THE WEB CAN BE A BETTER PLACE TO SURF AND DO BUSINESS !
Last Updated: October 30, 2004
[February 28, 2001]
Usability in Germany: cognitive Architects
Gerry McGovern: Don't believe what you read - "People are becoming increasingly skeptical about the ethics of online journalism. Is it editorial content or is it advertising?"
evolt.org: Getting Started with Usability Testing - "Now, many web designers have never actually seen any users using their sites. If you're one of them, prepare for a bit of a shock. You'll probably find people can't use them, especially if there's functionality involved (forms, etc.)."
[February 26, 2001]
To Hell With Bad Browsers - "Upgrade to a better Web experience."
David Siegel: The Balkanization of the Web (1995,1996) - "When you build a web site, different parts of it accommodate different customers."
The Register: Web Publishers don't give it away
Tacky effects to avoid!
[February 24, 2001]
Geek.com: Can you live without wireless Web? - "A new study conducted online by Accenture found that only 15 percent of the consumers surveyed who owned a mobile phone or other portable device use it to connect to the Internet. The study included 3,189 residents of the United States, Britain, Germany, Finland, and Japan."
John S. Rhodes: Super Easy Usability Testing (1999) - "Web site usability is a matter of knowing how to improve your site based on what your clients need. (...) Identify your users, and record their activities. Watch them use your Web site."
CNN: Web usability guru pitches better design in Asia
[February 23, 2001]
CyberAtlas: Physicians' Web Sites, eHealth Plans Mark Future of Healthcare - "Unlike commercial health sites, which consumers do not trust for health management activities, Jupiter analysts believe physician Web sites can provide a venue for delivering trusted content as well as interactive physician-patient capabilities, such as appointment scheduling, prescription renewal requests and secure electronic dialogue."
Don't ignore your audience! - "They are the ones who will make your site a success, not the technologies you chose to use."
WebmasterBase: Eye in the Sky E-Metrics
[February 22, 2001]
IBM User Technologies - "What is User Technology? It's really about designing the user experience, centered on the user and all aspects of usability and ease of use. We're dealing with the externals that affect the users, such as the interface, the product information, and also, the globalization of those externals for other languages and cultures. User Technology involves skills in human factors, UI design, visual design, and globalization expertise."
[February 21, 2001]
Nua Knowledge Base: Why you should use "World English" on the Web - "To communicate effectively on the Web you need to be sure that most people will understand your content. In the case of the English language, this means using American English."
ClickZ: Will your favorite search engine still be around tomorrow?
[February 20, 2001]
ACIA: Software for Information Architects - "... information architects will play an integral role, working closely with business managers, content managers, and software engineers to select, acquire, integrate, and leverage this sophisticated suite of applications. None of these people can do this work well alone."
[February 19, 2001]
Jakob Nielsen: Success Rate: The Simplest Usability Metric - "In addition to being expensive, collecting usability metrics interferes with the goal of gathering qualitative insights to drive design decisions. As a compromise, you can measure users' ability to complete tasks. Success rates are easy to understand and represent usability's bottom line."
MacCentral Online: Some Web sites 'hostile' to Mac users
[February 17, 2001]
InformationWeek: More Heavyweights Get Into Mobile Bank Transactions - "Low bandwidth, small keypads, and smaller screens are just some of the barriers."
ACIA/People: Mark Hurst (goodexperience.com) - "... we don't break things down into information architecture and usability problems; everything we see is a customer experience issue. We simply teach our employees to see technology through the eyes of a customer."
evolt.org: Keeping the Igloos Off the Beaches - "Marketing components drive the user to the site, branding components inform the experience, and site architecture components guide the experience. (...) This document offers a framework for asking and answering questions in the site development process, and for building igloos where the snow is."
[February 15, 2001]
Nua Knowledge Base: Sins of animation - "Animated ads may attract attention but they distract from content and ultimately can drive web readers away. (...) I find it very hard to read something on a webpage when there's an ad in my peripheral vision jiggling away."
