Design/Development

SimCad from CreateASoft

Process modeling and simulation remains an essential tool for performance support professionals - and, unfortunately, they are seldom used. Sketching a static process flow as part of user task analysis does not get to the root of process dynamics and the complexities that knowledge workers must deal with. SimCad is a best-of-breed process simulator. According to CreateASoft: "SimCad Pro 6.3 expands the existing feature list by adding the ability to create a dynamic value stream map from the original process map with ease. Analysis of the value stream map can then be performed by running different product mixes and what-if scenarios to detect any potential issues with the new designs. Additional features include an extensive VB scripting interface that allows SimCad to interface with existing ERP or MRP systems and provide a live view of the manufacturing environment; a forecasting operation predicts potential future problems and alerts the user of such conditions."

Zope

Zope is a Python-based open source application server for content management. See also product paper "What is Zope."

Movable Type

Movable Type is Six Apart's powerful, customizable publishing system which installs on web servers to enable individuals or organizations to manage and update weblogs, journals, and frequently-updated website content.

OpenCMS

OpenCms is a professional level open source Website Content Management System. OpenCms helps to create and manage complex websites easily without knowledge of html. An integrated WYSIWYG editor with a user interface similar to well known office applications helps the user creating the contents, while a sophisticated template engine enforces a site-wide corporate layout. As true open source software, OpenCms is completely free of licensing costs.

Jahia

An integrated content management and corporate portal server; 100% Java based; Available under a collaborative source license (contribue or pay paradigm); Installed in minutes; Easy to use and to administer; Full Multilanguage and I18N support; Staging environement (Draft & Preview mode); Content Workflow; Content Versioning; Document Management (WebDAV Support); Built-in Portlet-based interface; Built-in support for standardized java web applications and web services (default servlets supported as portlets); Full web-based administration; Integrated with the Apache Lucene Search Engine; LDAP compliant; JSP and JSTL support for easy templates development; Integrated HTML cache engine; dynamic XML export module and ...

epiplex™ version 4.2 released!

Version 4.2 of the award-winning software suite has been released! epiplex™ enables business performance by capturing, expressing, managing, and growing business processes, then producing an arsenal of assets that enable the workers - the business performers - to achieve business outcomes with a minimum of training, learning, and support. epiplex's core capability is capture, which is the ability to observe and gather the key elements of performer actions as they accomplish work in the computer applications that support the organization. Version 4.2 features Remote Capture and Analyzer, providing organizations with the ability to aggregate user workflows across the enterprise, then auto-analyze them for business process optimization and benchmarking. Contact info@epsscentral.com for further information on epiplex™.

Nooface

The purpose of this site is to support the exchange of ideas about next-generation user interfaces, focusing on approaches that go beyond the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing Device) method on which most current user interfaces are based. The goal is to promote out-of-the-box thinking on how user interfaces might evolve to accommodate new classes of users and devices outside of the traditional PC domain.

Slash / Slashdot

Slashcode is the site for All Things Slash. Slash is the source code and database that was originally used to create Slashdot, and has now been released under the GNU General Public License. It is a bona fide Open Source / Free Software project. Use this site to get the Slash source, read the latest Slash news, and participate in Slash discussions. Slashcode is run by the good folks at OSDN, but like all good open source projects, depends on the community. Thanks for your continued support, and let us know what we can do to make the site better.

Structuring the Unstructured

ClearForest announces ClearTags 4.0, an auto-tagging platform that includes semantic, statistical and structural tagging. (2002-03-06)

Bigchalk, inc.

Bigchalk, inc. is a comprehensive education destination for the K-12 learning community, with both subscription-based and free learning tools for educators, parents and students. Bigchalk's vast array of library resources, supplementary curriculum, and assessment professional development Web products provide access to unparalleled instructional resources. (2002-01-30)

Book Excerpt: Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery Page III

An Information Model provides the framework for organizing your content so that it can be delivered and reused in a variety of innovative ways. Once you have created an Information Model for your content repository, you will be able to label information in ways that will enhance search and retrieval, making it possible for authors and users to find the information resources they need quickly and easily.(2002-30-01)

Web Components

This Byte Magazine articles examines the use of browser-based application develoment components like ActiveX, Java Applets and Java Beans. (Aug-06-97)

Epiplex

Epiplex is a comprehensive development environment based on a unique capture technology. From a capture file you can create e-learning, animation/simulation, documentation, workflow, analyze processes, evaluate as-is and to-be models, simplify workflow, improve business processes and more. Epiplex features a comprehensive database and XML-based configuration management system, replete with versioning, security, workflow management and more. Contact EPSScentral for further information on Epiplex.

Humans should not have to grok XML

Today the computing world tends toward using XML for any and all formal specifications and data descriptions. The author, a big fan of XML, asks a blasphemous question: "Is XML totalitarianism a good idea?" In this opinion piece, Terence Parr, co-founder of jGuru, demonstrates that XML makes a lousy human interface. He also provides questions to ask yourself to determine if XML is appropriate even for your project's program-to-program interface needs. (2001-09-02)

Enterprise Application Portals (pdf)

EAI Journal: In the next few years, commercial Websites, as we know them, will vanish. As organizations increasingly move to do business on the Internet, their Websites will evolve into enterprise portals. Ultimately, all organizations will use an enterprise portal to establish their Internet presence. They’ll discover that stand-alone application and integration servers cannot sustain an enterprise portal strategy, and will have to exploit service-based application architectures and deploy portal servers. (2001-05-13)

ADVISOR P.I.

ADVISOR P.I. is a decision support tool. It conducts a root cause analysis of a performance deficiency (gap) and recommends the most cost-effective solutions (interventions) that would produce the desired level of productivity. Interventions considered by ADVISOR P.I. include training, job aids, job/process/organization re-design, new/improved incentive system, polices/procedures, tools, hiring practices, communication plan and others.

Euterpe, a Task Analysis tool

Euterpe is a Task Analysis tool developed at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. It is based on an ontology for describing the task world in a structured way. The theory behind it is based of GTA. Euterpe helps to build task trees, object hierarchies and other important concepts such as event and roles. Templates allow detailed information to be specified and multimedia can be attached to concepts to clarify their nature. Documentation can be generated on paper and as HTML pages.

IBM EZSort: Card Sorting Software

Cards Sorting is a method of getting information about how a user groups categorizes concepts and information. EZSort is a free software program that can be used to capture and graphically display the results of card sorting exercises.

IGrafx Process

IGrafx Process is a software program for mapping and evaluating task and process flows. It can be used to evaluate and diagram existing processes and an to evaluate process designs, including processes with a computer mediated component.

MacBird GUI Builder

MacBird is Open Source development project that is based on a Macintosh draw program with grouping and alignment that's used to design and run graphic user interfaces.

MacFlow™ & WinFlow™: Flowchart Design and Development

With WinFlow and MacFlow you can easily prepare and modify flowcharts of business processes and the flow of system interface screens or web application pages. You can download a demo copy of the program from the Mainstay Web site.

Macromedia Director as a Prototyping and Usability Testing Tool

This article explores Macromedia Director by providing an overview of how to use the tool. While prototyping and usability testing are important throughout the development process, Macromedia Director will mainly be presented as a tool to be used during the analysis and design phases. (2000-08-06)

Performance Support Project Estimator

Telcordia Technologies has developed an expert tool to help you estimate the total costs of developing your performance improvement and learning solutions. Estimator is an Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS) software tool (CD ROM) that provides a consistent methodology for the creation of estimates and project budgets for performance support and learning products. (2000-03-19)

Requisite Pro

Requisite Pro is a software program that can be used by a team to record and manage system development requirements. The product combines its own database with Microsoft Word. You can add and update the requirements in either the database front end or in Word. (May-04-98)

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WebCAT: Web Category Analysis Tool

WebCAT is a variation upon traditional card sorting techniques. It allows a web designer/usability engineer to test a proposed or existing categorization scheme of a web site to determine how well the categories and items are understood by users.

