Topics: User Science: Usability
Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus. Creative problem solving. Designing for your audience. Contingency design, site mapping, information architecture. Conducting meaningful user testing. Usability testing on the cheap. (68 articles)
Good Help is Hard to Find
by Lyle Mullican
Issue 312August 17, 2010
Help content gets no respect. For one thing, it is content, and our horse-before-cart industry is only now beginning to seriously tackle content strategy. For another, we assume that our site is so usable, nobody will ever need the help content anyway. Typically, no one is in charge of the help content and no strategy exists to keep it up to date. On most sites, help content is hard to find, poorly written, blames the user, and turns a mildly frustrating experience into a lousy one. It's time to rethink how we approach this part of our site. Done well, help content offers tremendous potential to earn customer loyalty. By learning to plan for and create useful help content, we can turn frustrated users into our company's biggest fans.
Quick and Dirty Remote User Testing
by Nate Bolt
Issue 306May 25, 2010
User research doesn’t have to be expensive and time-consuming. With online applications, you can test your designs, wireframes, and prototypes over the phone and your computer with ease and aplomb. Nate Bolt shows the way.
Design Patterns: Faceted Navigation
by Peter Morville, Jeffery Callender
Issue 304April 20, 2010
Faceted navigation may be the most significant search innovation of the past decade. It features an integrated, incremental search and browse experience that lets users begin with a classic keyword search and then scan a list of results. It also serves up a custom map that provides insights into the content and its organization and offers a variety of useful next steps. In keeping with the principles of progressive disclosure and incremental construction, it lets users formulate the equivalent of a sophisticated Boolean query by taking a series of small, simple steps. Learn how it works, why it has become ubiquitous in e-commerce, and why it’s not for every site.
Web Standards for E-books
by Joe Clark
Issue 302March 9, 2010
E-books aren’t going to replace books. E-books are books, merely with a different form. More and more often, that form is ePub, a format powered by standard XHTML. As such, ePub can benefit from our nearly ten years’ experience building standards-compliant websites. That's great news for publishers and standards-aware web designers. Great news for readers, too. Our favorite genius, Joe Clark, explains the simple why and how.
Accent Folding for Auto-Complete
by Carlos Bueno
Issue 301February 23, 2010
Another generation of technology has passed and Unicode support is almost everywhere. The next step is to write software that is not just “internationalized” but truly multilingual. In this article we will skip through a bit of history and theory, then illustrate a neat hack called accent-folding. Accent-folding has its limitations but it can help make some important yet overlooked user interactions work better.
You Can Get There From Here: Websites for Learners
by Amber Simmons
Issue 295November 3, 2009
"Content-rich" is not enough. Most websites are not learner-friendly. As an industry, we haven’t done our best to make our content-rich websites suitable for learning and exploration. Learners require more from us than keywords and killer headlines. They need an environment that is narrative, interactive, and discoverable. Amber Simmons tells how to begin creating rich content sites that invite and repay exploration and discovery.
Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients
by David Sherwin
Issue 295November 3, 2009
It's hard for clients to understand the true value of user experience research. As much as you'd like to tell your clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call you back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. David Sherwin creates a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise.
The Myth of Usability Testing
by Robert Hoekman Jr.
Issue 294October 20, 2009
Usability evaluations are good for many things, but determining a team’s priorities is not one of them. The Molich experiment proves a single usability team can’t discover all or even most major problems on a site. But usability testing does have value as a shock treatment, trust builder, and part of a triangulation process. Test for the right reasons and achieve a positive outcome.
Usability Testing Demystified
by Dana Chisnell
Issue 293October 6, 2009
The value in usability testing comes from the magic of observing and listening as people use a design. The things you see and the things you hear are often surprising, illuminating, and unpredictable. This unpredictability is tough to capture in any other way. Dana Chisnell shows you how.
Testing Search for Relevancy and Precision
by John Ferrara
Issue 292September 22, 2009
Despite the fact that site search often receives the most traffic, it’s also the place where the user experience designer bears the least influence. Few tools exist to appraise the quality of the search experience, much less strategize ways to improve it. But relevancy testing and precision testing offer hope. These are two tools you can use to analyze and improve the search user experience.
