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522 days ago
personas usability
Yes, you should be using personas
…Putting each function to the test using personas before letting it in the door is very helpful. Then giving features relative priority using the number and importance of personas who are using them helps guides the overall application or site’s design priorities…
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528 days ago
usability user experience
The big cost of small usability problems
User experience problems tend to be cumulative. Enough small problems can have the same effect as a few large ones – namely, causing users frustration and sometimes causing them to give up on your application or website. Crafting a good user experience requires finding and eliminating major usability issues, but less severe problems deserve attention too.
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533 days ago
usability usability testing
Usability testing is broken: Rethinking user research for social interaction design
When you look at what the social web is, there are some characteristics that I think we’re not taking into account very well in doing usability tests…
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542 days ago
applications usability
Five Usability Challenges of Web-Based Applications
Web-based applications present usability challenges we don’t often see in other types of designs. These challenges need to be top-of-mind as the design team creates, updates, and maintains the application.
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543 days ago
heuristic evaluation usability
Ten Usability Heuristics
These are ten general principles for user interface design. They are called “heuristics” because they are more in the nature of rules of thumb than specific usability guidelines.
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543 days ago
heuristic evaluation usability
How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation
Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the “heuristics”).
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563 days ago
colors usability
What difference does colour make?
Many organisations limit the success of their websites, purely because their branding guidelines do not provide enough colors for designers to utilize.
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572 days ago
a/b testing usability
A/B Testing: Usability From A to B
Usability is an often discussed part of design, but it seems to be very poorly understood. While most people understand the concept of usability, many people don’t know how to use it in their workflow, how to get started with their testing, or fail to see the benefits it has for them.
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574 days ago
form fields usability user experience
Form Field Usability: Matching User Expectations
Matching your customer’s expectations – even when it comes to the subconscious expectations of how wide an input field should be – is crucial if you want a user-friendly site.
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598 days ago
personas usability
User Research for Personas and Other Audience Models
This article is about the ingredients we can draw on when creating audience models and some alternative ways of communicating the results of an audience analysis.
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603 days ago
usability
Facilitating Usability Tests
In her Facilitating Usability Tests online webinar September 23, 2010, Christine Perfetti discussed her process for moderating usability tests and provided tips and best practices for facilitating a study.
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606 days ago
usability user experience
Improve Site Usability by Studying Museums
Using a website should be easy. It should be intuitive. We should know what button or link to click to get to where we need to be.
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607 days ago
usability user experience
Creating usability test tasks that really motivate users
The magic of usability tests is that you get to see what people actually do with a system (rather than what they say they do). This gives you great insights into how people behave and how to improve your design.
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607 days ago
usability user experience
To Usability Test…Or Not?
Sometimes conditions exist that can send tests awry.
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607 days ago
usability user experience
Usability v. User Experience
Right now, usability and user experience are all the rage, in the same way that Web 2.0 was several years back. I (used to) teach a series on User Centered Design where the focus is on the progression of design and development to create engaging and communicative web sites.
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610 days ago
application usability user experience
A Real Web Design Application
The web and its related disciplines have grown organically. I think it’s safe to say the web is not the domain of just the geeks anymore—we all live here. And those of us who work here should have sophisticated, native tools to do our jobs.
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610 days ago
usability
Does your website legally need to be accessible?
The other day I was asked the question “To what level does any website legally need to be made accessible?”
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620 days ago
axure prototype usability
How to create a predictive search prototype in Axure
Axure is a great application to use when mocking up interaction design concepts for usability testing…
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621 days ago
usability
Factors That Affect Usability
Usability is a study of human-computer interaction that helps designers analyze our users’ patterns as they use our creations.
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621 days ago
design usability
Decoupling Usability and Visuals
Design is often seen as a subjective and creative pursuit. I tend to agree, but feel that the more subjective and detached you are from specific strategic goals, the more problems will arise. If there’s any ambiguity regarding how something should be used and how visuals are incorporated to your advantage, you should expect a lot of waste.
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622 days ago
usability
10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of
Sometimes you just want to get the information you’re after, save it and move along. And you can’t. Usability nightmares — which are rather the daily routine than an exception — appear every now and again; usually almost every time you type your search keywords in Google.
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622 days ago
usability
Questions That Help Assess Website Usability
The level of usability on your website takes on a vital role when we’re designing for the end-user.
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628 days ago
usability user experience
Gestural Interfaces: A Step Backwards in Usability
In a recent column for interactions, Norman pointed out that in the rush to develop gestural (or “natural”) interfaces, well-tested and understood standards of interaction design were being overthrown, ignored, and violated. Yes, new technologies require new methods, but the refusal to follow well-established principles leads to usability disaster.
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632 days ago
usability user experience
Happy customers through an improved checkout
You would think that the checkout form would be simple. However often users abandon their purchase, because the checkout form fails to deliver.
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633 days ago
personas usability
Personas: Explorations in Developing a Deep and Dimensioned Character
“Who has been frustrated or had issues with trying to use personas effectively? … Personas are often emotionless, easily forgotten or dropped altogether, and difficult to share with others in a way that got them engaged.”
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634 days ago
usability
Website Usability: Six Must-Have Improvements
Not all usability improvements require a complete overhaul, and with the economy where it is now is a good time to consider more affordable projects. Concentrate on designs and structures that are simple and easy for the user to understand.
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635 days ago
design usability
A Design Is Only As Deep As It Is Usable
In this article, I hope to provide a clear demarcation between what is perceived by most to be beautiful in Web design and what is truly beautiful, along with some guiding principles to help designers today create websites whose beauty is not superficial, but rather improves and enhances the user experience.
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635 days ago
design error usability
How To Improve Design Usability: Minimizing Errors Part II
When designing websites and other applications are there ways we can guide users to make correct choices, help them interact with our systems, and generally make our systems more usable? A variety of strategies exist to improve our interface designs and today we’ll talk about 2 of them.
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635 days ago
design error usability
How To Minimize Errors And Create More Usable Websites: Part I
Errors happen. It’s inevitable that any system will fail at times. Often failures are attributed to human error. Most, though are really due to design errors. As designers what can we do to minimize errors and their effects on our sites and in our applications?
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635 days ago
documents usability user experience user interface
Printfu.org – PDF Search Engine
Usability, User Experience and User Interface Documents, eBooks and PDFs