AnswerWorks

With AnswerWorks from WexTech, you can add a natural language search function to your help file. Several usability studies have show that users prefer to use the online help keyword search feature to find a help topic. AnswerWorks expands the capability of the keyword and full text search, by allowing users to enter a more natural search string, like "How to add an invoice". (Jul-26-98)

BOS-EXPERT/WIN

According the the product description "BOS-EXPERT/WIN is an extremely unique context-sensitive online help and documentation system that can be used with any network system running Windows on its front-end terminals. BOS-EXPERT/WIN can even be used to create user-friendly online help texts for mainframe applications using 3270™, Telnet™, and AS/400™ emulation packages for Windows." (2000-04-25)

foCoach

foCoach is an ActiveX component for Visual Basic that allows you to setup a two way communications link between a VB application and a Windows 95 help topic. With this component you can fill in a field in a VB application by clicking a button or hyperlink in a Windows help topic. You can download a trial version of the ActiveX component form the Fundamental Objects Inc. website. (Dec-29-96)

ICE Browser

The ICE Browser is a component for embedding a HTML browser into Java applications. It supports for the HTML language (HTML 3.2). It can be uses as a HTML help systems embedded in JAVA applications or as a WEB browser in a Java application. (Jul-28-97)

JavaHelp

JavaHelp is an online help system that will enable Java programmers to add online help to their Java applications. JavaHelp will display HTML documents stored locally or on a network. The JavaHelp window can include navigational buttons and an expandable table of contents. It will also enable servers side topic searches. You can find more information about JavaHelp in in this WinWriter article. (Updated Nov-10-97)

KeyHelp

KeyHelp is a free ActiveX control that online help authors and programmers can use to enhance the capabilities of compiled Microsoft HTML Help systems and to control the behavior of HTML Help systems in a Windows application. It provides native HTML pop-ups, embedded windows, an auto-sizing secondary window, content-level Information Types, and and various script extensions. (2001-07-01)

PHD HelpIndex

With PHD HelpIndex you can add a WinHelp like subject index to a website. You can either embed the applet in a HTML page or display it in a floating window. As you type characters in the search field will quickly scroll to the first word that contains all the character you entered. You can easily run the applet in a HTML frame along the left hand edge of your browser window and display the found pages in a content frame. (Mar-01-97)

ProHelp

ProHelp is a Delphi control that allows you to quickly add What's This help to a wide variety of windows elements. With ProHelp, you can switch an application to a novice user mode where a person can click the right mouse button on an element to immediately display the element's What's This help topic. (Sep-02-98)

TODSHelp Component

TODSHelp Component is a 16 bit Borland Delphi VCL component that you can use to quickly create Window 95 like help pop-up windows for any object on a Delphi form. You can display these pop-ups by pressing F1 on a selected object, pressing the right button and selecting the "What's this?" menu option or clicking a help button and then an object. You can even launch Windows Help from a help pop-up. (Feb-22-97)

Microsoft Agent Scripting Helper

According to the developer: "Microsoft Agent Scripting Helper, or MASH, assists you in the process of Microsoft Agent programming. MASH separates the code from the content, allowing you to focus on the presentation rather than the programming details. You can experiment with Agent's Animations, Speech, Move, and other actions, and easily compose and play back complex, entertaining scripts. MASH will automatically generate all of the HTML scripting needed to paste your creation into an HTML Web page or HTML email message."(Oct-18-98)

The Microsoft Agent Web Ring

This site lists of over 30 site that contain information or demonstrations of the Microsoft Agent. The Agent "...provides an interactive conversational interface on web sites and in desktop applications using 3D Animated Characters that support both Text-to-Speech Synthesis and Voice-Activated Commands." (1999-07-03)

Active Wizard

Active Wizard is an easy-to-use ActiveX control that enables you to create 'Windows 2000 style' wizards. Just put an ActiveWizard control on your form, add some ActivePane controls, and the ActiveWizard control automatically resizes the Panes for you. The ActivePane controls acts like a container, where you can put other controls. (2000-12-03)

CodeMonkey WizardX

The CodeMonkey WizardX ActiveX control provides all of the elements needed to add professional quality wizard dialogs to any application.(Apr-04-98)

Add-Ins

You can use this deceptively simple little application to add menu items to the Help menu in any Windows 3.1 or 95 application. These add-in menu items can be used to launch other applications, like the Windows calculator, a CBT or a hypertext document. It's amazing easy to use. (Feb-22-97)

Assistware

With Assistware you can add online help to an existing application. Assistware uses a proprietary help topic document viewing software. To open a help topic for an application a users drags and drop the Assistware help bubble onto an application. You can download a demo from this web site. (Updated 2000-11-26)

As-U-Type

As-U-Type is a utility that can automatically correct most common spelling mistakes and typos in any Windows 95/98 application. This can be a very useful for performers who enter lots of text information, such as a help desk representative who types information about equipment problems. (Updated 2000-11-26)

CoachWare

According to the developer Sterling Resources, CoachWare is an "...online coaching tool that provides users with all the information they need, as they need it, in order to perform their jobs successfully. It presents business and system procedures in the context of the users’ job functions and provides easy to follow, step by step instructions for completing specific tasks." You can download a multimedia demonstration of CoachWare. (1999-08-07)

Cognitive agents

According to the developer "Cognitive agents enable the construction of applications with context sensitive behavior, adaptive reasoning, and the ability to monitor and respond to situations in real time, all in a previously impossible human-like fashion. Because they are based on an understanding of the human cognitive architecture, cognitive agent-based applications can be used in a wide range of applications."(1999-11-15)

DemoShield DemoX

With the DemoX ActiveX control or Netscape Plug-in you can easily add an interactive computer program demonstration to a web page or program created with Delphi, Visual Basic or any other development program that supports ActiveX controls. You create the interactive demonstration files with the DemoShield development tool. (Aug-13-97)

e-Sim - Simulation Software

E-Sim created the simulation software used by LiveManuals.com. This site contains 9 different downloadable simulations for products ranging from a blood analyzer to a army tank. (1999-08-07)

IntraLaunch

IntraLaunch is an ActiveX component that can be used to launch a local application by clicking a hypertext link or graphic on a web page. For example, you can program the IntraLaunch to start a word processing program and open a specified file. This component is ideally suited for use in an corporate Intranet. (Jul-01-97)

JAM (TM)

According to the developer "JAM (TM) is an advanced, web-based interactive job aid management system. It is a unique, performance centric business process support system that provides online, interactive job aids needed to perform the job. For ease of use, job aids are organized by job, group, process and task. The user is provided online access to information, procedures, tools, decision support systems, and linked expert support in order to accomplish "moment of need" performance objectives."

JC ActiveDoc

According to the developer " JC_ActiveDoc (TM) is a Netscape Plug-in that allows you to view Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint right inside Netscape. It's ideal for Intranet information exchange. It's also convenient to download and view Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents from Internet. (1999-09-18)

Perfect Menus

Perfect Menu is a little utility application that allows you to add menu items to an application's right click pop-up menu. You can use these additional menus to open other programs, perform actions within the application or start a macro program.

VISN - Visual Interactive Support Network

According to the product description Visual Interactive Support Network is an electronic performance support software designed to deliver task-related information at the point-of-work to the right person at the right time, and is easy to use. The white paper and Features and Benefits page contain additional information about VISN. (2001-02-04)

Wisdom for Notes

Wisdom for Notes is a just-in-time (JIT) learning tool for Lotus Notes®. According the product description and screen shots on this page, Wisdom for Notes consists of help pop-ups (bubblehelp windows) with task based instructions. (2001-04-29)

overLIB Pop-ups in HTML

overLIB is a JavaScript library created to enhance websites with small popup information boxes to help visitors around your website, but only on browsers that support Dynamic HTML (1999-09-25)

Intranet Tools

This page contains a very extensive list of software and tools developing and supporting an internet web sites. (1999-11-28)

Amzi! Prolog + Logic Server

With the Amzi! Prolog + Logic Server, you can use a Prolog language program to create a rules engine that can be linked into any Windows, NT and DOS program that is developed in Delphi, Visual Basic, Toolbook and many other development tools. The Amzi! inc.website contains several sample programs that can be downloaded. (Nov-9-96)

eXpertise2Go - Expert System Web Site

Here you'll find resource information about the expert system approach to providing knowledge online along with demo systems suggesting potential applications as product advisors/infomercials, diagnostic assistants, job aids/performance support tools and technical tutors. (2001-07-08)

Morae by TechSmith

Morae is an all-digital, software-based solution that records and synchronizes user and system data for usability analysis of software, Web sites, Intranets and e-Business applications. By integrating the functionality of a traditional lab with exclusive, Rich Recording Technology, Morae provides a single collaborative solution that modernizes the usability testing process. Organizations can harness the benefits of usability testing at a fraction of the cost.

