Contextual Help

Some interesting examples of contextual help ...

"The membership creation screen on the BBC web site is an interesting example of providing contextual help. There are links such as "What is a secret question" beneath the field labels. And additional explanatory text appears to the right of a field when it is in focus. Lastly, audio help is available."   continued ...   (Via paper & pencil)

Contextual Help.

How to come up with Breakthrough Ideas

Coming up with the right number of features ...

"Brilliant, wildly creative people can pull breakaway ideas from thin air. The rest of us need tools. EQing is the tool we used to design the Head First series, and we've been using it ever since.

Bert, Eric, and I are all audio freaks -- we lust after the giant mixing boards at live shows, confident (and delusional) that we could do it so much better, if only we could get our hands on those sliders. So, an audio equalizer was a natural metaphor for us, and this is my first attempt to explain how we use the concept of EQing to brainstorm new designs.

37signals, the folks behind the wildly popular Basecamp and Backpack, did that when they tuned the features slider way, way, way down. Their art is in knowing which features to leave out, of course. But turning down the features slider wasn't really their goal. The goal (I think) was User Bliss, an entirely new slider, and one that was partially tied (inversely) to the Num Of Features slider. Turning down the features turned out to be one of the most important ways to achieve User Bliss."   continued ...   (Via Creating Passionate Users)

Featuritis.

Galleries: The Hardest Working Page on Your Site

Making galleries work well ...

"Sony Ericsson wants you to choose one of their mobile phones. They've got 17 lovely models to choose from. Perhaps you want the T237? That one seems nice. Or the T630? Or maybe, the K700i?

What's the difference, you ask? Unfortunately, they won't tell you until after you've chosen the one you want. Only then will Sony Ericsson inform you about your chosen model's features are.

Seriously, just pick a model from this list, then we can move along with our exercise. Do you want a W600, a W520a, a W800, a J300a, a T290a, a S710a, a S700i, a K500i, a K700i, a Z500a, a P910a, a T237, a T637, a P900, a T630, a T226, a T616, or that perennial favorite, the T610?"   continued ...   (Via UIE)

Gallery.

Usability v. Human Factors in Complex Mobile Systems

Usability is important but a systems approach is needed for many products ...

"There's been much discussion lately about how important design has become for mobile solutions, applications and devices. Nearly the first eight years of my career were devoted to questions of usability, suitability, design and even survivability of complex systems developed and deployed by the U.S. military. I've come to enjoy the equally mistrustful expressions from the military towards preceived academic nature of studying human performance and systems design which considered the human as part of the system; and the mistrustful expressions from those in technology about any phrase that includes the word military. There's an assumption that military products are somehow low quality which is astonishing when you consider that the Internet which enables email, the web and other services was designed and built by contractors serving the military much in the same way that my work did.

Market responses to solutions and devices like the iPod, the Razr and the Treo demonstrate that consumers value design and the advantages to a systems approach to the user experience."   continued ...   (Via mobile jones)

Systems Approach.

Top 5 killer intranet mistakes

The top 5 mistakes and recommendations ...

"There are mistakes, and there are killer mistakes. A successful intranet needs a lot of work and careful thought; some mistakes will limit success, others will kill the intranet.

In his recent column Lessons Learned: How to Avoid the Top 10 Intranet Mistakes my colleague Carm Porco, VP, Prescient Digital Media, provides some advice to avoid 10 of the most common intranet mistakes. To build on his list of favorites I thought I’d publish a slightly different list, one that concentrates on the ‘killer’ mistakes.

Note: a killer mistake doesn’t mean that the intranet dies, and shuts down – that simply doesn’t (commonly) happen. A killer mistake is strategic in nature; a strategic error that prevents the intranet from moving forward, halted by inertia or a state of purgatory. This purgatorical state is a broken state where the intranet can no longer progress in its current form without a complete restructuring – which often includes a new governance, technology, information architecture and design."   continued ...   (Via Intranet Blog)

Ouch!

Help Is For Experts

Help is used by advaced users rather than novices in Office 12 ...