Beyond Goals: Site Search Analytics from the Bottom Up
by Lou Rosenfeld
Issue 292September 22, 2009
Top-down analytics are great for creating measurable goals you can use to benchmark and evaluate the performance of your content and designs. But bottom-up analysis teaches you something new and unexpected about your customers—something goal-driven analysis can't show you. Discover the kinds of information users want, and identify your site's most urgent mistakes.
Internal Site Search Analysis: Simple, Effective, Life Altering!
by Avinash Kaushik
Issue 292September 22, 2009
Your search and clickstream data is missing a key ingredient: customer intent. You have all the clicks, the pages people viewed, and where they bailed, but not why they came to the site. Your internal site-search data contains that missing ingredient: intent. Learn five ways to analyze your internal site-search data—data that’s easy to get, to understand, and to act on.
Introduction to RDFa II
by Mark Birbeck
Issue 287July 7, 2009
In part I of this series, we looked at how semantic features normally confined to the head of an HTML document can be used to add semantic richness to the elements of the body. Along the way, we defined six rules of RDFa. In part II, we’ll learn how to add properties to an image, and how to add metadata to any item—and we’ll add a few more rules to that list.
Visual Decision Making
by Patrick Lynch
Issue 286June 23, 2009
If it takes only 50 milliseconds for users to form an aesthetic opinion of your site’s credibility and trustworthiness, are designers who create visually compelling sites simply wasting time and treasure on graphic indulgences? Patrick Lynch doesn't think so.
Introduction to RDFa
by Mark Birbeck
Issue 286June 23, 2009
In part one of a two-part primer on RDFa, learn how semantic features normally confined to the head of an HTML document can be used to add semantic richness to the elements of the body. Mark Birbeck shows us how.
Return of the Mobile Stylesheet
by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux
Issue 275January 6, 2009
At least 10% of your visitors access your site over a mobile device. They deserve a good experience (and if you provide one, they'll keep coming back). Converting your multi-column layout to a single, linear flow is a good start. But mobile devices are not created equal, and their disparate handling of CSS is like 1998 all over again. Please your users and tame their devices with handheld style sheets, CSS media queries, and (where necessary) JavaScript or server-side techniques.
The Elements of Social Architecture
by Christina Wodtke
Issue 279March 3, 2009
While our designs can never control people, they can encourage good behavior and discourage bad. In this excerpt from Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web 2nd Edition, Christina Wodtke tells us how to make products that delight people and change their lives by remembering the social in social architecture.
Getting Real About Agile Design
by Cennydd Bowles
Issue 273December 2, 2008
Agile development was made for tough economic times, but does not fit comfortably into the research-heavy, iteration-focused process designers trust to deliver user- and brand-based sites. How can we update our thinking and methods to take advantage of what agile offers?
Flexible Fuel: Educating the Client on IA
by Keith LaFerriere
Issue 273December 2, 2008
IA is about selling ideas effectively, designing with accuracy, and working with complex interactivity to guide different types of customers through website experiences. The more your client knows about IA's processes and deliverables, the likelier the project is to succeed.
Understanding Progressive Enhancement
by Aaron Gustafson
Issue 269October 7, 2008
Steven Champeon turned web development upside down, and created an instant best practice of standards-based design, when he introduced the notion of designing for content and experience instead of browsers. In part one of a series, ALA’s Gustafson refreshes us on the principles of progressive enhancement. Upcoming installments will translate the philosophy into sophisticated, future-focused design and code.
Zebra Striping: More Data for the Case
by Jessica Enders
Issue 267September 9, 2008
As designers or marketers, we share a desire that our tables and forms be easy to scan, read, and use. Does the widely practiced shading of alternate rows help, hurt, or have no effect? A previous study proving inconclusive, designer and researcher Jessica Enders has tackled the conundrum again, coming up with statistically relevant data and a set of recommendations.
Look at it Another Way
by Indi Young
Issue 267September 9, 2008
Before you can solve a user's problems, you must see them as that user sees them. Once you understand what drives people’s behavior, not only do new ideas flow freely, but the ideas that flow are appropriate and useful. Indi Young tells how to get out of your own way and hear what your users are telling you.