Bad Human Factors Designs

A scrapbook of illustrated examples of things that are hard to use because they do not follow human factors principles. by Michael J. Darnell

EPSS Indicators

This article, by Bill Miller, describes six key factors that might indicate that a job or business process factors would substantially benefit from an EPSS.

Painless Software Management: An Interview with Joel Spolsky

WebWord: Companies add features because some customers want them. Not every customer wants every feature: most customers use 20% of the features. This leads many naive startups to think they can deliver a product with 20% of the features and still capture the market. Then they crash and burn when they discover that actually everybody is using a different 20% subset of the features of the market leader. (2001-08-19)

Managing User Expectations

Systems development projects have a high failure rate. Often, the users of a system are dissatisfied with it because it does not meet their expectations. What is the cause and effect relationship between expectations and failure? No doubt, a poorly designed system will fail to meet expectations. But sometimes users have unrealistic expectations without regard for constraints of budget, time, manpower, etc., and the best system that developers could produce will go unused because it doesn’t meet these high expectations. In this latter case, the expectations were actually the cause of the failure, not the other way around. Perception can be more important than reality. Project managers have two things to manage: the development of the system and the perception of the system. For this paper, we are focusing on the latter aspect of project management: managing user expectations. (2001-08-19)

Draft Your Dream Team

Destination CRM: Successful KM initiatives, experts say, focus first on people, business processes and company culture. Only later should the emphasis shift to the technology and tools that facilitate knowledge sharing. While specific organizational needs will vary, most teams should include individuals who can assess the company's knowledge imperatives in light of its business requirements. Members may need expertise in management, administration, human resources and business processes as well as in the supporting technologies. (2001-08-05)

The Three Models Used in Designing for Ease of Use

Models facilitate understanding users, analyzing complex systems, and describing effective designs. The use of three models contributes to the design of easy-to-use computer systems: the user's conceptual model, the designer's model, and the programmer's model. Here we provide an understanding of the three models, including how they are used and the relationships between them. (2001-08-05)

Developing a knowledge-aware service and support portal is a team effort

destinationCRM.com, Gloria Gery: Too many organizations spend lots of time and money developing knowledge and support resources without getting the business and performance outcomes they need. There’s no mystery as to why: it results at least in part from the way organizations historically have approached knowledge organization and delivery. Support tools typically are developed by functional groups that operate in organizational silos--documentation, training, business management, information systems or support services and help desks. While each of the resulting knowledge resources may be well structured, none alone is sufficient to allow the company to realize the bottom-line value of knowledge synergies. That’s because each tool has a different goal and is designed, independent of any larger considerations, to achieve it. (2001-07-29)

Critical thinking part 3: project management

uiweb.com: It’s true that design specifications are difficult to write, and that good ideas are fleeting and rare, but until the design is in it’s final form, it’s far from finished. Much can happen between the moment the designer finishes the expression of the idea, and when the development team has finished building it. (2001-07-15)

The Secret to Software Success

Desperate to avoid the scapegoat's horns, some technology executives are finally beginning to take up arms against this sea of failure, redefining how software is built. They call it Agile Development, a disciplined, minimalist approach that's both elegant and arduous, and maybe IT's best hope to avoid "Yet Another Trip to Hell." Agile means what it sounds like: fast and efficient. Small and nimble. Less money, fewer features, shorter projects. (2001-07-08)

Addressing Obstacles to User-Centered Design

Why do many organizations resist or use poor excuses for user-centered design methodologies (while sometimes claiming to be user-centered)? This page presents an overview of numerous answers to this question -- an overview which should help you to identify many of the kinds of obstacles to look for and to prepare for in the organization(s) of interest to you. This page also addresses some of what it takes to overcome or avoid organizational obstacles and solicits your views on these issues. (2001-07-01)

Site Planning, the Red-Headed Stepchild of the Web

Digital Web Magazine: This article is meant to serve as a resource for considering the likely details, and building a site from them that is simple for the user. Many if not all of the questions asked below will look extremely familiar. However, you need to answer for yourself whether or not you sincerely ask these questions for every project—and apply the answers to your work. If you are not sincere about asking these questions and coming up with the answers, the visitors you're hoping for won't be sincere about using the site. (2001-07-01)

Project risk factors checklist

TechRepublic.com: The first step to using the checklist involves identifying potential risks and assigning them probabilities of high, medium, or low. Next, the user reviews a list of high-risk factors and the problems that might result from their occurrence, as well as examples of strategies that can lessen the risk. The checklist also provides examples of medium- and low-level risks whose impact could be severe enough to affect the project. (2001-07-01)

Using a Style Guide to Build Consensus

Usability Interface, Whitney Quesenbery: Style guides are often requested as a way to promote a common look and feel but do little to address the real problems in the way user interfaces are developed. In many situations, a collection of rules for visual design and the use of controls can seem like a band-aid; promoting surface-level consistency rather than solving the real usability problems. Even when a good style guide is created, it is often ignored after release. Worse, the style guide can become a weapon where a user-centered design process is needed. In either case, the style guide has failed to produce the desired effect. What’s missing is a consensus on the scope, ownership, or content. Solving this problem requires a change in the way style guides are developed, distributed, and used. Three suggestions for teams developing style guides are to start early, to make the emerging style guide widely available, and to plan for long-term maintenance of the guidelines. (2001-06-10)

Guidance on Style Guides: Lessons Learned

Usability Interface, Chauncey E. Wilson: This article highlights some of the lessons that I’ve learned about the process of creating style guides and implementing processes for ensuring that a product is consistent in a number of dimensions. I discuss the purposes and benefits of a style guide, a process for creating a style guide, the many types of consistency, reasons why style guides fail, methods for ensuring consistency, and some references that discuss these issues in more detail. (2001-06-10)

Critical thinking in web/interface design part 2: idea generation

Scott Berkun, uiweb.com: Good ideas are hard to find. Project schedules, plans and budgets are important, but without quality ideas, great design is impossible. Finding people that can create and cultivate good ideas is always difficult, and often beyond our control. However, everyone can develop their own creative thinking skills, and can provide an environment that supports creativity. The best teams know how to balance quality engineering practices with a creative and supportive work environment. This essay on idea generation describes how this can be done, and offers advice on defining and managing the creative process. (2001-05-13)

Web Site Production Management Techniques

Macromedia: While there is no perfect way to manage Web production, this guide to techniques for efficiently and consistently delivering excellent user experiences was derived from extensive research into the processes used by seasoned Web professionals. (2001-05-13)

Style Guidance

Webtechniques.com: Looking back on the whole process one year later, we all agree that developing our site's style manual was the key to our successful redesign. Without such a document, we would have had many more problems, and no record of how we solved them. This document gave our authors a central reference for the issues that our site design raised. This page contains a link to the style guide discussed discussed in the article. (2001-04-15)

Critical Thinking in Web and Interface Design

Scott Berkun, Microsoft: The first step towards critical thinking is to take an objective view on the nature of the problem space. As a developer or designer, you are incredibly biased about the value of what you're doing. You're on the inside, looking out, and cannot possibly see your creations the way outsiders will. To get your bearings, you need to triangulate information from multiple sources. The viewpoint of a developer, manager, single important customer is of little value in isolation. Get the bird's-eye view and as many alternative views as you can find. (2001-04-08)

Low-Technology Prototyping Techniques

The fundamental concept underlying these collaborative, low- technology approaches to design is that no one person can embody all the knowledge required to design a successful product. Through reciprocal education, reciprocal preparation, and reciprocal validation, each participant contributes knowledge and in turn is shaped by the contributions of others. Concrete visualization reduces ambiguity and also ensures that the design proceeds to specifics, rather than becoming mired in abstractions. (2001-03-11)

DESIRE Information Gateways Handbook

"This handbook is designed to support libraries and other organisations interested in setting up large-scale information gateways on the Internet. It offers a step by step guide and points to tools, examples and documentation, which can support the process. The handbook is divided into three sections to reflect the managerial, information and technical issues that building a gateway raises." (2001-02-04)

Two Tracks to a UCD Solution

"One commonly held objection to developing a superior user experience, is that it takes too long. The argument goes that, if you wait to get it right then you'll be late to market and the opportunity will be lost. In this short white paper, we present an approach which allows you to do both in a controlled and reasoned fashion - move quickly to respond to market demands, whilst developing a superior user experience." (2001-01-07)

Build e-business apps faster

InfoWorld.com: According to this article: "Web application development projects should be characterized by small teams, flexible requirements, and iterative development, which involves adding application functionality, getting user feedback, and refining requirements through a series of shorter delivery cycles."