"One of the most interesting epiphanies I've had over the last few years seems on the surface like a paradox: "help" in Office is mostly used by experts and enthusiasts.

How can this be? I think my biased assumption was that experts know how to use the software already and eager novices would be poring over the documentation trying to learn how to be more effective using it.

Yet, in usability tests we see it again and again: novices and intermediates click around and experiment, experts try to reason things out and look them up in help.

Why is that? I don't know the answer, but I can speculate."   continued ...   (Via Jensen Harris)

Have a question?

On "Web 2.0"

Concerns about Web 2.0 ...

"There’s a lot of talk about the so-called Web 2.0 at the moment, and I’m in two minds about what I think.

On the one hand, as a geek who used to be involved in publishing, “new” almost de facto equates to “exciting”. It could genuinely be the Web is metamorphosing from rather dull dumb-terminals sending and receiving screenfulls of data - just like the IBM MVS terminals I used to use in 1988 - to a rich, asynchronous, application-like environment.

On the other hand, I have two worries. The first is my natural scepticism (some might say “cynicism”) about the hype. It seems to me like a new venture capital orgy is being prepared. The bubble is being inflated by pompous and largely empty buzzworks like “folksonomy”, “social networking”, “tag clouds” and others brilliantly satirised on the Go Flock Yourself blog. And where are the business models?"   continued ...   (Via Bruce Lawson)

Empty Buzz Words.

Building for Usability

Making usability the focus when designing a website ...

"The usability of an organization's Web site has a major impact on the organization's success or failure. If your site is difficult to use, an online payment process is confusing, or users can't find the information they need, visitors will go elsewhere and will associate their bad experience with your company's brand. How can you make your site easy to use? Make usability testing an ongoing part of the site planning and development processes.

Typically, usability testing is conducted at the end of the development process by a team of specialists. Test subjects are observed, results are analyzed, and site features are adjusted accordingly. Testing close to the end of the project lifecycle carries some limitations, however. For one, there may not be enough time left to make changes. Second, usability begins with the architecture, not with the interface. By the time the interface is tested, some things aren't easily fixed. Usability issues may arise not from page layout, but from technologies used to build the site or from the underlying front-end or back-end architecture of the site. These issues can't be fixed by moving a graphic element around a page, and may require a costly rebuild of at least part of the system.

To achieve maximum usability in the initial site prototype, it's necessary to design for usability throughout the site lifecycle, with all functional team members contributing to the usability of the project."   continued ...   (Via Advisor)

Usability Lifecycle.

Enticing Users with Content

Using content to attract users ...

"Our researchers have been spending a lot of time looking at how designs can best entice users with their content. Specifically, how can design teams get users to pay attention to their site’s valuable information when that content isn’t necessarily what the users are seeking?

As we’ve tested sites to see what strategies designs use to entice users with content, we weren’t surprised that the sites frequently feature advertisements and promotions for important content on the home page. The rationale for this design choice is clear. For users, the home page is the entry point for the site, so it makes sense to include content to entice them right away.

Users encounter featured content on the home page all the time. For example, users who visit the Citizens Bank site, see an advertisement for home equity credit prominently on their home page. This one advertisement alone takes up approximately 50% of the real estate on the page."   continued ...   (Via UIE Brain Sparks)

Citizens Bank Website.

The 8 Types of Navigation Pages

An interesting distinction between the type of page and user behavior ...

"When users are searching for content on a site, each page they encounter must do one of two things. Either the page provides the content they are seeking or it delivers them closer to the page that does.

As we’ve watched users search for their desired content, we’ve realized there are patterns to the pages we see. We’ve started to catalogue these patterns and have concluded there are essentially 8 types of pages a user can run into, when searching content-rich sites.

These different page types turned out to be important as we discovered users behave differently as they encounter each one. If the design of a given type doesn’t support the user’s behavior, then the user is less likely to succeed in finding their target content. Often, pages fail because designers don’t realize they were designing for the wrong type."   continued ...   (Via UIE Brain Sparks)

Scent of Information.

