge at a vantage point from which they should be jointly capable of conducting the whole orchestra. This article explains the contributions each individual has made, directly or indirectly, to the domain of software development.

Sommers, Adele. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>User Interface

Hart’s Law: The Magical Number Three, Plus or Minus Zero

George Miller, infamous for his 'magical number seven, plus or minus two,' somehow missed an even more important principle of how the world works: no matter how clever we think we are, it still takes us three tries to get anything approximately right. Although most of us have proven beyond a shadow of doubt our ability to blunder around and take many more than three tries, the overwhelming majority of us get it nearly right on the third try.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Usability Interface (2002). Articles>Usability

Have You Used Your Career Center Lately?

If you want your online career center to attract good resumes or really interesting candidates, usability is a key factor. If you are committed to attracting the most qualified candidates, be prepared to invest time and effort to improve the content and quality, and conduct tests to assess usability.

Bavasso Roffo, Sandra C. Usability Interface (2005). Careers>Advice

Helping Web Customers Sniff Out a Deal

In Jared Spool's presentation, 'Scent of a Web Site' to the Washington DC Chapter of UPA (September 18, 2002), Spool used scent as an analogy to attract customers to the goods or services they desire online. A predator locates prey by following a scent trail. If the predator loses the scent trail, it returns to the location where the trail was strong, and tries again. Spool reports seeing a similar behavior with people looking for content on very large Web sites. Spool introduced two new vocabulary words that I plan to use. Gallery pages are used on very large Web sites to aggregate content pages. Store pages are used to aggregate gallery pages. The home page connects to stores; effective home pages also connect to galleries and content as well. These concepts aren't necessary for Web sites of one to twenty or so pages. They are essential for very large Web sites, such as Amazon or Microsoft Network, with pages numbering in the millions.

Bine, Katharyn. Usability Interface (2002). Articles>Web Design>Usability

Heuristic Inspections for Documentation – 10 Recommended Documentation Heuristics

We all are familiar with Jakob Nielsen's heuristics for evaluating the usability of interfaces. When I was conducting a study on documentation usability, I started wondering if there existed a similar set of heuristics for evaluating the usability of documentation. The natural place to pose such a question was the STC Usability SIG mailing list. The response was that there was no heuristics set available although someone had tried to open the discussion in the mailing list some time ago. An answer, which led to the list of heuristics presented below, was something along the line 'Well, now that you asked, why don't you put the heuristics together' and so I did.

Purho, Vesa. Usability Interface (2000). Articles>Usability>Documentation

Heuristics to Evaluate Online Help

Creates a set of questions for each usability category for the person performing the heuristic evaluation with a range of very satisfied to very unsatisfied to not applicable. Each question can have a severity level that can raise significant opportunities for improvement to the foreground.

DeBoard, Donn. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods>Heuristic Evaluation