Tags // Usability
Why Are Web Sites So Confusing?
Andrei Hagiu assistant professor in the Strategy unit at Harvard Business School tries to rationalize why websites are so confusing:
“Thus, consumers coming to the supermarket to buy daily staples (say, bread and milk) might be induced to also get expensive chocolate if they have to walk past the corresponding aisle anyway. Shoppers visiting a mall for its anchor store (say, Macy’s) may decide to stop by a small design store while walking around the mall. And while flipping through the pages of a magazine in search of the article promised on the cover, readers are exposed to advertising, which produces most of the revenues.”
“In the same way, Google faces a subtle issue in designing its search result pages: consumers are mostly interested in the “objective” (i.e., middle) search results, but all revenues come from the sponsored search ads on the right hand side. The result is a compromise between what users want and what produces more revenues. For any given search, the 11th objective search result might be more relevant than any of the sponsored search results displayed on the right; yet it will be displayed on the second search page only—well beyond the reach of most users.”
information architecture, usability Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Myth of Usability Testing
Robert Hoekman Jr. discusses the reliability of usability tests in the latest issue of A List Apart.
“Usability teams also have wildly differing experience levels, skill sets, degrees of talent, and knowledge, and although some research and testing methods have been homogenized to the point that anyone should be able to perform them proficiently, a team’s savvy (or lack thereof) can affect the results it gets. That almost anyone can perform a heuristic evaluation doesn’t mean the outcome will always be useful or even accurate. Heuristics are not a checklist, they are guidelines a usability evaluator can use as a baseline from which to apply her expertise. They are a beginning, not an end.”
usability, research Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 20, 2009
A Look Behind The Curtain At YouTube’s User Experience Research
Jason Kincaid writes about how YouTube tries to constantly test out and understand how its users are using the website.
“To help gauge the Watch page’s ideal layout, YouTube invited in a number of users and gave them magnets that represented different elements from YouTube and other popular video sites. The results were not surprising, but they present an interesting challenge to YouTube: the vast majority of users chose to streamline their page as much as possible, featuring a large video player, a search box, and a strip of related videos. But the site’s heavy uploaders, who are obviously key to YouTube’s success, tended to favor a more complex site with a greater emphasis on analytics, sharing, and social interaction.
YouTube’s task is to figure out a way to appeal to both sets of users.”
governance, usability, research Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Card Sorting: Pushing Users Beyond Terminology Matches
A very useful article by Jakob Nielsen. His main point in this article is that we need to be wary of how we present usability activities like card sorting to users. If we are not careful, we may be priming them towards an option rather than allowing them to think through the different options. Jakob Nielsen explains his theory by way of an card-sorting exercise. Go ahead and read it.
card sorting, usability, research Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Internet banner ads ignored
A poll (PDF) by The Harris Poll shows that internet banner ads are ignored while internet search engine ads are not that bad. However, both these types of internet ads fall short of TV ads which are still preferred.
Over one-third of Americans (37%) say that television ads are most helpful in making their purchase decision while 17% say newspaper ads are most helpful and 14% say the same about Internet search engine ads. Radio ads (3%) and Internet banner ads (1%) are not considered helpful by many people. Over one-quarter of Americans (28%), however, say that none of these types of advertisements are helpful to them in the purchase decision making process.
usability Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, July 15, 2009
30 Examples of Attractive Nav
Web Designer Wall has put up a collection of appealing navigation systems:
"Web designers always have to strike a balance between usability and visual appeal when designing a website. Without this balance, a website might be nice to look at or difficult to navigate. Or, it might be easy to navigate, but not easy on the eyes. With this in mind, balancing attractive navigation with usability does not need to be overly difficult. To help you generate new ideas and inspiration for user navigation, here are 30 great examples of attractive and usable navigation."
information architecture, usability Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities
Jakob Nielsen's new piece tackles donation usability. I'm not surprised at his findings. We found similar themes when we did the redesign for the National University of Singapore Giving website. We found that there was a need to inform donors on why their gifts were needed and how they will be used (the LEARN section). Also we found that there was a need to pay-back in kind by honouring donors (the HONOUR section). It goes without saying the the DONATE section had to be without flaws. So glad to know that the findings are similar across continents.
usability Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 30, 2009
Usability testing on the cheap
A friend of mine asked me about doing usability testing on the cheap. Thought I'd share some apps and websites I have bookmarked.
- Userfly - This is a new service and could become the next big thing. It captures user sessions on video and overlays it with screen interactions.
- Silverback - Mac only app that uses the video cam on the mac to record user reactions and screen interactions. I use this frequently.
- Ethnio - Online recruitment for conducting usability studies, focus groups and surveys.
- Usertesting - Low cost usability testing. Captures user sessions on video.