Human-Centered Intranet Design

Tips for making HCI user friendly ...

Have you ever tried discussing Tolstoy with a vacuum cleaner? This is precisely how many users feel when trying to interact with their systems in a technologically driven work environment. And I do mean interact. Although the word is usually associated with social activity, interacting with technology is exactly what we're doing every time we sit in front of our computers.

There's an unfortunate disconnect between how humans naturally function and what a lot of technology delivers. Technology needs to function as an extension of our own abilities, but users are often left scratching their heads or pounding their keyboards in frustration. It's ironic that while intranets aim to bring workers together in collaborative effort they can also alienate individual users who struggle to decipher poorly developed or overly complicated systems. This makes about a much sense as creating more bureaucracy to eliminate red tape.

The human-computer relationship can be an uneasy one. But it doesn't, and shouldn't, have to be that way. Just as physical ergonomics is important to the health of the body, cognitive ergonomics is important to the health of the mind. Developers need to have a deeper understanding that regardless of what technology allows them to do, the end product must conform to the natural way in which humans work.

Human-System Disconnect - Users have always tried to reconcile the way in which they naturally work with how technology makes them work (or in some cases changes the way they work). For those not in a technology-driven field, or not used to working with computers beyond a word processor, this is not an easy task — especially when software is getting bigger; more elaborate; and consequently, more complicated."   continued ...   (Via Intranet Journal)

Talking to a vacuum cleaner.

Convergence catch-22

Simplicity vs. convergence - a catch 22 ...

"Donald Norman in his “ask Don” postings:

Today simplicity, tomorrow convenience. Tomorrow convenience, the next day simplicity.
Jack of all trades, master of none. Certainly this is no new topic- combining gadgets and gizmos into one ubiquitous swiss army device that will allow us to always have the right tool at our finger tips. But when it comes to designing an interface, is this a catch-22 that will always swing like (as Donald implies) a pendulum?"   continued ...   (Via MNteractive)

Swiss Army Knife.

Customer Experience Management vs. User Experence (Part III)

The distinction between Customer Experience Management and User Experience ...

"Continuing the posts on defining Customer Experience Management (CEM)… A number of consultancies and agencies equate CEM with User Experience. In our previous article, we outlined the five disciplines of CEM.

User Experience, or “Usability” is focused on the interface discipline of CEM. It is used primarily in reference to the analysis, design and/or development of human-to-technology interfaces. Some examples of this include:

- Visual, navigation & informational web design
- Interactive apps. w/ decision trees (e.g. register, search)
- Easy-to-use interfaces for complex technical systems
- Product designs for devices (wireless, PDA, IPOD)
- Information & visual design within devices (game, DVR, computer)

User Experience is an importantpart of CEM, but like Experiential Marketing, it’s a part of a much larger whole. User Experience architects center their focus creating functional, intuitive interfaces (online or systems applications and technological devices) that enable customer interaction and transaction. CEM practitioners focus on the comprehensive interaction of customers in both online and offline channels."   continued ...   (Via Live Path)

Customer Experience Management.

I Guess No One Cares About Fonts

The real Segoe UI font as used in Office 12 ...

"Last week, I wrote about Segoe UI, the new font used to render the user interface of Office 12 and Windows Vista.

I intended it to be a little fluffy "FYI" piece. Little did I anticipate the flurry of comments and feedback and e-mail and blog entries. Font this, font that! Font font font font font!!!

So today, a little more about Segoe UI, starting with a mea culpa. To save time, I pulled the picture of Segoe UI I published last week from the beta version of the Windows Vista UX Guidelines in MSDN.

That was a mistake. It turns out that whomever made the picture used Segoe (Microsoft's corporate branding font) and not Segoe UI (which is the font we are using in the Office 12 interface.)"   continued ...   (Via Jensen Harris)

Segoe UI font as used in Office 12.

Don't Forget: User Interfaces for Physical Spaces

Looks like a great event and a very nice case study is available now ...

"MAYA Design, in preparation for the User Interfaces for Physical Spaces event, has just published a fabulously detailed case study, annotated with copious illustrations.

