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Usability Resources
By Scott Wallace
Overviews
- Introduction to Usability—Concise and well organized. From usability information site Usability First.
- Usability Basics—An excellent starting point—the what, why, and how of usability. From Usability.gov.
Web sites
- STC Usability SIG Web site—"Topics," "Toolkit," "Bookshelf," email discussion list; conference and training information (including Usability SIG sessions at the annual STC conference). Join online.
- Usability.gov—One of the best—and an elegant example of usability. From the National Cancer Institute.
- Usable Web—With more than 1400 links, the most comprehensive usability site on the Web. By usability notable Keith Instone.
- Useit.com—Jakob Nielsen's site. Articles, reports, books, and interviews with Nielsen. Biweekly "Alertbox" column, with archives dating back to 1995.
Articles
- Research-based Web Design and Usability Guidelines—Five principles, with examples and comments. From Usability.gov.
- Web site Design—Consulting firm Usability First on how to infuse your site with "pervasive usability."
- What Is HCI?—IBM's overview of human-computer interaction. The "study, planning, and design of what happens when you and a computer work together."
- Concise, Scannable, and Objective: How to Write for the Web—Nielsen and Morkes' seminal piece based on usability research at Sun Microsystems.
- How Users Read on the Web is a summary of this article, more suited to online reading.
- Stanford Poynter Project—Findings of a Poynter Institute–Stanford usability study that used cameras to track people's eye movements as they viewed web sites.
Online Newsletters
- UIEtips—Data about the "hottest usability issues" from noted research and consulting firm User Interface Engineering.
- Usability Interface—Award-winning quarterly publication of the STC Usability SIG. Current articles, archives.
- WebWord Newsletter—Current issue, archives. From usability consultants WebWord.com ("industrial strength usability").
Books
- Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. Jakob Nielsen. New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis, 2000. ISBN 1-56205-810-X. Content, page and site design, and more.
- Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Steve Krug. New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis, 2000. ISBN 0-78972-310-7. User "satisficing" and other facts of life for the Web designer.
- Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work. Tom Brinck, Darren Gergle, and Scott D. Wood. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, 2001. ISBN 1-55860-658-0. A systematic approach to usable Web design.
Glossary
Usability Glossary—More than 1000 usability-related terms. From Usability First.
The
Devil Mountain Views -- Mar/Apr 2002
(ebstc.org/newsletter/front.html)
For suggestions, complaints, or (especially) compliments, contact
dmvashwini@yahoo.com