Elephants in the Living Room

According to this article by Bruce Tognazzini "Four of your fellow development team members, all trying to do their specific jobs to the best of their abilities, have the power to sink your best effort at interaction design. As an interaction designer, it is your job to see they don't do so." (2000-09-30)

Writing Good Work Objectives

This article elaborates upon the qualities of good work objectives and the process of writing them. It is concerned with how objectives are derived (i.e., their content) and how they are specified (i.e., their form). This article was written for people who are writing work objectives for the first time and for those who, although they might have done so before, find the task a difficult one. (2000-03-26)

Turning Chaos into Order: Managing Web Projects

"In this month's column, I propose a method that combines the best production techniques from the world of media production with those found in the software development environment. This approach provides practices that -- should you welcome them into your nest -- might help you be less nagged, squawked at, and otherwise nitpicked for past chaotic practices." (2000-01-30)

Evaluating a Performance Support Environment for Knowledge Workers

This online article by Beverly E. Thomas, John P. Baron, and Wayne J. Schmidt. identifies some methods for evaluating the feasibility of implementing a performance support system. It describes five evaluation techniques, including some techniques for calculating the potential return on investment (ROI).

Multimedia Development Tools

This website contains a comprehensive summary of the management methodologies, procedural checklists and evaluation tools that can be used to plan, manage and evaluate a multimedia, CBI or EPSS development project.

Project Management Links

This page contains an larger number of links to project management information for software development. (1999-06-01)

Effective Info Architecture

The site has grown too big, too fast, and they hired you to fix it. So where do you start? There are techniques and people who can help you become a better information architect. You're about to learn the techniques; your users are the people who can help you. Through techniques such as personas, card sorting, and pen and paper testing you stay close to your users and should have a good idea of how to design for them. (2001-09-16)

User-Centered Design for VoiceXML Applications

My experiences have identified a number of issues that cause users to exit VoiceXML applications. For example, users will abandon an application - even if they like its concept - when they: are confused by their initial contact with it; think the application stopped working; encounter errors; don't quickly perceive the application's value; and become bored with long prompts or unwieldy application navigation. Your VoiceXML application can avoid or address these issues - and retain more first time users - by implementing human factors wisdom in the context of a UCD (user centered design) process. (2001-08-12)

Perfecting Your Personas

Cooper Interaction Design: A persona is a user archetype you can use to help guide decisions about product features, navigation, interactions, and even visual design. By designing for the archetype—whose goals and behavior patterns are well understood—you can satisfy the broader group of people represented by that archetype. In most cases, personas are synthesized from a series of ethnographic interviews with real people, then captured in 1-2 page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to bring the persona to life. (2001-08-05)

Designing for Usability on a Shoestring

WebReview: Designing a usable interface comes down to knowing who will be using it. This approach is referred to as User-Centered Design, and following it will improve the usability of your site. It's crucial that you focus on the user and their needs from the outset, and keep this in mind throughout the project. Without early and continual focus on the user, you run the risk of discovering usability problems late in the game, when changes are expensive and time consuming. The lesson is simple—identify the target audience of a site as soon as you start thinking about designing it. (2001-08-05)

Stalk Your User

Web Techniques, Jeffrey Veen: Contextual inquiry is an increasingly popular method for discovering this information. Also known as ethnographic research or field studies, the idea is deceptively simple: Build useful products and watch your users as they work. The process itself sounds even easier: Go to where your users are and tag along with them. (2001-05-13)

Notes on Design Practice: Stories and Prototypes as Catalysts for Communication

Thomas Erickson, Apple Computer Inc.: My goal is to talk about some of the informal, practical methods that designers use to grapple with the messy, ill-defined issues that pervade their daily practice.

Boxes and Arrows: Defining IA Deliverables

Webmasterbase.com: This article contains a brief describes of 7 information architecture techniques and deliverables. They are: conceptual model; content inventory and organization; user flows /scenarios; task analysis; site map; and page architecture. According to the author an: "...IA's job is to define the structure and behavior of the systems as it is perceived by the user, and these seven deliverables are an excellent way to make sure the IA's thinking is clear and clearly communicated." (2001-02-18)

Effective Strategies for Bridging Gulfs Between Users and Computer Systems

This paper describes design strategies that led to significant improvements in the usability and learnability of an end-user programming environment called RIDES. These strategies may be viewed as concrete procedures for building easily learned interfaces and were derived from Polson and Lewis' CE+ theory. RIDES was designed to make it possible for US Air Force training experts, with minimal programming experience, to author simulation-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Using the techniques described in this paper, the researcher reduced, by 1/3, the time it took to learn and use the redesigned RIDES system. (2001-01-01)

What exactly is Knowledge Mapping?

"Knowledge mapping is a important practice consisting of education, discovery, survey, audit and synthesis. It aims to track the loss and acquisition of information & knowledge, personal and group competencies and proficiencies, show knowledge flows, appreciate the influence on intellectual capital due to staff loss, assist with team selection and technology matching. (2000-11-19)

A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design

Diagrams are an essential tool for communicating information architecture and interaction design in Web development teams. This document discusses the considerations in development of such diagrams, outlines a basic symbology for diagramming information architecture and interaction design concepts, and provides guidelines for the use of these elements. (2000-10-22)

The Value of Real Customer Involvement

In this ClickZ article, Nick Usborne asks "Why don't more e-commerce sites work harder to solicit, manage, and use significant feedback from their customers? I'm not talking about that lame "feedback" button. I'm talking about respecting your visitors as an important element in your team." (2000-10-15)

Extending UML for UI

UIDesign.net - "This paper seeks to set out my current position and opinion on how the Unified Modeling Language might be extended to accommodate the modeling of interaction design and user interface design for the purpose of facilitating a user centered design process." (2000-10-15)

Seven Styles of Learning

In this article, Elaine Winters asks: Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, hypothesizes that human beings are capable of seven independent means of information processing. How many do you think are considered when a team brainstorms a new product proclaiming itself to be 'interactive?' (2000-10-15)

13 common objections against user requirements analysis

In this InternetArchitect.com article, Simon D'Hertefelt recommends that "...before designing an interactive solution, you have to understand the problem: who are the future users, what are their current practices and what are their needs? This article lists 13 common objections against user requirements analysis and why you should not believe them." (2000-07-30)

Why user experience disasters happen at the start of web projects

According to this InformationArchitect.com article by Sim D'Hertefelt, "Usability IS about choosing useful functionalities. If a website is not useful, making it easy to use or attractive is not going to make it more usable. Usable means useful AND easy to use AND appreciated by users." (2000-06-11)

Composition and Usability

Technique: In this Digital Web article, Rick Cecil describes a process of asking questions to identify the required components of a web page and then ranking those in order of importance. (2000-06-04)

Toward the Automatic Construction of Task Models from Object-Oriented Diagrams

Task models bridge the gap between HCI and Software Engineering. They are useful both for interface design and for generating user interface code and user documentation. These benefits, however, are difficult to achieve because building task models from scratch is difficult. In this paper, we describe an approach for automatically constructing task models from object-oriented diagrams in a CASE tool. (2000-03-12)

Task-Centered Human Interface Design

The central goal of this online shareware book is to teach the reader how to design user interfaces that will enable people to learn computer systems quickly and use them effectively, efficiently, and comfortably. The interface issues addressed are primarily cognitive, that is, having to do with mental activities such as perception, memory, learning, and problem solving. (2000-02-06)

Site Redesign

A article about the process used to redesign the uidesign.net website. This first article is about the process for gathering requirements. (2000-02-06)

Cluster Analysis for Web Site Organization

"This paper outlines the premises of and describes a method for using card-sorting and cluster analysis to involve users in the organizational design of Web sites. Members of a site's target audience sort cards representing key pages of a proposed site into groups. Cluster analysis is then performed across all participants' card groupings to produce site diagrams. By revealing the perceived relatedness of the key pages, these diagrams can help guide the navigational design of the site to meet users' expectations, resulting in a more usable site." (via WebWord) (2000-01-16)

Apprenticing with the Customer: A Collaborative Approach to Requirements Definition

