A-Z of usability for World Usability Day

 – posted November 14th, 2006 by Laurence Veale     No comments

A-Z indexes are rarely well implemented. Brian pointed that out in his April article, A-Z indexes: A painful exercise in mindreading. While I completely agree, I’ve gone ahead and produced an A-Z of usability for World Usability Day.

a |
b |
c |
d |
e |
f |
g |
h |
i |
j |
k |
l |
m |
n |
o |
p |
q |
r |
s |
t |
u |
v |
w |
x |
y |
z

Affordance

Affordance describes the features or properties of an object which indicate how to interact with that object.

Behavioral Design

Behavioural design is about getting technology to work or function well, and about making that functionality easy to use.

Cognitive Friction

The title of the second chapter of Alan Cooper’s “The Inmates are Running the Asylum”, and the title of our very own John Wood’s blog. It is the resistance of the human intellect when faced with software that has many possible states.

Don Norman

Don Norman is one half of the Nielsen-Norman group and author of “The Design of Everyday Things”, a seminal book on usability, and a must read for any usability professional.

Emotional Design

“Emotional Design” is another book by the above Don Norman. In it, Norman describes three levels of design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

Focus Groups

John Wood has strong feelings on the role focus groups should or rather shouldn’t play in usability. His reasoning? Usability is about what people do, not what they say. I tend to agree.

Goal Directed Design

Goal Directed Design is the other half of personas. For a design to be truly successful, the designer needs to appreciate the difference between the user’s goals and tasks. A goal is the end condition, while a task is an intermediary process necessary to achieve the goal.

HCI

Human computer interaction is the study of interaction between people and computers. It relates the discipline of computer science with many other fields, one important one being pyschology.

Interaction Design

Interaction design is the design of a product to ensure that its functions and behaviour are clearly communicated to the user and that the user can intuitively interact with it.

Jakob Nielsen

The godfather of usability, particularly on the web. His book “Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity” was first published in 1999 and is as relevant now as it ever was. He has published a book or two since then as well as publishing regular articles to useit.com

Krug, Steve

The author of “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability”, a well written and concise book bursting with tips and techniques on how to factor usability into the design process. Another must read for anyone who is interested in usability

Less is More

Less features, less code makes for better software. if you haven’t heard Jason Fried of 37 Signals speak on bloated software, then I recommend you do so on IT Conversations.

Mac

The Mac and most other things Apple are designed for the user and with a fabulous user experience in mind. At least that’s what the Mac fans tell us.

Navigation

A bit of an obvious one, but without a clear and intuitive information architecture underpinning your website, your visitors will be lost, literally.

O, the “O” as in Web 2.0

The Web2.0 which is bringing the rich interactivity from the desktop to the web, whether it be email, calendars or project management. More usable? Yes, but not for everyone. Poor accessibility is a big issue with all these new AJAXian user interfaces.

Personas

By designing for everyone, you design for no one. Personas are the starting point for any project we undertake using a user centred design process. We identify who we’re designing for and define what their goals are. In our view, there’s no better way to design a positive user experience.

“Question asking method”

The question-asking method is one of the methods employed during user testing, where participants are asked by the test facilitator how they are interpreting the information on screen. Another approach is the “Think aloud method” where users are asked to think aloud as they interact with the website or application in an attempt to understand their motivations and responses to what’s happening on screen.

Rapid-fire user testing

.

User testing doesn’t have to be time consuming or expensive. John described the various techniques in his Rapid-fire user testing workshop at last month’s bootcamp.

Scenarios

Scenarios are a description of the tasks personas will carry out to achieve their goals when using an application.

Tasks

Tasks: not to be confused with goals. Where goals are the desired outcome, tasks are the intermediate steps to achieving the goal. Too many applications are designed around tasks rather than goals which means that while they may work, they fall far short of a genuinely satisfying user experience.

Usablility or user testing

Usability testing is the observation and recording of how users in the target audience interact with an application. Then, the analysis of usability testing gives valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t and how the website or application can be improved.

Visual Design

This is the art of web design, whereas interaction design could be described as the science. It’s just one part of design but how important is it? There’s been heated debate on the web over the last couple of months. Take a look at Jakob’s site. Ugly or ugly duckling?

Wireframes

Wireframes are essentially the blueprint of a webpage, describing how it should function and how it should work before any visual design is undertaken.

Xerox

Xerox are the people who developed the mouse and the windows user interface in the 1970s, devices we still use today. In general terms, the user interface hasn’t really changed in over 30 years.

You, the youser

If you’ve read all the way from A, I salute you!

Zen

Zen is a form of buddhism that places great importance on moment-by-moment awareness and seeing deeply into the nature of things. Wouldn’t it be great if software was developed this way?

Have your own?

I’m sure you could do better. Put me to shame and leave a comment below

Categories World Usability Day

Comments Open | Trackbacks On | permalink