Deafness and the User Experience
by Lisa Herrod
Issue 265August 12, 2008
Because of limited awareness around Deafness and accessibility in the web community, it seems plausible to many of us that good captioning will fix it all. It won’t. Before we can enhance the user experience for all deaf people, we must understand that the needs of deaf, hard of hearing, and big-D Deaf users are often very different.
Zebra Striping: Does it Really Help?
by Jessica Enders
Issue 258May 6, 2008
Just because a design convention exists doesn't mean it works. Our field runneth over with design patterns, but is low on evidence of their utility. Jessica Enders drops some science on the widespread belief that zebra stripes aid the reader by guiding the eye along a table row.
Sign Up Forms Must Die
by Luke Wroblewski
Issue 255March 25, 2008
You load a new web service, eager to dive in and start engaging, and what’s the first thing that greets you? A sign-up form. We can do better, says Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Via a technique of "gradual engagment," we can get people using and caring about our web services instead of frustrating them (or sending them to a competitor's site) by forcing them to fill out a sign-up form first.
Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry
by Aarron Walter
Issue 255March 25, 2008
Findability is to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as "web standards" is to "table layouts." In a web whose vastness exceeds comprehension, sites with findable content win. The good news is that everyone on your team can help make your site findable. Get a taste for this essential discipline from Aarron Walter, author of Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond.
Version Targeting: Threat or Menace?
by Jeffrey Zeldman
Issue 253February 19, 2008
Version targeting shakes our browser-agnostic faith. Its default behavior runs counter to our expectations, and seems wrong. Yet to offer true DOM support without bringing JScript-authored sites to their knees, version targeting must work the way Microsoft proposes, argues Jeffrey Zeldman.
Put Your Content in my Pocket, Part II
by Craig Hockenberry
Issue 245September 11, 2007
Screen size matters. And now that Apple is embedding mobile Safari in more iPods than the iPhone alone, it matters even more. Concluding his remarkable two-part series, Craig Hockenberry covers the down and dirty details of designing and coding with the iPhone (and its brethren) in mind.
Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo
by Aza Raskin
Issue 241July 13, 2007
Are our web apps as smart as they should be? By failing to account for habituation (the tendency, when presented with a string of repetitive tasks, to keep clicking OK), do our designs cause people to lose their work? Raskin's simple, foolproof rule solves the problem.
Inside Your Users’ Minds: The Cultural Probe
by Ruth Stalker-Firth
Issue 234March 27, 2007
Drawing on the field of ethnography, Ruth Stalker-Firth introduces a method for studying user behavior and motivations outside the lab.
Ruining the User Experience
by Aaron Gustafson
Issue 234March 27, 2007
Anticipating your users' needs is the key to making a good impression; it's the little things that matter most. ALA technical editor Aaron Gustafson explains why progressive enhancement means good service.
Where Am I?
by Derek Powazek
Issue 221August 8, 2006
It’s 2006 and we’re still messing up global navigation. Derek Powazek gets back to basics and offers a few simple guidelines for getting it right.
Home Page Goals
by Derek Powazek
Issue 211January 30, 2006
Home pages may get plenty of design attention, but that doesn't mean they don't need improvement.
Thinking Outside the Grid
by Molly E. Holzschlag
Issue 209December 19, 2005
CSS has broken the manacles that kept us chained to grid-based design...so why do so few sites deviate from the grid? Molly E. Holzschlag can tell us that the answer has something to do with airplanes, urban planning, and British cab drivers.
Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist
by Brian Crescimanno
Issue 209December 19, 2005
Sometimes it's the little things that drive you nuts. As many of us have probably noticed during this season of holiday shopping, usability problems in online forms can be infuriating. Brian Crescimanno helps solve the problem with a checklist of form-usability recommendations.
Power to the People
by D. Keith Robinson
Issue 208November 28, 2005
Relentlessly simple solutions to complex design problems can be the difference between an average experience and a great one. D. Keith Robinson reminds web designers and developers that ease of use is more important than technological sophistication.
