TAG: usability
"If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy."
Tags: software business it usability
Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings
"We simply confirmed for the umpteenth time that banner blindness is real. Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it's actually an ad."
Tags: advertising marketing internet design usability research
The Enterprise, Apple, and Insufficient Ambition
"The only tools that succeed in an enterprise situation are those which are so compelling that people choose to use them in their free time."
Tags: it business technology usability
Helpful distortion at NYC & London subway maps
"Subway map readers want to know how to get from A to B a lot more than they want to know the exact curve of the tracks along the way. Sometimes truth is less important than knowledge."
Tags: design usability subway maps
Paradox of the active user (aka "I don't *want* to RTFM")
"The “paradox of the active user� is a paradox because users would save time in the long term by taking some initial time to optimize the system and learn more about it. But that’s not how people behave in the real world . . . "
Tags: design interface usability
tagging vs. cataloging: what it's all about
"So, tagging has brought metadata to the masses, thanks to both its ease of use as well as its clear value."
Tags: tags ia metadata design usability
10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Website
"These are the top 10 things I learned from attending the Future of Web Apps Conference 2006 in San Francisco earlier this month."
Tags: tips internet marketing design startups usability business
The Process of Defining the Problem
"Had we not gone through the process of better defining the problem, one of the two original options may have been utilized and probably failed to meet the company’s goals."
Tags: process design usability business
"Users aren't stupid, they're efficient. They're spending the least amount of effort (i.e. intelligence) as they possible can on each step of the goal they're trying to achieve. If you make them spend more, they'll go somewhere else . . ."
Tags: design ia intelligence quotes usability
"Basically, unconscious design is design where there is no “conversation with the situation�. Sometimes we make design decisions based out of habit; we are simply following the norm; or we just never asked ourselves “Why?�."
Where Visual Design Meets Usability
An Interview with Luke Wroblewski, Part 1
Tags: design usability interviews
No Instruction Necessary: part 1
Andy Rutledge on affordance: "A common object with an obvious affordance is a glove. When you look at a glove, there appears to be one, and only one way to “use� it."
Tags: design education usability
"What Apple and Netflix did, while not simple, was straightforward. The value they created came from innovations that dramatically improved the user's experience. They looked hard at the current experience and focused on designing an ideal one."
Tags: innovation design usability ux
Jakob Nielsen's Usability Fighting Styles
XML Thumb Strike! Blue Underline Grab!
"There was a time when presents were mailed in November with the challenging admonition: Do not open until Christmas. That tradition has given way to a new challenge: anyone receiving a package in November has to attack it immediately to get it open by Ch
Tags: design packaging usability
"Clearly, even the design of something as deceivingly simple as a urinal can have a myriad of issues to consider and design around."
Tags: design usability bathrooms
Epicenter software design: Building features from the inside out
"So, if you’re wondering where to start on a new feature or a new product, discover the epicenter. What’s the one thing it needs first before it needs anything else?"
Tags: design development process ui usability
How can the design of digital surfaces help engender trust?
"In other words, when we're presenting interfaces of tracks or radio programmes or books that people have a relationship with, how do we represent those relationships and patterns of usage at the surface layer?"
Tags: design communication culture ux usability
get out of your lab, and into their lives
Petere Merholz of Adaptive Path recommends abandoning traditional usability testing and instead allowing people to test in their normal computing environments.
Tags: usability research design
10 Web Trends That Should Die in 2006
"Here’s a new years resolution for the web at large: stop doing silly things to users. Following are top trends that I just hope will not see 2007."
Tags: trend design internet usability
Josh Porter thinks about the three attributes a successful piece of web magic must have.
Tags: internet design interface simplicity software usability
"The finicky world of CSS isn’t the best match for the precise art of typography, but you can do more to improve the readability and beauty of your Web pages than you think."
Tags: typography css design usability
A long and serious look at the design problems of the iPod.
Tags: design apple ipod interface usability
For years, Web typography involved little more than choosing a typeface and font size. Unstyled Times New Roman was the norm, and the integration of established typographical techniques and rules was unimagined.