WebmasterBase: Boxes and Arrows: Defining IA Deliverables - "Every project is unique, and the role each IA plays within the company is also unique. However, the IA's job is to define the structure and behavior of the systems as it is perceived by the user, and these seven deliverables are an excellent way to make sure the IA's thinking is clear and clearly communicated."
[February 13, 2001]
E-Commerce Times: E-tail Invades the Real World - "... a positive experience buying online at an in-store kiosk can give reluctant Web users the push they need to begin doing more shopping online."
E-Commerce Times: Taking the Net Offline - Prelude to a Kiosk? - "Trying to teach people to use a computer for the first time, when all they want to do is buy a box of envelopes, could easily be a frustrating process. The more likely scenario is that the customer asks for help finding something, the employee points to the machine and walks away."
System Concepts: Usability Training Course - Customer Centred Design for Interactive Systems (London, April 4-5, 2001)
[February 12, 2001]
WebWord: Colorblindness and Usability - "You might do a lot of usability testing on your web site but you still might lose up to 10% of your audience because of some simple mistakes with colors. Specifically, your web site may be designed in a way that doesn't work well for people with colorblindness. Generally the fix is quite simple: be sure to provide excellent contrast between your various web page elements."
Digital Web Magazine: Form vs. Function: Finding the Balance (1999) - "The first step in developing a good balance is to have a firm understanding of what the site is going to be about. In other words, a site's function must be identified before its form can be developed."
[February 10, 2001]
A List Apart: This HTML Kills: Thoughts on Web Accessibility
Can Color-Blind Users See Your Site?
Slashdot: Handicap Access/RSI & Linux (1999) - "Most accessibility aids, by their very nature, are targeted to a specific handicap. For example a unicorn stick does absolutely nothing for a blind user and a screen reader is overkill for a color blind user. Without a general model for accessibility, developers would need to build multiple user interfaces for a given application."
Mystery Meat Navigation
[February 8, 2001]
Creating An Effective Web Interface (1999) - "Our goal is always to keep the site easy to use and desirable. We need it to be useful, and that's a real challenge in an industry where new technologies are a way of life."
[February 7, 2001]
Nua Knowledge Base: Why PDFs suck - "A major problem with PDFs is that search engines can't search text that's inside a PDF file-thus obviating one of the greatest of all the benefits of the Web. By putting a PDF file of your document on a website, you're not putting the document on the Web-you're putting a picture of it on the Web."
The Internet: It's Full of Holes - "... at a time when the Internet should be safer than ever, it appears that it's really more vulnerable than ever."
Geek.com: Is your PC or PDA making you stupid? - "Do you find yourself having memory troubles since you've been more reliant on technology?"
[February 5, 2001]
Jakob Nielsen: Are Users Stupid? - "Opponents of the usability movement claim that it focuses on stupid users and that most users can easily overcome complexity. (...) It is not a question of whether users are capable of overcoming complexity and learning an advanced user interface. It is a question of whether they are willing to do so."
[February 4, 2001]
End User Experience, What is it - "To prevent users from leaving your site confused you should try to keep it simple. This is especially true if your web site is going after the general masses. (...) Metaphors should not be used because not all users will understand them. If your user doesn't understand what they are looking at, they will not have a good experience."
Monash University: User-centred web design - "Many web sites fail to empower users and in fact frustrate and confuse them because although they offer the promise of information, services or goods at the mere click of a mouse button, they are difficult for people to use."
[February 3, 2001]
Web Techniques: Customer Assistance Software to the Rescue - "Companies can turn browsers into buyers by providing immediate assistance to users when they encounter problems. By eliminating confusion at the point of purchase and enabling user self-assistance throughout the process, companies can not only reap the benefits of decreased customer service costs but also minimize site abandonment by shoppers."
[February 1, 2001]
System Concepts: Guideline dogma - "Nobody would deny that usability guidelines, applied in context by a usability professional, are extremely valuable in guiding a website evaluation. The problem occurs when non-professionals apply these guidelines out of context. This can result in an unimaginative site that looks bland and homogenous. To design usable sites that truly engage customers we need to replace simple guidelines with a customer-centred design process."
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