This online article describes a technique for gathering task and process information through an apprenticeship relationship with a user. The technique is called Contextual Inquiry. (Sep-05-97)

Design as Storytelling

This article describes how to use story telling in the early stages of the interaction design process. The author relates that: "I almost always begin design by talking with users. Initially, my goal is simply to collect people's stories. I believe that the stories people tell about what they do and how they do it contain information vital to designing good interfaces. Stories reveal what people like about their work, what they hate about it, what works well, what sorts of things are real problems. But although stories can contain a lot of valuable information, I believe that it is the process of collecting stories, rather than the content they contain, that is their most valuable contribution to design." (1999-10-10)

Helping and Hindering User Involvement - A Tale of Everday Design

This case study provides a detailed account of the obstacles and facilitators to user involvement that were identified during the design of a computer application. The factors that affected user involvement included contracting design services, selecting users, motivating users, facilitating and mediating meetings and offering points of focus for user contributions. (Sep-03-97)

Identifying User Requirements Through Prototyping and Usability Testing

In this article John Harris argues that we should not use paper prototyping or any other usability techniques to gather user requirements. He recommends that we should be using a statistically valid techniques to gather most types of user requirements. (May-16-99)

Crafting a wizard

IBM developersWorks: Designing an effective wizard is no magician's trick. Even though wizards are intended to make complex tasks appear easy, shielding users from complex details is real work to designers and developers. This article will share 15 dos and don'ts gleaned from the author's experience to help you create a wizard that works. (2001-09-16)

COMMON GROUND: A Pattern Language for Human-Computer Interface Design

How can the HCI community help inexperienced designers move away from clumsy designs and labor-intensive processes towards this state of confidence and skill, without spending years learning it all the hard way? To begin with, we could start building a human-computer interface pattern language. A language of this sort is a set of interrelated patterns, which share similar assumptions, terminologies, and contexts. At its best, such a language would both aid individual interface designers in their day-to-day work (as the Design Patterns book clearly does for many software engineers), and also help the whole industry develop better tools and paradigms. (2001-08-19)

IBM User Interface Guidelines

These user interface guidelines govern the design of IBM network-based products. This is a well designed document that includes both design principles and specific guidelines. Many of the principles and guidelines can be applied to Web sites and consumer software products. (2001-08-05)

KDE User Interface Guidelines

This document is intended to provide a place where KDE application designers/developers can review user interface design principles. It is intended to complement, not compete with, the interface standards. Design principles are not the same as standards; I view standards as something that can be measured and enforced. I like to think that the standards would be motivated by the principles. The standards should be defined so that a given application can be reviewed against them to determine its degree of compliance. However, our goal here is not to provide measurable standards, but rather to encourage better design and improve usability. (2001-07-22)

Making Medical Device Interfaces More User-Friendly

Medical Devicelink: "A lot of medical device displays look overstuffed with information and controls so that very little empty space remains. Such space is important in a user interface, because it helps to separate information into related groups and provides a resting place for the user's eye. Overly dense-looking user interfaces can be initially intimidating to nurses, technicians, and physicians, making it difficult for them to pick out specific information at a glance." (2001-07-22)

Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines

This article describes a new user interface model called inductive user interface (IUI). Also called inductive navigation, the IUI model suggests how to make software applications simpler by breaking features into screens or pages that are easy to explain and understand. This IUI model is emerging in various Microsoft projects, most notably Money 2000. This article provides an introduction to IUI, rather than a firm, comprehensive set of guidelines. (2001-07-08)

Reducing the user interface

IBM Developer Works: User interfaces are constantly getting larger and more functional. There's probably a simple exponential growth function similar to Moore's Law that could describe it, but whatever it is, the key is that UIs keep expanding. Many applications have far more data and functions than a single user would ever want or be able to use. This paper focuses on, among other things, ways to enable users to quickly filter down large data sets and to limit functions based on their job roles. (2001-06-17)

User interface expert Bruce Tognazzini has plenty to say -- ignore his words at your peril

IBM developerWorks: Bruce Tognazzini has been at the forefront of the ongoing user interface debate for the past 20 years. He has been a relentless advocate of his own design principles, even when his work has been downplayed or ignored by computer companies that have hired him. This piece surveys his thoughts on the problems of usability, based on his online and offline writings. Since he has never been afraid to express his opinions on the subject, there's plenty of material to work with. (2001-05-06)

The Role of Flow in Web Design

The irony of flow in design is that when it is achieved, the design itself often goes unnoticed. Paper clips, suspension bridges, and the computer mouse are all great designs, but are noticed by most only when they fail. This traps the egos of many developers and designers, who might feel frustrated by the lack of recognition for their brilliance. Sometimes you'll see a software product or Web site that goes out of its way to make you aware of what the designer has done for you, or what they think about the world, but this is rarely of benefit to the user. (2001-02-25)

It’s a matter of style – GUI versus the Web

IBM: In the second column in his series on improving application design, Dick Berry focuses on the differences between GUI and Web environments, and reveals effective approaches for each that can enable the best possible user experience. (2001-01-01)

Speaking Metaphorically

CIO Magazine: "An effective metaphor makes a site or system intuitively obvious to the new user by providing comfortable and familiar surroundings that help users quickly absorb the content of a site or adapt to the rules of a system. Take the shopping cart used in online stores, which helps ground users by providing a brick-and-mortar object for them to relate to." (2001-01-01)

User Modeling for Adaptive and Adaptable Software Systems

Bill Kules, University of Maryland: Universal Usability requires that user interfaces accommodate users with a wide variety of expertise and knowledge. Moreover, individual users' needs and preferences change as they use a software system. Systems that guide the user through an evolutionary learning process or adapt the user interface to the user provide a solution to this challenge. This paper introduces the techniques, highlights several examples of systems that implement them and provides guidelines for practitioners who wish to develop adaptive and adaptable interfaces. (2000-12-10)

A Review of Error Messages

Michael Bolton: Error messages, if they’re posted at all, should convey helpful information and advice--not only for the user, but also for tech support and maintenance programmers. Here are a few things to think about when coding your error-handling routines and designing your error messages.

The Art of UI Prototyping

Scott Berkun, Microsoft Corporation: "The best reason to prototype is to save time and resources. Relative to the real product, prototypes are easy and inexpensive to create. So, for a minimal investment, you can find usability and design problems and adjust your UI before you invest heavily in the final design and technologies." (2000-11-19)

The user experience: The iceberg analogy of usability

In this article Dick Berry of User Experience Design, IBM Ease of Use Team writes "Developers sometimes ask which aspects of look and feel contribute most to the overall usability of an application or Web site. They are typically surprised when I answer that the "look and feel" aspects aren't the major contributors at all." (2000-10-22)

SAP Design Guild

This site contains a number of articles about the various aspects of designing web applications. The site contains an article by Alan Cooper. (2000-09-04)

Interactive Systems Design

This page contains the course notes and information for an introductory course on Interactive Systems Design. (2000-09-04)

Undo me!

In this Salon Magazine article, Simson Garfinkel, suggests that a consistent undo feature that allows people to recover from accidental deletions is far better than displaying and "Are you sure?" message. (2000-06-04)

Metaphors We Compute By

In fact, the more metaphors you use, the better. I'm giving this lecture, therefore, to encourage you all to think about the metaphors you use in talking about computers, and to consider broadening your repertoire. (via webword) (2000-03-12)

Defining Interaction Design: An Interview with Alan Cooper

According to Alan Cooper: "Look and Feel stuff is Interface Design. It's all very stylistic. It's the color that you paint your walls. Interaction Design is about the Architecture. It's what kind of building are we building. What functions does it support." (2000-02-27)

Principles of good GUI Design

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have become the user interface of choice. Yet despite the GUI's popularity, surprisingly few programs exhibit good interface design. Moreover, finding information explaining what constitutes a good and intuitive interface is exceedingly difficult. In this article, I describe the basic rules for all good interfaces -the cardinal dos and don'ts. (2000-02-20)

Summary of The Humane Interface

When we set about learning any interface feature that is new to us, we proceed in two phases, the first of which gradually grades into the second. In the first, or learning, phase we are actively aware of the new feature, and seek to understand and master it. If that feature is well–designed, and if we use it repeatedly, we eventually enter the desirable second, or automatic, phase, in which we have formed a habit, and use the feature habitually, without thought or conscious effort. (2000-02-06)

Paper Prototyping Kit

The kit contains scaled GUI and Web screens, printed with a light grid designed to facilitate location of controls (such as buttons and fields) but to drop out when photocopied. The screens are colour printed on A3 paper (approximately equivalent to US Ledger/Tabloid size). (2000-01-16)

Designing a More Usable World

This web site is maintained by Trace, "...a research center at the University of Wisconsin - Madison which focuses on making off the shelf technologies and systems like computers, the Internet, and information kiosks more accessible for everyone through the process known as universal, or accessible design." (1999-12-05)

Microsoft Accessibility Web Site

This site contains information about designing and developing accessible software and web sites. (1999-12-05)

How to Avoid Foolish Consistency

According to this article by Scott Berkun of Microsoft, "People don't like to learn things. If they take the time to learn something, they expect to be able to apply that knowledge in many places. It follows that good designers conserve the number of things users need to learn to get stuff done" The article goes on to point out that consistency can be a bad thing when it does not serve a specific purpose. (1999-09-18)

Do Interface Standards Stifle Design Creativity?