Unfortunately the online testing services can't be used for testing intranets. And not many intranets support Macs or browsers other than IE. So that leaves one with the Classic approach -- 1 video camera 1 PC, and 1 extra LCD monitor. Yes, there is another tool, Morae, that can be used on Windows, but it's pricey.
intranets, usability Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Usability heuristics for web development teams
A Site Point article that makes the case for a more holistic approach to design heuristics:
If we consider the Information Architect (IA), the ‘JavaScripter’ and the web standards developer, each of these roles has a great deal they can contribute to creating a better, more holistic set of usability heuristics.
usability Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 5-8
Jakob Nielsen on his stages of corporate usability. He also advises against the prospect of leapfrogging the stages:
"If your company is currently at a lower maturity level, it might be tempting to try to bootstrap the situation and move directly to one of the higher levels, asking everybody to do everything that's recommended in the full user-centered design process. If you do this, you're doomed. Too many simultaneous changes to an organism will give it a fever. People can't cope with the later stages’ concepts and requirements without time to adjust to the less drastic changes introduced at the earlier stages. A good metaphor is emerging from a deep dive: You can't go directly to the surface without getting the bends."
usability Add tag Permalink | Monday, May 01, 2006
Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 1-4
Jakob Nielsen writes about his 8 stages of usability practice in organizations. He details out stages 1-4 in this article:- Hostility Toward Usability
- Developer-Centered Usability
- Skunkworks Usability
- Dedicated Usability Budget
I've found success by incorporating usability studies as part and parcel of an overall design plan, and by not harping on the fact with the management. In the end, getting management to see the benefits of the big picture is more important than getting them lost in the details of our practice.
usability Add tag Permalink | Monday, April 24, 2006
Case Study: Intranets, Usability, and Value
Nice case-study approach by Jeffery Veen to solicit feedback on some real common intranet situations. I like this case-study approach; it provides more context to understand the 'noise' that Jeff is trying to get across.intranets, usability Add tag Permalink | Monday, November 15, 2004
What is usability?
An in-depth article about the role of usability in design. "There is some confusion about what usability is and whether businesses are 'doing usability' or not. There are many aspects to usability - more than just running a usability test at the end of a project. This article provides an overview of what usability is (and what it is not)."usability Add tag Permalink | Monday, November 01, 2004
It’s Not Just Usability
Very entertaining post by Joel Spolsky on the design of the social interface -- interfaces for social networking, e-mail, discussion boards, etc. "Whereas the goal of user interface design is to help the user succeed, the goal of social interface design is to help the society succeed, even if it means one user has to fail."interface, usability Add tag Permalink | Thursday, September 09, 2004
Usability News
The current edition of Usability News newsletter has some interesting articles. There was a study on the affect of different layouts on online reading. It was found that "the use of margins affected both reading speed and comprehension in that participants read the Margin text slower, but comprehended more than the No Margin text. Participants were also generally more satisfied with the text with margins. Leading was not shown to impact reading performance but did influence overall user preference. " There is also a study done on the role of interactivity in online learning materials. The study found, as would be expected, that "students in the most interactive group (proactive) made significantly larger learning gains than those in the least interactive group (reactive)."usability Add tag Permalink | Monday, July 19, 2004
Usability and listening to customers have limits
Gerry McGovern on balancing usability and real value : "Usability sometimes misses the point. If you’re trying to sell me red shoes, I don’t care how user-friendly your website is, I’m just not interested in buying. If you’re charging me 30 percent more than your competitor, all your fancy usability is pretty much irrelevant. If I think this product is cool and I must have it, I will gladly suffer an unusually designed website just to get my hands on it."usability Add tag Permalink | Monday, July 05, 2004
90% of All Usability Testing is Useless
Good advice from Adaptive Path's Lane Becker on having the right usability testing mindset. Here are some points that he makes: 1) usability testing should focus more on the context and not on the metrics, 2) usability testing is not QA and 3) usability testing should be a core competence owned by the design team. Good stuff.usability Add tag Permalink | Thursday, June 17, 2004
Digital Web:Accessibility and usability
Digital Web: Accessibility and usability
Peter-Paul Koch: Does building a perfectly accessible site mean all usability extras should be perfectly accessible, too? I think few people will disagree if I answer "No". To me, saying "Yes" means "If it doesn’t work in screen readers we can’t use it", and that approach would take perfect accessibility a step too far.
usability Add tag Permalink | Thursday, February 19, 2004
Column Two: Five ways to identify intranet usability issues
Column Two: Five ways to identify intranet usability issues- Stakeholder interviews
- Walking through scenarios
- Review existing data
- Usability evaluation
- Expert review
usability Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Usability.gov: Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines
Usability.gov: Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines"The primary audiences for the Guidelines are website designers, managers, and others involved in the creation or maintenance of websites. A secondary audience is researchers who investigate Web design issues. This resource will help them determine what research has been conducted and where none exists." A entire book in PDF format (128 pages).
usability, research Add tag Permalink | Friday, October 31, 2003