I recently reviewed Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think. Now in its second edition, if you haven’t read it yet, you’d be doing yourself a huge favor by adding it to your Christmas list.
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Web Site Usability Book Review: “Don’t Make Me Think”
Usability guru Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (now in its 2nd edition) is one of the best books on web usability that I’ve read. Why? Because it’s short, easy to read and covers all the essentials really well.
Read More10 Tips to Improve Web Site Usability Testing
Web site usability tests are easy to run and they don’t have to be perfect for you to learn a lot from them. The important thing is just to do them on a regular basis so that you can observe user behavior on your site.
Every time I run one I learn new things about what works and what doesn’t on our site. I also learn how I can improve the way I conduct our testing.
Here are some things I’ve learned that you might find useful:
PDFs Okay To Open in New Windows
I was pleased to read Jacob Nielsen’s “latest Alertbox article”:http://www.useit.com/alertbox/open_new_windows.html which recommends opening new windows for PDF and other non-web documents. This is something I’ve been a proponent of for a long time.
British Embassy: Non-clickable Register Button
Nothing like having an image that says “Register Now” and then not linking it to anything. A belated April Fool’s joke? Sadly, I doubt it. So much for us Brits having a smug sense of superiority over the Yanks. Read More
UIE Roadshow 2005: Know Your Users
This week I attended the 2005 UIE Roadshow, which was all about getting to know your users better. Day one was about discovering user needs through field research, and day two covered the use of personas to guide design. I didn’t attend day three, which centered on usability testing.
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I’m always finding broken stuff on the web. Sometimes I take the time to point these problems out to the web site owner, but mostly I just don’t have the time. However, I often find these occurrences to be useful learning experiences, and at the very least they remind me that nobody’s perfect.
Writing Good Link Text
Despite my difficulties in navigating the W3C QA site (see previous post) it was interesting to read their article about good writing conventions for links. Read More
Why is the W3C Web Site So Hard To Use?
I recently learned that the W3C has a quality assurance web site. The reason I learned this was because I followed a link to a W3C article about writing links.
Conveying Information Through Design
US News & World Report have just released their Best Hospitals: 2004 rankings. This is a pretty big thing for America’s hospitals, something akin to the health Oscars.
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