It makes even clearer just how cool the workshop will be. The case study outlines their process, which we'll get to walkthrough in detail -- literally, as we make trips to the libraries before and after renovation.

I mean, where else have you seen people create information blueprints as companions to architectural blueprints?

The workshop takes place December 12, in Pittsburgh, PA. And, let's face it -- you're not getting any work done that close to the holidays! So use up that training budget before the end of the year and come join us!"   continued ...   (Via peterme)

Physical Space.

Media: Connected Home is Confusing

New consumer technology must be usable to be widely accepted ...

"Networked Home 'too confusing' for consumers" develops the theme in UN story: Connecting up the Home with the Needs of Users by reviewing other conference speakers' contributions and the fundamental hurdles that haven't been jumped in moving to connected-up consumer products.

'Even Microsoft’s Branet admitted there was a need to "focus on educating consumers".

'But until the key players stop operating in silos, this isn’t going to happen,' is media consultant Jemima Gibbons' view, as she returns from the Connected Home conference."   continued ...   (Via Usability News)

Connected Home.

Designing in Hostile Territory

Getting designs approved through management ...

"A friend who works for a large wireless provider complained to me recently about the impossibility of taking a design approach in his "design-unfriendly organization." He had put forward a new approach to customer service designed to dramatically enhance retention and was shot down by, of all things, the "Corporate Customer Innovation Committee."

"Roger," he bemoaned, "You write all this stuff about business design, innovation, and creativity, but unless managers have a CEO that aggressively promotes design, they will be squelched." I can feel his pain. I empathize -- but do I sympathize? Not really, because my friend is thinking about the question from a design-free perspective and expecting a design-friendly outcome that just isn't going to happen.

The bottom line: You don't need anyone's permission to think like a designer. But there are five things you need to do if you want to be effective in a "design-unfriendly organization."   continued ...   (Via BusinessWeek)

Design Approval.

Example design process for elderly

A scholarly paper on the design process for increasing usability for disabled users ...

"A “research paper” from Fujitsu describing the design process for creating a phone for elderly or disabled people. Clearly shows design considerations.

“Fujitsu’s Raku Raku PHONE is an easy-to-use mobile phone for elderly persons, persons unfamiliar with mobile-phone operation, and persons with physical disabilities, for example, persons with visual disabilities. This highly accessible, userfriendly mobile phone makes full use of speech synthesis and voice recognition technologies and achieves good universal design through an ingenious combination of hardware, software, and user interface. In the development phase, we adopted a special process to aggressively research and evaluate product usability from users’ viewpoints, clarify existing problems, and improve the design and user interface of mobile phones. This paper describes the steps taken to achieve universal design in the Raku Raku PHONE and the universal design features of its hardware, software, and audio functions."   continued ...   (Via Small Surfaces)

Raku Phone.

We have the technology, now tell us how to use it

The need for usability in a high tech world ...

"Office workers waste up to a month a year trying to figure out how to use their computers properly because modern technology is so complicated, a new study warns.

Trying to get their heads round difficult programmes on the PC is costing firms both time and money, often because no-one has taught employees what to do.

The survey of 500 workers and 300 bosses by the training body City & Guilds found that workers spent 10 per cent of their time battling against computer programmes or getting to grips with phones, handheld devices and other gadgets, equating to a month a year.

Thirty-seven per cent say they are frustrated by not being able to handle the technology. About a third (32 per cent) of workers say they have failed to receive training from their company to teach them to use the technology in the office."   continued ...   (Via Scotsman)

Computer Overload.

The Beauty of Simplicity

A good review about the merrits of simplicity ...

"It is innovation's biggest paradox: We demand more and more from the stuff in our lives--more features, more function, more power--and yet we also increasingly demand that it be easy to use. And, in an Escher-like twist, the technology that's simplest to use is also, often, the most difficult to create.

Marissa Mayer lives with that conundrum every day. As Google's director of consumer Web products, she's responsible for the search site's look and feel. Mayer is a tall, blond 30-year-old with two Stanford degrees in computer science and an infectious laugh. She's also Google's high priestess of simplicity, defending the home page against all who would clutter it up. "I'm the gatekeeper," she says cheerfully. "I have to say no to a lot of people."