According to the Jakob Nielsen essay "Since the dawn of time (1984), we have known that consistency is one of the strongest contributors to usability. The Macintosh was based on a detailed book of Apple Human Interface Guidelines that were followed by almost all applications. One of the main benefits of the Mac (and later Windows) over earlier systems was the resulting consistency that made it possible for users to use software right out of the box." (1999-09-05)

The Importance of Designing Usable Systems

According to this article by Susan Dray; "Developers often see the functionality of a system as separate from the UI, with the UI as an add-on. Users, however, do not typically make distinctions between the underlying functionality and the way it is presented in the UI. To users, the UI is the system. Therefore, if the UI is usable, they will see the entire system as usable." (1999-08-22)

The Importance of Simplicity

According to this article by Scott Berkun of Microsoft "Web sites and software often compete with each other based on the features they provide. The popular assumption is that the more features a product has, the better it will be. The truth is that features improve a product only if they are actually used by the customer. In most cases the proliferation of features in products creates more complexity than value" (1999-07-13)

Interface Design and Optimization of Reading of Continuous Text

This article summarizes the research on reading online text. (1999-06-12)

Designing the User Interface

This site supplements Ben Schneiderman's book "Designing the User Interface". The site contains many links to related websites, articles and HCI course information. The links are organized by Chapters in the book. (Feb-07-99)

An EPSS Interface that people can use

This online article by Dr. Beatriz Beltrán provides ideas and information about designing a user interface for an EPSS. It includes a design checklist for evaluating an interface.

GUIguide Enterprise Guidelines

"GUIguide provides you with world-leading graphical user interface design standards. It enables your developers to access design guidelines for both GUI and web-based applications from their desktops using any standard web browser." (Feb-07-99)

GUI Testing Checklist

This site contains a very extensive and detailed GUI testing checklist. The site also contains links to other GUI testing resources. (Sep-02-98)

The Interaction Design Patterns Page

This page contains information about resources related to pattern languages for interaction design (of which user interface design is a subset), and a few links to more general papers that may be of use to interaction designers. (Apr-18-99)

Organizing Information Spatially

According to the author of this online article, Kevin Mullet, "By carefully adjusting the qualities of individual elements and the configuration as a whole, the designer can manipulate the order in which elements are perceived, the relative importance assigned to each, and the relationships between elements inferred by the viewer". (Jul-26-98)

Usability Heuristics

This page contains a brief description of the ten factors that affect the usability of a computer program. This list was developed by Jakob Nielsen. (Mar-12-97)

User-Centered Revolution

This article describes the difference between system-centered and user-centered design approaches. It also describes some key factors in user-centered system and list the category of errors that users typically make. (Mar-12-97)

User Interface Design

According to the author the information in this site is intended to be an introduction to the issues involved in designing user interfaces. It draws heavily on material that is already in existence and is a summarization and synthesis of those resources. (Mar-02-98)

User Interface Design Tips

This Adobe Acrobat article contains numerous tips on the process of designing and developing a user interface. (Jan-15-99)

User Interface papers by David Benyon

This page contains a list of articles authored or co-authored by David Benyon. The articles are about Adaptive and Intelligent Interfaces, Task Analysis and System Design. All the articles are in the Adobe PDF format. (Jan-17-98)

Task/Transaction System Design Model

This article, by Bill Miller, describes a basic design model that was used to develop an awarding winning electronic performance support system. This page contains several screens shoots and diagrams that will take a while to download.

Yahoo - Interface Design Index

This Yahoo index page contains links to various sites with information about interface design. (Mar-20-99)

Making use of user research

Cooper Interactive: User research can be roughly broken down into two types: usability testing and ethnographic field research. Many people are already familiar with usability testing, and many companies make use of it during development. However, ethnographic field research can yield valuable results for improving products that can't be easily measured by usability testing. (2001-09-16)

Guerrilla usability

Builder.com: The most important design elements to test are navigation; labeling of inputs, categories, links, and buttons; searching; and multistep processes such as shopping or registration. Anytime you do something unconventional, test it. Innovation is critical to advancing usable Web design, but don't turn your visitors into unpaid test subjects. Test in the safety of your own garage with willing subjects. (2001-09-16)

Fly on the Wall

IBM developerWorks: For developers to make products that delight customers, they need adequate information about who exactly the customers are and what their requirements are. The User-Centered Design (UCD) process provides numerous options for gathering both customer and user input, with wide variation regarding the time involved, labor required, overhead costs, and validity of the information collected. The "Fly on the Wall" (FOTW) technique is a low-cost, low-overhead method of collecting valid customer data. The method is illustrated here through a pilot study that used first-hand, unobtrusive observations by UCD practitioners to collect valid customer data in a timely, cost-effective manner in collaboration with development and marketing staff. (2001-09-02)

The Usability of Usability

An interview with Jared Spool, Founding Principal of User Interface Engineering. According to Spool: "Usability is not usable! It doesn't work. It doesn't produce the results we promise it will. And we get angry when people stop paying attention to us. As a profession, we need to spend a lot more resources on basic research. We need to stop thinking that there are pat, one-size-fits-all solutions to every problem. And we need to align ourselves with the business goals more directly. We need to make our own work usable." (2001-07-29)

A Comprehension-Based Model of Web Navigation and Its Application to Web Usability Analysis

CoLiDeS, a comprehension-based cognitive model of Web navigation, offers a theoretical explanation of the impasses users so often encounter during information search and retrieval from the WWW, and also identifies the determinants of success cases. In this model, acting on a single Web page screen object is regarded as the outcome of a multi-step process: (1) parsing the current display containing up to about 200 screen objects into five to ten top-level schematic objects, (2) focusing on one of these top-level schematic objects, (3) comprehending and elaborating the screen objects within the focused-on area, and then (4) selecting one of the actual screen objects as the target for the next action, the object whose representation bears the highest degree of semantic similarity to the user’s goal. (2001-07-22)

GNOME Usability Study Report

A report on the results of a baseline usability study of the GNOME desktop conducted by a Sun's GNOME usability staff in Menlo Park, California during the week of March 13-16, 2001. Gnome is a graphical user interface (GUI) for the Linux operating system. The report gives detailed findings of the study and makes 32 design recommendations. The study found that GNOME's dispersed development process should be transparent at the user level but it currently shows through. This results in confusion for the user who is confronted with inconsistent terminology and user interfaces, multiple ways to accomplish tasks, and information that is not organized intuitively, requiring the user to manipulate similar information in separate locations. The user is also presented with overwhelming amounts of detail and complexity, all displayed at the same level. (2001-07-22)

Testing E-Commerce Systems: A Practical Guide

IEEE Computer Society: This article provides a quick and practical introduction to testing medium- to large-scale transactional e-commerce systems based on project experiences developing tailored solutions for B2C Web retailing and B2B procurement. Typical of most e-commerce systems, the application architecture includes front-end content delivery and management systems, and back-end transaction processing and legacy integration. Aimed primarily at project and test managers, this article explains how to establish a systematic test process, and test e-commerce systems. (2001-06-17)

An Integrated Method for Evaluating Interfaces (pdf)

