#usability (301 links)
- Why you should be using disambiguated URLs simonwillison.net
There’s one aspect of URL design that is often ignored. Good URLs should be unambiguous. By that, I mean that any logical piece of content should have one and only one definitive URL, with any alternatives acting as a permanent redirect.
- Information Architects Japan » iA Notebook » The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard informationarchitects.jp · Archived on
- Garrett Dimon / Documenting Interface Design garrettdimon.com
I’ve done my best to migrate away from traditional documentation methods and find ways that actual help others visualize what the end product should look like.
- Digital Web Magazine - It's in the Details: Seven Secrets of a Successful International Website digital-web.com · Archived on
When it comes to creating a successful international website, language isn’t everything. Many other factors come into play, all of which require knowledge about your target market.
Heuristic evaluation is a technique that involves analysing the usability of a website against a set of general usability precepts.
- Adactio: Journal - New Year’s Resolution adactio.com
"The numbers clearly show that monitor sizes and resolutions are getting bigger. The most common interpretation of that is more and more people have bigger displays. But an equally valid interpretation of the numbers is the range of displays is bigger tha
- Creating Passionate Users: What comes after usability? headrush.typepad.com
"Thanks for giving me something useable, well-designed, and useful. Now, can you make it as engaging as a game or sport? Can you keep me so immersed that time and all the clutter of daily existence drops away? Where I'm under a spell that's never broken b
...in IE7, Firefox, and Safari.
- 24 ways: The Mobile Web, Simplified 24ways.org
Considering a foray into mobile web development? Following are four things you need to know before making the leap.
- A List Apart: Articles: Making Compact Forms More Accessible alistapart.com
Forms pose a series of usability and accessibility challenges, many of which are made more complex when you need to build a form to fit into a small space.
If we want to serve devices whose viewports range from 240 pixels to about 1680 pixels—and with resolution ranging from 72 to 150 pixels per inch—we need a new method.
- Intelligent Experience Design » Articles » Marissa Mayer of Google: Speed Good, AJAX Not So Good paradymesolutions.com
"The study found that users preferred speedy page loads to a greater number of results per page and to ‘highly interactive ajax features’. Although users reported that they preferred more results per page, their expressed desires diverged from their a
- 24 ways: Compose to a Vertical Rhythm 24ways.org
"On the Web, vertical rhythm – the spacing and arrangement of text as the reader descends the page – is contributed to by three factors: font size, line height and margin or padding. All of these factors must calculated with care in order that the rhy
UI expert Robert Hoekman Jr shows you how to educate your visitors about the features of contemporary sites and web apps through instructive design.
There was a large amount of interest in last month’s Web Application Form Design article, so I decided to provide some additional details.
- Label Placement in Forms :: UXmatters uxmatters.com
Evaluating label placement in forms with eyetracking.
- Click here and other meaningless link phrases | 456 Berea Street 456bereastreet.com
"One of those things that you have to keep educating clients about: writing good and informative link phrases." About 5 or 6 times a day, normally.
The biggest barrier in the networked world is convincing groups of people, not just individuals, simply to use (or even try!) your software.
Topics: 1. How designing for the web has changed / 2. How to measure the impact of usability checks / 3. Life at Google - and how Measure Map is playing out / 4. The state of the industry
- Accessibility statements or Site help pages? | 456 Berea Street 456bereastreet.com
Are we supposed to stop providing them now? No, not really, but perhaps we should replace them with something better.
How useful accessibility pages provided on a selection of UK Web sites were to users - in particular older people without significant impairments, but who may soon benefit from accessibility information.
“Apple’s system preference pane for Universal Access: takes into account the probability that users needing assistance [...] would most likely appreciate larger, bolder text on that pref panel.” Might be nice to do for accessibility statements...
"After personally observing users with disabilities interacting with websites in unexpected ways, I have come to believe strongly in the value of user research—and to suspect that we really don’t know quite as much about real-world accessibility as we
- isolani - Web Accessibility: Accessibility in Trouble isolani.co.uk
Its clear that the web accessibility community has been on a downward spiral for over a year now, but its not entirely clear why.
Clients love to request [splash pages] and these are the arguments I use to shoot them down
- Real Wireframes Get Real Results - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design boxesandarrows.com · Archived on
- A List Apart: Articles: Text-Resize Detection alistapart.com
We’ll give you a way to detect your visitors’ initial font size setting—and a way to find out whenever your visitor increases or decreases the font size.
- Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing philip.greenspun.com
Old school. Still has some relevance.
More comments on previous link
- Bruce Lawson’s personal site : Forms: inputting country names brucelawson.co.uk
The most accessible, user-friendly way to receive input that a user incontravertibly knows is to ask the user to type their response into a free-text field, rather than require them to select it.
- Amberlight - User Centred Research and Design Services amber-light.co.uk
London based Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Consultancy who provide user-centred research and design services to clients and partners in the UK and internationally.
Records the position of every click on a page, building up a virtual heat map of visitor activity. It also provides user behaviour analysis, segmentation and tracking.
- ClickTale :: Because every user has a story clicktale.com
Watch movies of how users interact with your website. Gain valuable insights to maximize usability
- Google Accessible Search labs.google.com
"Accessible Web Search for the Visually Challenged." Hurrah!
- Garrett Dimon / The Time is Now for Front-End Architects garrettdimon.com
Missed this first time round: "The web needs more front-end architects before poor implementations of front-end technology hobble the potential benefits of recent advances."
- RNIB clear print guidelines rnib.org.uk
Guidelines on designing printed information that is accessible to people with sight problems.
AJAX and its kin are empowering developers, but with great power comes great responsibility.
We design, manage and deliver profitable user experiences.
- Seth's Blog: What I learned from eye tracking sethgodin.typepad.com
The folks at etre were kind enough to do some eye tracking analysis of Squidoo [...] The blue dot shows you where the user is focusing her eyesite... it doesn't measure peripheral vision, which is crucial.
Bad ideas that get in the minds of standards-based developers
- Dogmas Are Meant to be Broken: An Interview with Eric Reiss - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design boxesandarrows.com · Archived on
It’s not particularly spectacular, and it’s not the Ten Commandments. These are simply why users find [some] sites and devices less usable than others.