The technology that powers Google's search engine is, of course, anything but simple. In a fraction of a second, the software solves an equation of more than 500 million variables to rank 8 billion Web pages by importance. But the actual experience of those fancy algorithms is something that would satisfy a Shaker: a clean, white home page, typically featuring no more than 30 lean words; a cheery, six-character, primary-colored logo; and a capacious search box. It couldn't be friendlier or easier to use."   continued ...   (Via Fast Company)

Google Simplicity.

Nokia Usability Forum

A good usability resource from Nokia ...

"Resources from Nokia about design. Some interesting stuff in there, a lot of it pitched to developers.

“Usability articles. Usability articles illustrate concrete perspectives on usability in mobile application creation. They describe in brief the most interesting issues in wireless development with end user in mind. There are success cases as well as general guidance on how to handle usability issues in a cost-efficient manner in product development."   continued ...   (Via Small Surfaces)

Nokia Mobile.

Minimizing the annoyance of the mobile phone

Societal problems with using mobile phones ...

"Nearly one in three (30%) adults say the cell phone is the invention they most hate but cannot live without, according to the eighth annual Lemelson-MIT Invention Index study.

It is easy and fun to think of the great advances in telecommunications, computation, and entertainment that will mark the next few years. But while we may relish the thought of all those wonderful technologies and opportunities, let us also remember that these come at a cost. The cost is partially monetary, but more and more it is in human-measures: annoyance, irritation, and frustration. It is what makes us wish to throw away the technology even as we embrace it.

We are in real danger of a consumer backlash against annoying technologies. We already have seen the growth of mobile-phone free zones, of prohibition against phone use, camera use, camera phones, in all sort of public and private places. The mobile phone has been shown to be a dangerous distraction to the driver of an automobile, whether hands-free or not. If we do nothing to overcome these problems, then the benefits these technologies bring may very well be denied us because the social costs are simply too great."   continued ...   (Via jnd.org)

Mobile Phone.

Linux gets Usability Support

Linux focusing on usability ...

"The Better Desktop initiative from Novell is a new component of the openSUSE project that provides open source developers with usability testing data and resources they can use to improve the quality of the Linux desktop.

Novell has released primary desktop research, including video footage and analysis of usability tests (see link below). Instructions for constructing and operating a low-cost usability lab will also be provided.

This initiative means that open source developers will be able to see for themselves the types of desktop software designs that are succeeding with end users. As a result, open source developers will have the resources to build applications that better meet the needs and expectations of users, which may see a rise in the adoption of Linux on the desktop."   continued ...   (Via Usability News)

Linux Logo.

Crap Circles

A challenge to using circular diagrams ...

"Gardiner Morse has written an article challenging the over-use of circular diagrams by vendors and consulting firms. To quote:

"The circle below, from a global accounting firm's Web site, is used to illustrate the company's consulting services for owner-managed businesses. It shows the business life cycle "maturity phase" leading, inexplicably, into the "conception/ start-up phase." This company's clients should ask whether they really want to be guided in circles. (To be fair, the shortcomings of this example and those that follow are exaggerated by lack of narration; someone with a laser pointer could probably explain what the diagrams should show, even if they don’t.)"   continued ...   (Via Column Two)

Circular Diagram.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Happy Thanksgiving 2005.

Why Do We Love Rounded Corners?

Rounded corners work because they leave visual hints ...

"As interface and graphic designers, we border on obsessed with rounded corners. Web developers have gone to great lengths, through the creative use of CSS (and sometimes Javascript) to make the creation of rounded corners as painless as possible. The proposed CSS3 specification even includes properties for rounded corners (Firefox already supports it).

So why is there such a fascination with rounded corners? I would venture that our attraction to rounded corners goes beyond the aesthetic and speaks to something more.