When we added heuristic evaluation to our expert analysis method, we found that it worked well in our interdisciplinary environment, but that its recommended prioritization strategy (which ranks problems according to severity) has some limitations. Specifically, it does not address how much it will cost the developers to fix the problems, nor does it adequately capture the distinction between high-level (global) and low-level (specific, screen-level) problems. To address these limitations, we developed a method that integrates user research, heuristic evaluation, affinity diagramming, cost-benefit charts, and recommendations into a report that others can use to plan both short and long-term improvements. (2001-06-17)

Apply Usability Methodologies in Intranet Information Architecture

Intranet Journal: Over a series of five articles, I'll use a real project example to demonstrate how we applied comprehensive Usability theories and methodologies in the development of the information architecture for an intranet. Our first method of gathering data for the project was a stakeholder analysis. The purpose of the stakeholder analysis was to develop a better understanding for project expectations and scope, to learn more about the organization, and to gain a general understanding about the end users. (2001-06-10)

NetRaker Experience Recording

A Web-based remote-research application that enables companies to observe and interact with their customers, partners and/or employees by empowering their researchers to remotely view and record their users' computers. By connecting through the Internet or via intranets and extranets, researchers can view their users' desktops and chat in real time. (2001-06-03)

Usability Levels - Three Ways to Care for Usability

SAP: All three levels of usability work are needed for developing usable applications. Technical prerequisites and style guides create the fundament on which usable applications can be built, but do not guarantee them. Only the "user-and-task" level ensures that a development team will really end up with a usable application that serves the needs of its users. (2001-04-22)

Usability Makes a Comeback

ClickZ: Once you've lost a customer on your Web site, you've lost that customer for good. This happens for many reasons: faulty or ambiguous navigation, bad interface design, long download time, incompatible technology, and so on. What can you do about it? The answer is simple: Find out what your site visitors want your site to do. The earlier you discover their needs, the better. To make it easy for you, I have created a Usability Checklist that can be used to test your site before launch. (2001-04-22)

Usability Testing Basics

ClickZ: About a year and half ago "Web development was almost always done under ridiculous time constraints, and usability testing was seen as an advantageous but unnecessary step in developing a site. Even when sites were tested, there was no time to incorporate learning from the tests before launch. Since then, the industry has come a long way. Usability testing is now recognized as a necessary, if not integral, part of Web site development. As the industry matured, three simple truths emerged:" (2001-04-15)

Usor: A Collection of User Oriented Methods

This web site contains descriptions of different user oriented methods. These are not exhaustive descriptions. They are rather short summaries with references to more thorough descriptions of these methods. The purpose of this web-site is to encourage the usage of user oriented methods in both industry and research projects. (2001-04-15)

The Race is On

E-commerce Guide: Want to be able to determine what visitors encounter when they visit your site? Then put together this easy usability test. Here are the ingredients: two computers; your site and a competitor's site; two Internet users of equal dexterity; a shopping list; and a timer. Set your users up at separate terminals and arm them both with the same shopping list. Don't put too many items on the list but make sure there is a good mix of products that include non-brand (any black sweater) and specific items (Calvin Klein's cK Be cologne). (2001-03-25)

Usability.gov

This site is designed to provide current and accurate information on how to make Web sites and other user interfaces more usable, accessible, and useful. Information is provided by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the federal government's principal agency for cancer research. The site also links to a variety of quality Web sites and resources on usability, accessibility, and related topics that exist in the field. (2001-03-11)

Success Rate: The Simplest Usability Metric

Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox: "In addition to being expensive, collecting usability metrics interferes with the goal of gathering qualitative insights to drive design decisions. As a compromise, you can measure users' ability to complete tasks. Success rates are easy to understand and represent usability's bottom line." (2001-02-18)

Hail to the usability test

Poor design makes us feel like idiots. We blame ourselves. But Nielsen gets us off the hook: "If many people make the same mistake, the conclusion is not that people are stupid but that the design is wrong." And you can't change people. We're a constant, according to Nielsen. Designers typically try to fix people, with training or unfathomable manuals. But it never works. (2001-01-28)

Why You Need to Test Your Web Site with Real Users

Webreference.com: "The ultimate purpose of your Web site should be to help your visitors find the information, product, or service that they want, quickly and painlessly. Professionals of all kinds find it difficult to put themselves in the shoes of ordinary users, so it is essential to ask users what their problems are. Although running usability tests will cost a few thousand dollars, an unusable commercial site will lose far more than that by driving away visitors." (2001-01-14)

Measuring User Experience

Webtechiques: This article defines and describes the best practices for using various techniques for designing and evaluating Web sites. The techniques include usability testing, contextual inquiry, heuristic evaluation, and focus groups. (2001-01-14)

20 Tasks in Ecommerce

This page lists 20 user tasks that can be used in usability evaluations. The tasks focus on what users need to do with most e-commerce sites. (2001-01-14)

When Nielsen Speaks . .

WebTechniques.com: An interview with Jakob Nielsen in which he points out that: "In traditional commerce, first you buy a microwave, or a VCR, or an Excel spreadsheet. By the time you've discovered that a product is too difficult to use, the manufacturer is laughing all the way to the bank. On the Web, if a site or product is too difficult, the user's reaction is to leave. The Web reverses the user experience and transaction process. On the Internet, ease of use comes first and transfer of money comes second. Revenues on the Web are determined almost completely by usability." (2001-01-07)

Collecting Feedback About Your Website's Search Interface

Internet.com, Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice Coyne: "It's crucial for websites to provide search interfaces that are available, simple, and productive. This article gives basic instructions about how to test your website's search interface for usability." (2001-01-07)

Good Grief! The Highs and Lows of Usability Testing

WebReview: According to this article" "When team members pour their heart and soul into a project, they become heavily invested in the results of their effort. As it becomes clear that changes need to be made, there's a very real grief process involved in letting go of the current design and moving toward a better product. Teams need to work together to process both the information and the emotions that usability testing produces." The author provides some practical advise on dealing with the emotional reaction to the results of usability testing. (2001-01-01)

EULER evaluation: a study in search engine usability

This site contains a reports for three different usability inspection techniques: Cognitive Walkthrough, Usability Heuristics and Usability Testing with Evaluators. It's an interesting example of documenting the types of findings using these inspection techniques. (2001-01-01)

Usability Testing of World Wide Web Sites

Bureau of Labor Statistics: The life cycle of Web creation is identical to that of traditional software: requirements gathering, analysis, design, implementation, testing, and deployment. And, just as traditional software development should have a functionality and a usability component, so should Web development efforts. Usability can be defined as the degree to which a given piece of software assists the person sitting at the keyboard to accomplish a task, as opposed to becoming an additional impediment to such accomplishment. (2000-12-10)

Universal Usability Guide

This Web site provides the definition and foundation for the topic of universal usability in addition to introducing researchers and practitioners to five perspectives on universal usability. Universal usability involves understanding how users attempt to accomplish tasks using a variety of technologies in different organizational and social contexts. And researchers and practitioners have a wide range of approaches and methods available to apply to this range of user-system interactions. (2000-12-10)

A Heuristic Evaluation of a World Wide Web Prototype

Bureau of Labor Statistics: This paper describes the use of the heuristic usability evaluation technique. One of the findings of the study was: "The biggest discrepancies were found in heuristic #2 (consistency) and heuristic #7 (progressive levels of detail). The UI experts found more consistency violations than did the developers, while the pattern was reversed for progressive levels of detail. One explanation is that developers were well acquainted with the application's intended functionality and so did not find inconsistencies to be particularly disruptive." (2000-12-10)

Usability as a Goal for the Design of Computer Systems

Assessing usability is vital for those acquiring software packages as well as for those designing and developing software. The concept is also worth scientific research. Still, defining or measuring usability is problematic both in the course of system development projects and in research settings. The measures promoted by some recent usability studies are inadequate and even give rise to false assumptions. (2000-12-03)

Rage Against the Machine

WebWord.com: Usability is about psychological research, data collection, and data analysis. It is not really about design, or marketing, or programming. Unfortunately, you need to be wary of companies that claim they do usability because many do not interact with users at all, and many do not do any research. Pay close attention to your business problems and when you are seeking out usability help, talk in detail about how the research is going to be conducted. (2000-12-03)

Software is too hard to use

According to this ComputerWorld article "Next month, a group of corporate users, vendors and experts will convene in Redwood Shores, Calif., to test what they hope will become a common method for evaluating the usability of software. The report, which a vendor would present to users, is analogous to nutrition information and ingredients on a food package." (2000-09-04)