Design Choices Can Cripple a Website
by Nick Usborne
Issue 207November 8, 2005
Do you test your designs? If not, Nick Usborne wants you to take responsibility for your design choices and the very quantifiable effect they can have on websites that are built for business.
Ambient Findability: Findability Hacks
by Peter Morville
Issue 205October 10, 2005
In this excerpt from his new book,
Web 3.0
by Jeffrey Zeldman
Issue 210January 16, 2006
Web 2.0 is a fresh-faced starlet on the intertwingled longtail to the disruptive experience of tomorrow. Web 3.0 thinks you are so 2005.
Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction
by Nick Usborne
Issue 213March 7, 2006
You want your users to do something—buy things, beg you to work for them, learn how they too can achieve inner peace. So how do you get them to do what you want? Try getting out of the way.
Complex Dynamic Lists: Your Order Please
by Christian Heilmann
Issue 200May 24, 2005
Help your site’s visitors reach their goals quickly with a dynamic menu that takes its cue from the Mac OS X Finder.
Anonymity and Online Community: Identity Matters
by John M. Grohol
Issue 214April 4, 2006
Most community managers want to offer a comfortable level of anonymity without spending too much time battling hooligans who aren't invested in the community. John Grohol offers advice on striking the right balance.
Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms
by Brian Suda, Matt Riggott
Issue 186August 10, 2004
Google’s cache offers users a copy of your website with their search terms highlighted. You can do the same thing and make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for — whether they're coming from an external search engine or your own site search — by making their search terms easy to spot.
Let Them Eat Cake
by Aaron Gustafson
Issue 177April 16, 2004
A growing debate pits accessibility against usability. From our point of view, it’s like pitting peanut butter against jelly. This article helps you create a page that is both usable and accessible, saving readers the trouble of scrolling with a little help from JavaScript and the Document Object Model.
The Table Ruler
by Christian Heilmann
Issue 175March 26, 2004
Make your site easier to use by giving your visitors a virtual “ruler” to guide and track their progress down long data tables. With a pinch of JavaScript and a dash of the DOM, your table rows will light up as your visitors hover over them.
Accessible Pop-up Links
by Caio Chassot
Issue 174March 19, 2004
Sometimes we have to use pop-ups — so we might as well do them right. This article will show you how to make them more accessible and reliable while simplifying their implementation.
Helping Your Visitors: a State of Mind
by Nick Usborne
Issue 171February 20, 2004
Even the simplest website is harder to figure out than a catalog or magazine. We all know how to “use” a catalog: start at the front cover and keep turning the pages. But with every new site we visit, we have to “learn” how it works, how its “pages” turn, how to find what we’re looking for. Text that takes visitors’ needs into account can help guide them through the maze.
Designing for Context with CSS
by Joshua Porter
Issue 171February 20, 2004
The medium is the message: Imagine providing unique information exclusively for people who read your site via a web-enabled cell phone — then crafting a different message for those who are reading a printout instead of the screen. Let your context guide your content. All it takes is some user-centric marketing savvy and a dash of CSS.
Improving Link Display for Print
by Aaron Gustafson
Issue 203September 19, 2005
Some time ago, Eric Meyer showed you how to add URIs to the printed version of your pages using print styles. Sometimes, though, too many inline URIs can make pages hard to read. Aaron Gustafson comes to the rescue with a JavaScript add-on that'll have you loving your linkage again.
The Perfect 404
by Ian Lloyd
Issue 168January 16, 2004
No matter how carefully you design and structure your site, visitors will sometimes request missing, moved, or non-existent pages. A well tempered 404 error page will plunge these visitors back into the flow of your site. Ian Lloyd shares strategies for crafting the perfect 404.
Tackling Usability Gotchas in Large-scale Site Redesigns
by Jeffrey Zeldman
Issue 163November 14, 2003
Redesigns can solve old usability problems while creating new ones that must be solved in turn. From the lessons of the ALA 3.0 redesign comes this quick study in remapping content without frustrating readers.
Keeping Navigation Current With PHP
by Jason Pearce
Issue 162November 7, 2003
Turning unordered lists into elegant navigational menus has become a new favorite pastime for many web designers. A dash of PHP can add intelligence to your CSS-styled menu.