Tags: css design typography tips usability
"It's now officially annoying to use web apps that haven't replaced clunky html functionality with peppy Ajax goodness. Here are places Ajax should now be required in a web application"
Tags: ajax design interface tips usability
A good List Apart article explaining (with examples) how to make a very functional 404 page.
Tags: design javascript usability
Garrett Dimon: "With big and simple, it’s about removing the noise, and making the important stuff standout."
Tags: design trend usability simplicity
"His goal was to make it simple to use and a joy to look at. He succeeded. The result was the iPod"
Tags: apple design usability technology
Semantic Typography: Bridging the XHTML gap
Using a real estate listing to explain how semantic XHTML should work.
Tags: css design semantic xhtml typography usability
Adaptive Path: "Every large corporation has a marketing strategy that outlines what it wants to say to customers, but many of them still aren’t using their homepages effectively to highlight that message."
Tags: architecture branding internet design marketing usability posted
Amazon, excess and the future of navigation...
"A massive explosion in trustworthy ways of exploring through your data is how you turn a business from a repository or a directory into a web native, 21st century operation."
Tags: amazon internet usability tags interface business posted
Jakob Nielsen: "Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues,"
Tags: blogs usability design ui lists posted
Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005
Jakob Nielsen: "The oldies continue to be goodies -- or rather, baddies -- in the list of design stupidities that irked users the most in 2005."
Tags: design usability webdesign posted
A cognitive analysis of tagging
" "Or how the lower cognitive cost of tagging makes it popular"
Tags: branding tags interface science usability posted
" These bits of inspiration are culled from interface designers, architects, authors, jazz greats, and more. What brings them together here is their affinity to our design philosophy."
Tags: design interface quotes usability posted
" Design engineers face the challenge of making consumer products smaller and simpler without sacrificing detail or functionality"
Tags: gadgets ipod small usability design posted
Interview with Jason Fried of 37Signals
"The best marketing in the world is to give people products they love. Give them things they want to tell others about."
Tags: business design interviews marketing productivity software usability posted
GUIdebook: "Welcome to the interview with John Gruber, author of Daring Fireball Link points to external site and long-time critic and observer of Mac OS X interface."
Tags: apple design internet interviews os usability posted
"Welcome to guidebook, a website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces, as well as various materials related to them."
Tags: design internet history usability posted
Five Mistakes Band Label Sites Make
43 Folders: "Admittedly, this is well off our usual fare, but please indulge me in a public service message on behalf of music fans across the Internetsâ€â€five mistakes that band and label sites make (and a few tips on how to fix them)."
Tags: design music internet usability tips lists posted
Interaction Design & Written Language
"Leading users through a narrative requires maintaining enough context and information to communicate current status as well as enough interest and clarity to get them to the end."
Tags: interaction usability copywriting posted
Getting Real: The problem with preferences, interface design, and the customer experience
"And that’s the point I want to make. One of the hidden dangers of highly customized software, and products flush with preferences, is that it becomes very difficult to craft an ideal customer experience."
Tags: design software productivity usability posted
What are the best ways to represent visited links?
Tags: css design usability webmastertools
Net Rage: A Study of Blogs and Usability
Catalyst’s proprietary test of the usability of blogs, conducted in late June and early July of 2005
Tags: blogs design usability research ux
"These are online games that, in my opinion, offer a "good experience" - good game design with an overall attention to quality. Unless otherwise noted, they're all free, online, and available right now."
Tags: design fun internet videogames usability posted
Jakob Nielsen explains the three things holding up usability on the web.
Tags: design internet usability posted
Five simple steps to better typography
"So, in an attempt to spread the word here’s the first of five simple steps to better typography. To kick it off, part one is about the Measure."
Tags: design typography tips usability posted
Garrett Dimon: "On the web, precise control of how a design is experienced is a lot like squeezing a wet bar of soap. The more you tighten your grip, the more likely it is to fly out of your hands."
Tags: design usability ia posted
Mistakes developers can make using AJAX
Tags: ajax design internet technology usability posted