On one level, I think we're attracted to things that appear to be organic in nature. Take the iPod for instance. While the industrial design of similar products clearly hints towards how the device came to be, Apple put a lot of effort into creating a device that feels more like it grew on a tree than assembled in a factory. They went to great pains to conceal the machine-like characteristics that would typically hold a device together (screws, etc.). The result is a smoother feel with very few edges or hard angles to be found. This "smoothness" not only speaks to usability but also fosters an emotional connection with the device. Some of our earliest memories are tied to objects and things that are far less than perfect and rife with right angles. Corners say "go away." At the risk of sounding hoaky: smoother, rounder surfaces say "hold me.""   continued ...   (Via basement.org)

Rounded Corners.

The Web is hot again

The popularization of Web 2.0 UI ...

"Five years after the dot-com bust we now find ourselves on the cusp of a second revolution: Web 2.0 (or so it's been dubbed) — the first version upgrade of the World Wide Web. Richer Web software is popping up daily and amazing us with an entirely new experience.

Interactive Web applications are being launched with such robust functionality that they're threatening the future of the common desktop application. Technologies like AJAX have gained widespread buzz in a short period of time, proving that the market is now ready for what was promised years ago.

This shift is towards a more fluid, helpful and innovative Internet. Take Zimbra, a new contender in webmail. It's like Microsoft Outlook on steroids. You can hover over an address in your e-mail message and a mini map instantly appears. Couple that kind of functionality with a Web-based drag-and-drop interface, and it's hard to tell if it's running on your desktop or through a browser."   continued ...   (Via Globetechnology)

Kayak.com.

Towards the Design of Effective Formative Test Reports

Developing a best practices guide for formative test reports (PDF) ...

"Many usability practitioners conduct most of their usability evaluations to improve a product during its design and development. We call these "formative" evaluations to distinguish them from "summative" (validation) usability tests at the end of development.

A standard for reporting summative usability test results has been adopted by international standards organizations. But that standard is not intended for the broader range of techniques and business contexts in formative work. This paper reports on a new industry
project to identify best practices in reports of formative usability evaluations.

The initial work focused on gathering examples of reports used in a variety of business contexts. We define elements in these reports and present some early guidelines on making design decisions for a formative report. These guidelines are based on considerations of the business context, the relationship between author and audience, the questions that the evaluation is trying to answer, and the techniques used in the evaluation."   continued ...   (Via JUS)

Sample Reports.

The Enterprise User Experience - Bridging the IT/Marketing Divide

GUI vs. UX ...

"At one time, the concept of the Graphic User Interface (GUI) held great promise in connecting marketing to technology, and there was much talk of the importance of user friendliness. Yet over time, the term GUI lost its meaning, devolving to technological window dressing—just an aesthetic veneer without much substance. Somehow, the user at the center of this concept began to vanish from the picture, in favor the graphics and the interface.

Thankfully, the ideas and practices of enterprise UX design are gaining mindshare, succeeding where the GUI paradigm failed, and creating a shared tech-marketing domain. Companies are beginning to realize that UX professionals bring positive solutions to the table. Today, we see savvy technologists and marketers starting to embrace the enterprise UX concept because both camps stand to gain much in doing so.

User experience is a deliberately broader concept than GUI. It may take some time for it to fully penetrate the product design and development world. But it’s the right term to help create an approach to product design and development that incorporates the way people really perceive design, use products, and make decisions."   continued ...   (Via UXmatters)

It's the UX not the GUI.

Online International Journal of Usability Studies

A new online journal with excellent articles ...

"Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Usability Studies.

This journal was born in response to a growing need in the community of usability practitioners and researchers. Have you ever you looked for the most recent findings of usability studies that you can learn from or wondered where to publish interesting results from your own usability studies? Until now, there was no available forum for usability practitioners and applied researchers to share and disseminate many of their findings and experiences that are of general interest to this community. To meet this need and to fill the gap between academic research and business case studies, the Journal of Usability Studies was born. This publication will be a peer-reviewed, on-line journal dedicated to promoting and enhancing the practice, research, and education of usability engineering."   continued ...   (Via JUS)

Journal of Usability Studies.

