2004 Usability Features Archive

Budgeting for Advertising and Customer Experience

Published: Thu Dec 16th, 2004 | Posted By: David Moore

What kind of organisation spends $30 million on advertising but baulks at $10,000 for usability testing? Quite a few, it seems. This useful article makes the case for a more equitable division of funds, for the benefit of the organisation and its website's users.

Link: http://www.goodexper.../archives/000036.php

Categories: Usability » Features

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Information Architecture Heuristics

Published: Sun Oct 3rd, 2004 | Posted By: David Moore

A short but valuable account of the elements to bear in mind when evaluating the information architecture of a site, from Louis Rosenfeld, grandfather of the discipline and author of the famous O'Reilly 'polar bear book'.

Link: http://louisrosenfel..._archive/000286.html

Categories: Usability » Features

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90% of All Usability Testing is Useless

Published: Wed Jul 7th, 2004 | Posted By: David Moore

Lane Becker from Adaptive Path on why context is more important than the statitistics and why the most valuable user testing is seen as part of the design stage, not of QA.

Link: http://www.adaptivep.../archives/000328.php

Categories: Usability » Features

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Ten Best Government Intranets

Published: Wed Jul 7th, 2004 | Posted By: David Moore

Jakob Nielsen's latest column offers good advice and guidance on improving your intranet, based on the experiences of successful implementations. Content-related tips including setting expiration dates when material is uploaded, and centralising editing to ensure quality.

Link: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040621.html

Categories: Strategy & Process » Features , Usability » Features

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Usability is dead, long live Product Value

Published: Sat May 1st, 2004 | Posted By: David Moore

A short but compelling piece from British usability expert Gilbert Cockton on the need to assess the value a product (such as a website or piece of software) delivers, not just how well it performs against predefined standards. Some problems are much more important than others, and for what's too slow for some uses (and users) will be fine under other circumstances.

Link: http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1638.asp

Categories: Strategy & Process » Features , Usability » Features

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OK Cancel

Published: Thu Apr 22nd, 2004 | Posted By: David Moore

The first user-centred design comic strip pits Jakob Nielsen's posse against Jared Spool's homies in a fight over usability principles. It's much funnier than my description of it.

Link: http://www.ok-cancel...week_2004_02_06.html

Categories: Fun & Nonsense , Usability » Features

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Inherent value testing

Published: Mon Mar 1st, 2004 | Posted By: David Moore

Interesting article from usability expert Jared Spool on a variant of standard usability testing, aimed at establishing if visitors to an organisation's site understand the true value of the services on offer.

Link: http://www.uie.com/a...erent_value_testing/

Categories: Usability » Features

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Introduction to Information Architecture (and User-centred design)

Published: Sun Feb 1st, 2004 | Posted By: David Moore

In what she bills as a 'Quick and Dirty Presentation', information architect Tracy Reith gives us a good overview of the discipline and good links to further resources.

Link: http://www.treith.com/ia_presentation/index.html

See also Matt Jones' quirky but informative introduction to user-centred design, from the recent O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference: http://www.blackbelt...archives/000871.html

Categories: Usability » Features

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