Slash Forward (Some URLs are Better Than Others)
by waferbaby
Issue 138February 22, 2002
Some URLs are better than others: easier for visitors to remember, easier for designers and developers when it comes time to change the technology that drives the site. Waferbaby neatly and briefly considers the effect of web addresses on usability, design, and ease of maintenance and technological transition.
A Backward Compatible Style Switcher
by Daniel Ludwin
Issue 136February 8, 2002
You asked for it, you’ve got it: an Open Source alternate style sheet switcher that actually works in Netscape 4. No, really. Daniel Ludwin shows how it’s done.
Reading Design
by Dean Allen
Issue 128November 23, 2001
With so many specialists working so hard at their craft, why are so many pages so hard to read? Unabashed text enthusiast Dean Allen thinks designers would benefit from approaching their work as being written rather than assembled.
Information vs. Experience
by Emmanuel King Turner
Issue 125October 26, 2001
The conflict between presentation and structure reveals two views of the web. Which one’s winning?
How to Succeed With URLs
by Till Quack
Issue 123October 12, 2001
Dynamic websites rock. Dynamically generated URLs suck. Till Quack shows how to use PHP to convert those machine-friendly nightmares into dreamy, human-friendly web addresses.
Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web
by Mark Bernstein
Issue 106April 20, 2001
Crafting a narrative web: To succeed profoundly, Bernstein says, websites must go beyond usability and design, deeply engaging readers by turning their journeys through the site into rich, memorable, narrative experiences.
A Failure to Communicate
by George Olsen
Issue 103March 30, 2001
It’s ironic that, as professionals dedicated to clear communication, information architects and user interface designers are having such trouble communicating with each other. Information designer George Olsen digs up the roots of communication breakdown and explores the three aspects of web design.
The Declination of Independence
by Brandon Oelling, Michael Krisher, Ryan Holsten
Issue 102March 23, 2001
Three web designers discuss trendiness and innovation in design, and list 15 sites that made a difference in the year 2000.
The Curse of Information Design
by Scott Jason Cohen
Issue 96January 27, 2001
With the rise of information architecture, user experience consultants, and usability experts, the fate of a website is no longer left to chance, and its design is no longer a function of organic processes. That may be good for business, but is it really good for the web? Scott Cohen has his doubts.
Daemon Skins: Separating Presentation from Content
by Mark Newhouse
Issue 87November 3, 2000
There ’s more than one way to skin a website. Newhouse demonstrates creative scripting techniques that give viewers and designers the control they crave.
Experience Design
by Bob Jacobson
Issue 77August 18, 2000
It’s time for web designers to peek over the cubicle and start sharing ideas with their peers in related design disciplines. Jacobson suggests one way to do that in this overview of the emerging Experience Design paradigm.
Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus
by Curt Cloninger
Issue 74July 28, 2000
Usability mavens like Jakob Nielsen think the web is an ill-used database. Graphic designers like Kioken think it is a fledgling multimedia platform. Could both groups be right? New ALA author Curt Cloninger explains why usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus. This one's a hottie.
URLS! URLS! URLS!
by Bill Humphries
Issue 70June 30, 2000
Database-driven content management systems are everywhere. And with them come URLs only a robot could love. Bill Humphries shows how to transform CGI-generated URLs into meaningful user interfaces through the power of URL mapping.
Walking Backwards: Supporting Non-Western Languages on the Web
by Shoshannah L. Forbes
Issue 65May 26, 2000
And you think you?ve got problems. Try building web sites in a bi-directional language like Hebrew or Arabic. Israeli web developer Shoshannah L. Forbes discusses the mind-boggling hardships involved, and looks at what the latest browsers are doing about it.
Fragments (of Time)
by Pär Almqvist
Issue 64May 19, 2000
The best web interfaces take time – the one asset that seems to be in perpetually short supply. Leading Scandinavian web developer Pär Almqvist presents a time-based perspective on web interfaces and the network economy.
Language: The Ultimate User Interface
by Julia Hayden
Issue 59April 14, 2000
Words. Language. Meaning. They’re a nutritious part of your complete website. So why do so many webmakers treat language like an afterthought? Julia Hayden explores ways to make words work.
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