Usability Testing of Mobile Applications

Field testing for mobile devices may not be worthwile ...

"Usability testing a mobile application in the laboratory seems to be sufficient when studying user interface and navigation issues. The usability of a consumer application was tested in two environments: in a laboratory and in a field with a total of 40 test users. The same problems were found in both environments, differences occurred in the frequency of findings between the contexts. Results indicate that conducting a time-consuming field test may not be worthwhile when searching user interface flaws to improve user interaction. In spite of this, it is possible that field testing is worthwhile when combining usability tests with a field pilot or contextual study where user behavior is investigated in a natural context."   continued ...   (Via JUS / Anne Kaikkonen, et al)

Field Testing.

Usability for the Masses

The need for all designers to learn usability ...

"The biggest problem facing the usability field is how to scale up massively so that we can impact all the user interface designs in the world. How big is this challenge? As of November 2005, there are about 75 million websites on the Internet. There are also about 30 million intranets inside corporate firewalls. Thus, there are more than 100 million user interface designs, just in the online space.

Add several hundred thousand software applications, dozens of cell phone manufacturers, and thousands of assorted consumer electronics products, and we have even more UI design to cover, many with quite esoteric and unique requirements.

Granted, many of the websites are personal sites that are only intended for the owner's closest friends. These designs may be seen purely as a personal expression and not as user experiences in the traditional sense of third-party users trying to understand a design. Still, there are probably about 70 million professional user interface designs in the world that are intended to serve the customers of a business, government agency, or a non-profit organization. If these UIs do not have good usability, much money will be lost."   continued ...   (Via JUS / Jakob Nielsen)

Usability for the Masses.

Check User ID Button

A simple and good idea for checking to see if an ID is available ...

"We’ve all been there. You find a new cool site. You decide to register for their service. You enter your favorite user id, the password, your pet’s birth date, the name of your third grade teacher (the cute one that you had a crush on), and your favorite Easter egg color. You finally press Submit. Then you find out the user id is already taken. Arrgghh!

Digg.com bypasses the ugly post-submit depression by putting a “Check” button next to the user id. Enter the name. Press Check. Find out immediately if your favorite Id is available."   continued ...   (Via UIE Brain Sparks)

ID Check Button.

A myriad of ways to make users sign-in

How sign-in strategies work on various sites ...

"It’s amazing how many different ways web sites handle sign-in pages. The messaging of the interface, whether or not to sign up for an account, and the HTML elements used are just some of the details that change drastically from site to site. Just recently I was doing an interface review to see what the state of the art was, and I was simply boggled by the different approaches I saw.

I’m interested in how this plays with users. Do they want to sign up for a new business service, or do they want to simply check out this one time? While we haven’t tested this Yahoo feature specifically, our experience testing checkouts has suggested that people often shy away from “fringe benefits” like this, especially if those benefits are not explained fully. (and much moreso if they have a choice not to)"   continued ...   (Via UIE Brain Sparks)

Amazon Sign-In.

Weaving Usability and Cultures: Benefits of an accessible website - part 2: The business case

More on the business case for making a website accessible ...

"The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) states that service providers must not discriminate against disabled people. A website is regarded as a service and therefore falls under this law, and as such must be made accessible to everyone.

Some organisations are making accessibility improvements to their websites, but many are seemingly not making the accessibility adjustments. Disabled people don’t access their website, they say, so why should they care?

There are, however, two very good reasons as to why businesses should start taking these issues seriously:

- An accessible website will make you more money
- An accessible website will save you money"   continued ...   (Via uiGarden)

Web Accessibility.

The blooming of information architecture at Google: A close look at facets, tags & categories in Google Base

A good review of the new Google Base UI ...

"I just spent some time with GoogleBase and was amazed at just how deeply Google has embraced standard information architecture concepts and trends. We have categories, facets, tags. I kid you not. Google of the simple search box with a go button has come a long way indeed.

A rich browse experience: Search and browse is integrated. I like this. I searched for "prius". It gave me a flat list of results, and options to refine by several facets (or attrib