Usability Tools: A Useful Start

According to this WebTechniques article "The best way to improve your site's usability is to observe your users interacting with it and then incorporate their feedback into your design. However, if you're inexperienced with facilitating usability tests or lack the resources to conduct a test, consider employing some automated usability tools that provide a head start in designing a more usable site." (2000-08-20)

omparison of Usability Evaluation Methods

CThis chart provides a brief description of various usability test techniques and their advantages and disadvantages. (2000-06-04)

End of the Hit Parade

According to this CIO magazine article " Investing any more money in your website without evaluating how well it meets the customers' needs—or whether it is delivering enough of an ROI to justify its existence—is about as stupid as investing in a website that tells the time. This story will give you tips on how to measure whether your website measures up." (2000-05-29)

Best E-Tailers? It's a Mystery

Online retailers are starting to employ a time-tested tactic used by old-school retailers to ensure positive shopping experiences: the mystery shopper. For years, brick-and-mortar companies such Sears and Kinkos have hired third-party researchers to pose as customers and then report on their buying experiences, including in-store customer service, store appearance, and security. (2000-03-19)

Usability Toolkit

This site contains information on usability testing techniques, participatory design, contextual inquiry and evaluation checklists. (2000-02-27)

Industry Usability Reporting

In October of 1997, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) initiated an effort to increase the visibility of software usability

Computer System Usability Questionnaire

This site contains a usability questionnaire that can be used to evaluate user satisfaction with a computer program. (1999-08-15)

Web Test Dummy: Automating Web-Site Usability Testing With Agents

The WebTechniques.com article describes a software agent that evaluates some web site usability factors. The agent is given a task to find some specific information. In the process of finding the information, it evaluates download time, number of link on a page and the number of pages visited. (1999-07-04)

Guide to Usability for Software Engineers

This University of Maryland web site contains an extensive body of link and information about usability testing and tools for developing user interface components. (Nov-27-98)

Serco Web Site - Online Articles and Links

The Useful Information section of the Servco website contains articles about usability testing (in PDF format) and links to other usability and Human-Computer Interaction web sites. (Nov-27-98)

The Usability Methods Toolbox

This well organized site contains a brief description of the methods that can be used to evaluate the usability of a computer program. (Jan-04-97)

Usability Professional's Association

This website has information about the Association and links to other sites that contain information about usability testing. (Jan-05-97)

Usability Evaluation with the Cognitive Walkthrough

This online article describes a usability testing method that can be performed on a paper model by a design team. The authors contents that Cognitive Walkthrough is an effective method for identifying and eliminating some potential usability problems during the early stages of the design process. (Mar-12-97)

Getting the Most from Paired-User Testing

This online article by Daniel Wildman appeared in Vol2 No3 of the ACM Interactions magazine. It examines the shortcoming of some types of formal usability testing and describes a test method that employs two users interacting with one workstation. (Jul-01-97)

Focus on Usability

This article was published in the October 1996 edition of the Windows Tech Journal. The article describes the principles of usability testing and interface design some. (Oct-5-97)

Usability Problem Identification Using Both Low- and High-Fidelity Prototypes

This article describes an experimental comparison of using low and high fidelity prototypes in usability evaluations. In the experiment, substantially the same sets of usability problems were found in the low- and high-fidelity conditions. Moreover, there was a significant correlation between the proportion of subjects detecting particular problems in the low- and high-fidelity groups. In other words, individual problems were detected by a similar proportion of subjects in both the low- and high-fidelity conditions. The authors concluded that the use of low-fidelity prototypes can be effective throughout the product development cycle, not just during the initial stages of design. (Feb-01-98)

The WebMetrics Toolkit

The WebMetrics Toolkit is a group of programs that can be used to assess the usability of HTML documents. (Sep-06-98)

That Darned Content

Webreference.com: This article will step you through a few of the techniques I have used or seen others use to spin gold from straw in Web pages. The differences between a highly effective page, and one that is hard to read, or downright ugly, is often very subtle. Organization is the key to great pages, no matter what challenges you face. Good planning, enhanced by a few little tricks and aids can help you create great pages. Whether you have too many photos, too much text, or a full basket of elements that have no business on the same page, you can create a page that looks good and is easy to read. (2001-09-16)

The Art of Information Architecture

iBoost Journal: There are many factors in a quality Web site Design, development, creativity, writing, color balance, and organization are all contributors, but careful planning is what makes or breaks the site. The old adage 'It'll come out in the wash' rarely works in practice. Lack of planning usually results in unorganized material and plenty of headaches along the way. Information Architecture is the practice of designing the infrastructure of a Web site, specifically the navigation. (2001-08-05)

Apply Usability Methodologies in Intranet Information Architecture

Intranet Journal: A user needs analysis is crucial to the user-centred design process. Identifying issues in the requirements phase can save companies up to 100 times over what it would cost the company to fix the same problems after the system has been delivered. Once completed, a UNA report will be the blue print from which the production team can work, ensuring that the stakeholders' intranet's goals are married to the needs of the end users. In the first article of this series, we described how our stakeholder analysis gave us an understanding for the organizational structure, and its internal and external communications systems and processes. (2001-08-05)

Interview with Seth Gordon Information Architecture

Argus Center for Information Architecture: In a misguided effort to measure the effectiveness of an architecture, many researchers assess variables such as time on task (how long it takes a user to complete a given task) and error rate and recovery (the number of errors and how users recover). While these may be relevant in certain situations, like diffusing bombs or responding to 911 calls, I think they can be misleading when trying to measure the average user's experience on the Internet. I've traded in those tired metrics for two new ones: the frustration factor and user confidence of accuracy. (2001-07-22)

Using Language to Persuade Web Audiences

Designers must treat language as an integral part of a site's design. This means approaching each word on a page with the same intensity as you would your programming code and interface design. To do this takes some planning, creativity, and skill. Writing for the Web involves being aware of your audience and what you intend to communicate. We must know our audience intimately, understand our intent clearly, and be constantly aware of the way writing is integrated into our designs. (2001-07-08)

Error Message Guidelines

Established wisdom holds that good error messages are polite, precise, and constructive. The Web brings a few new guidelines: Make error messages clearly visible, reduce the work required to fix the problem, and educate users along the way. (2001-07-01)

Brevity versus usability

IBM DeveloperWorks: The user interface is the primary channel of communication between software and users, and is basically textual in nature, so clear language is critical to usability. Unfortunately, this clarity is often sacrificed in an effort make messages unnecessarily brief. If you use language a bit more generously, often just by adding a well-chosen word or two, confusing or ambiguous messages can easily be made understandable. (2001-07-01)

Information Design Using Card Sorting

Two Step Design: This paper outlines a step-by-step approach to preparing and running card sorting sessions. Guidelines on how to analyse and make use of the results are also provided. What is written here is based upon our practical experience of using card sorting to design intranets and online documentation. Hopefully these tips will allow you to learn from our mistakes and discoveries. (2001-07-01)

Need "Therapy" for Your "Information Pain"?

ACM Ubiquity: In interview with Louis Rosenfeld co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (O'Reilly). According to Rosenfield "You can test aspects or components of an information architecture. But you can't quantitatively evaluate the whole beast, save for some extremely narrow and focused situations. For example, you can test the relative speeds of both Land's End's and REI's search engines by looking up the same blue parka. But you can't measure the performance of the architecture itself. It's made of too many individual components that make up each site's architecture (including various browsable taxonomies, search functions, labeling schemes, navigational approaches and interface widgets). Users interact with many or all of these components as they look for information in a site, and it's impossible to ascertain their collective performance." (2001-06-17)

Hyperchunks

In place of the hypertext, we have what might best be termed the "hyperchunk" - the succinct slice of high-quality information designed to be stored in a database, linked from all over, understood quickly and in relative isolation, and often acted upon within a few minutes. (2001-05-27)

Interview with Vivian Bliss, Microsoft's Knowledge Management Analyst

Centralizing the creation and maintenance of an enterprise-wide information architecture is much worse than pushing a boulder up a hill. At least Sisyphus knew right away that he was beat, but today's intrepid IAs are naively signing up for multi-year tours of duty in a hell of organizational politics that would make Dilbert cringe. Vivian Bliss and her colleagues at Microsoft are pragmatic about these challenges, and have created the best model I've encountered so far for getting the cowboys and Borg to work from the same page. (2001-05-27)

Online Help - