The Achilles Heel of Product Design Competitions and the Fair Judging Solution

I have judged a fair number of national and international product design competitions (five in the past three years alone) and each has made the same procedural mistake: products are assembled and categorized, judging criterion are devised, reputable judges are assembled, and yet we judges never see or touch the products in person. Instead, we receive a set of written documents describing each product, its intended function, and its design process. Imagine an art contest conducted by email and you get the gist of what's going on out there.

Buttiglieri, Rich. Usability Professionals Association (2007). Design>Usability>Assessment

Avi Parush

Few usability professionals are as well-rounded as Avi Parush. Avi has worked in industry and academia, testing and design, the Old World and the New, with web applications and airplane cockpits, in operating rooms and on the bridges of ships.

Anderson, Clifford. Usability Professionals Association (2008). Articles>Interviews>Web Design>Usability

The Benefits of Usability

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.

Usability Professionals Association. Articles>Usability

Building a Better Style Guide  

Why are style guides so frequently created, but so rarely successful? All too often, businesses ask for a style guide as a means to create a common look and feel, in the belief that it will solve usability problems and establish consistency between applications – only to be disappointed in the results. Even if such a style guide is followed carefully, the resulting interfaces may not meet usability goals.. This paper explores strategies for creating a style guide that is more than a simplistic rules book. By making the style guide part of the process, it can be used to promote a shared vision, to help the product meet business and usability requirements for consistency and…it may actually be used.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Usability Professionals Association (2001). Articles>Style Guides>Rhetoric>Usability

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. Usability Professionals Association (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Regional>China

Cleaning Up for the Housekeeper, or, Why it Makes Sense to do Both Expert Review and Usability Testing

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

Cleaning up for the Housekeeper: or Why it Makes Sense to do both Expert Review and Usability Testing  

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

Common Principles: A Usable Interface Design Primer

When users perform a transaction or action, their cognition is often split between learning and operating the system or user interface (UI). A well-designed UI allows users to focus the majority of their cognitive energy on learning, and offers no operational complications. This most general principle of usability is often called the 'transparent interface.' The transparent interface is commonly defined as one that maximizes user task completion and minimizes interfering factors, such as unnecessary interface complexity or performance.

Oppedisano, Rick. Usability Professionals Association (2002). Design>User Interface>Usability

Competition on World Usability Day 2007: Are You the World's Best Expert Reviewer?

A world wide expert review competition sponsored by Intuit and Infosys Technologies Ltd. was hosted by the Usability Professionals' Association, Bangalore on World Usability Day, 2007. The purpose of this competition was to expose all to a simple, yet powerful usability technique: heuristic evaluation. It also served to gather data to define heuristic expertise standards at a global level. This is critical as this popular and valuable technique is used by 76% of the usability community (UPA Survey, 2005) and it shows a cost-to-benefit-ratio of 1:48 (Nielsen, 1994). By defining these standards we can ensure that evaluations are of a certain standard.

Kirmani, Shazeeye, Shanmugam Rajasekaran, Deepa Bachu, Muthukumar and Amit Pande. Usability Professionals Association (2008). Articles>Usability

Continuing eBook Classroom Studies

Acceptance of eBooks improves at Ball State University. Improvement of visual quality and 'no testing' helps a higher percentage of graduate students recommend eBooks for further classroom use. Many students found reading text material "satisfying & easy." More studies planned for the K-12 population.

Wiggenhorn, Susan. Usability Professionals Association (2003). Articles>Education>Online>eBooks

Criticizing Our Colleagues: Tough, But Kind  

I’m not used to writing editorials, but lately I’ve heard complaints from more than a few usability professionals about reviews of their work that were snide, hostile, and lacking in reasonable suggestions and this has moved me to speak out. These complaints deal with a primary activity of our profession: constructive criticism. We are often asked to uncover potential problems with products and processes and recommend design changes that could improve usability – using a tone that is firm and constructive. We are also asked to provide feedback to our usability colleagues in book, proposal, and presentation reviews. I have become concerned that feedback among usability professionals is not always as constructive as the feedback we routinely present to our clients. With the recent introduction of the UPA Code of Conduct, hostile reviews of the work of colleagues could be considered an ethical violation. More about that later.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Articles>Usability>Professionalism

Design for Life Cycle

I was struck by the similarities in the challenges of getting software engineers to consider usability during design, and getting mechanical product designers to consider life cycle issues during design. It occurred to me designers may resist adopting these two design processes for very similar reasons, and that possible solutions may be almost identical.

Hayes, Caroline. Usability Professionals Association (2007). Design>Usability>User Centered Design

Designing Better Elections

After the 2000 election, Design for Democracy worked with election officials in Illinois, Oregon and Nevada to design ballots, polling place signage, registration forms and other election materials. The election design system establishes a visual style, use of color, and an approach to illustrating instructions that make the ballot and polling place more usable.

Scott, Josephine. Usability Professionals Association (2006). Articles>Usability>Forms>Politics

Difficulties in Modeling GNU/Linux User Behaviors

Creating models of user behavior has been helpful in predicting basic outcomes of computer usability testing involving human subjects. However, models and methods have been based on a narrow view of computer use; namely, they are not compatible with behaviors resulting from using the Linux operating system. How different could Linux be from other operating systems?! This article provides a few points of comparison.

Queen, Matt. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Articles>Usability>Operating Systems>Linux

Does UPA Need a Code of Conduct?

Many professional societies have developed their own Code of Conduct. Given the high profile lapses in professional conduct and the evolving of the usability profession is it time for us to adopt a code?

Usability Professionals Association (2004). Articles>Usability>Professionalism

E-Bill Usability

People are increasingly relying on web channels to check on their billing relationship with companies. The problem: Not all billing applications present information that’s easy to navigate and action.

Szuc, Daniel and Gerry Gaffney. Usability Professionals Association (2004). Articles>Usability>Web Design

Entering the New Millennium

OK, it's trite, arbitrary, western-centric and perhaps even politically incorrect.  But the flipping of the calendar from the year 1999 to Y2K is compelling.  Y2K:  For how many of the past 1000 years would such a term have been meaningful?  That it is, shows how central information technology has become in our thinking.

Kreitzberg, Charles B. Usability Professionals Association (2000). Articles>Usability

Fast-Track User-Centered Design Techniques

The problem: we are being asked to do more UCD work, faster, and with smaller staffs. Sound familiar? Thirteen practitioners met in Asheville, N.C. at UPA 2000 to examine the questions of how we can reduce time and costs and still achieve good results. They developed many practical tips and considerations.

Bugental, J.O. 'Joe' and Kristin Travis. Usability Professionals Association (2001). Design>User Interface>User Centered Design

Guerilla Facilitation

If you find yourself in a facilitator role and you're beginning to doubt conventional methods, here are a few things that I suggest might help.

Battista, Ronnie. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Articles>Usability>Methods

HHS Announces Availability of New Guidelines to Improve Web-Based Communication

Last month HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced the availability of a new research-based guide to Web site design and usability.

Usability Professionals Association (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods

How FreshDirect Delivered e-Commerce Success

The lessons for FreshDirect's usability success can be applied to many e-commerce businesses.

Seiden, Alan. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

How to Create a Winning Tagline

The name of your company or consulting practice can offer prospects a clue into the work you do, which is especially necessary if it’s not readily understood, but if it bears your name, you’d better have a tagline to do the explaining.

Benun, Ilise. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Careers>Consulting>Writing

Hurricane Katrina's Impact on UPA Members

Hurricane Katrina illuminated UPA's sense of community this past month when the UPA Board of Directors acted quickly to attempt to contact our members who are/were located in the significantly affected regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. We received responses from several.

Mitropoulos-Rundus, Dave. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Articles>Usability>Risk Communication>Southern US

I Want Tools, Give Me Tools!!

The author wants to know more about ideation frameworks, immersive spaces, and aspirational models.

Daniel, Lucas. Usability Professionals Association (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods

Immersibility: What the World Needs Now?

'Immersibility' is a concept that takes a holistic approach to the quality of the Web user experience. The concept is discussed on www.immersibility.com. The site results from work by agency.com, the Nielsen Norman Group and Gomoll Research & Design. The site also offers a tool called 'the immersibility index' intended to measure, in a holistic manner, the quality of the Web user experience.

Zukor, Lee. Usability Professionals Association (2001). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design