#usability (299 links)
- The Aesthetic-Usability Effect nngroup.com
Users are more tolerant of minor usability issues when they find an interface visually appealing. This aesthetic-usability effect can mask UI problems during usability testing. Identify instances of the aesthetic-usability effect in your user research by watching what your users do, as well as listening to what they say.
- How Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name (2015) fastcompany.com
- Don Norman on how design fails older consumers fastcompany.com
Do not think that thoughtful design is just for the elderly, or the sick, or the disabled. In the field of design, this is called “inclusive design” for a reason: It helps everyone. Curb cuts were meant to help people who had trouble walking, but it helps anyone wheeling things: carts, baby carriages, suitcases.
- Geri Reid - Forms best practice gerireid.com
- Accessibility. You’re doing it wrong. | nicepaul.com nicepaul.com
Excellent, excellent article.
- LukeW | Netflix Makes Content the UI lukew.com
- URL Design — Warpspire warpspire.com
Excellent notes on URL design.
- Adactio: Journal—One web adactio.com
This is why I’m saying that most of the time, creating a separate mobile website is simply a cop-out. It’s a tacit acknowledgement that the regular “desktop” site is beyond help. The cop-out is creating an optimised experience for one subset of users while abandoning others to their bloated fate.
- Open ID Is A Nightmare blog.wekeroad.com
- Firefox Heatmap heatmap.mozillalabs.com
Rather useful insights into browser usage.
- Dark Patterns: Black Hat, Anti-Usability Design Patterns darkpatterns.org
Dark Patterns are [...] not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind. The purpose of this site is to catalogue various common types of Dark Pattern, and to name and shame organizations that use them.
New eye-tracking system using webcams. Clever!
- Home | Yahoo! Style Guide styleguide.yahoo.com
People will look very far down a page if (a) the layout encourages scanning, and (b) the initially viewable information makes them believe that it will be worth their time to scroll.
- Life Below 600px | I Am Paddy iampaddy.com
The fold is one of those guidelines that has been thrown about so much that it's now become a 'rule' of web design (or maybe more appropriately a 'ball and chain' of web design) with web designers blindly obeying without question.
- Google Code Blog: Introducing Google Browser Size googlecode.blogspot.com
I'm not sure I approve.
- Log in or sign up? - Leah Culver's Blog blog.leahculver.com
Sometimes I put my log in information into the register fields.
Me too! I hate that not only do I feel stupid, I have to retype everything again.
- BBC NEWS | Technology | M&S website voted user-friendly news.bbc.co.uk
"John Lewis maintained its third position while fourth and most improved was Boots." Yay and stuff.
- Coding Horror: Revisiting "The Fold" codinghorror.com
"Even today, people will cite the ancient, irrelevant rule of The Fold as if it's still law. In fact, I was just talking to a friend of mine who expressed his frustration at dealing with a middle manager who was using the "content must be above the fold" rule as a weapon, and demanding that all page content appear above the fold. It's terribly misguided."
"[Imaginary Landscape] performed a comparison of an 11-field Contact Us form with a 4-field Contact Us form. They found contact form conversions increased 120% when the number of fields was reduced from 11 to 4 (a 64% decrease)." Not surprising but metrics are useful.
- Effective A/B Testing elem.com
Very detailed A/B testing presentation.
- fivesecondtest fivesecondtest.com
A simple online usability test that helps you identify the most prominent elements of your user interfaces.
- Treejack optimalworkshop.com
A Treejack survey will show you the parts of your IA that work well, and the bits that need more work. Get answers to questions about which labels work best, whether a structure is too deep and where to put certain types of content. Think of it as analytics for a website you haven't built yet.
Get answers to questions about which labels work best, whether a structure is too deep and where to put certain types of content. Think of it as analytics for a website you haven't built yet.
- Fitted: a jQuery Plugin trovster.com
Turn entire content blocks in to clickable targets.
- High Performance Web Sites :: Wikia: fast pages retain users stevesouders.com
Wikia measures exit rate - the percentage of users that leave the site from a given page. Here they show that exit rate drops as pages get faster. The exit rate goes from ~15% for a 2 second page to ~10% for a 1 second page. This is another data point to add to the list of stats from Velocity that show that faster pages is not only better for users, it’s better for business.
- Verified by Visa: a conversion rate killer? | Blog | Econsultancy econsultancy.com
Banks and card providers haven't really done enough to educate customers about the system, or to make the forms more usable, but retailers can at least minimise some of the damage to conversion rates by doing as much as they can to advise customers about what to expect during the checkout process.
- Tools of Engagement: The New Practice of User-Centered Design, by Robert Fabricant - Core77 core77.com
We have been operating under the assumption that the primary challenge is to convince businesses to focus on fulfilling user needs with higher quality products, with more meaningful experiences. But what if the 'users' themselves are the problem? What if users represent not a coherent set of needs but a messy mix of desires and influences? What, ultimately, is the role of the designer in sorting through these desires to determine which should drive our design decisions? And what frameworks, other than intuition, should we use to make these judgments?
Missing. The. Point.
- Readability - An Arc90 Lab Experiment lab.arc90.com
A simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you’re reading.
Jeremy Keith's notes from Jared Spool's talk at An Event Apart Boston.
- Writing Microcopy - Bokardo bokardo.com
The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing.
- Dear Dustin Curtis | Dustin Curtis dustincurtis.com
If the UX architect at AA.com is actually pretty good, then why does the site suck so much?
- Web Usability - Accessible Forms using WCAG 2.0 usability.com.au
""Accessible Forms using WCAG 2.0" is the first of a series of documents to help web professionals use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.0 to develop accessible websites."
The power of faceted search lies in the ability of users to create their own custom navigation by combining various perspectives rather than forcing them through a specific path.
I'm currently researching three post-graduate HCI/Usability/Interaction degrees at three institutions in and around London UK, at: City University, UCL and Kingston.
- OK/Cancel » Archive » A Review of UCLIC ok-cancel.com
UCLIC (pronounced You-Click) stands for the University College London Interaction Centre. I attended their MSc in Human-Computer Interaction and Ergonomics, a joint program between Computer Science and Psychology, this past year. As promised, to aid others in selecting their program in the future, I am giving a full review of the program.
- Creating prototypes with OmniGraffle | urlgreyhot urlgreyhot.com
I've used Visio and Axure Pro in the past to do quick and dirty demos of interaction. With Visio, it's been easy to link sheets together. But I've been spending my time primarily in OmniGraffle Pro lately, so I wanted to demonstrate to the other Mac-using IA's and IxD's out there how you can do the same thing.
- Usable Accessibility: Making Web Sites Work Well for People with Disabilities :: UXmatters uxmatters.com
The concept of usability often seems to exclude people with disabilities, as though just access is all they are entitled to. What about creating a good user experience for people with disabilities—going beyond making a Web site merely accessible to make it truly usable for them?
- 50 swinish ways to annoy web users | Blog | Econsultancy econsultancy.com
Makes a handy checklist of stuff not to do.
- Accessibility Tips accessibilitytips.com
Yahoo folk providing accessibility info.
Good analysis of the recent WebAIM screen reader survey. Use <Hn> tags, think hard about accesskeys, use skip links, know your audience.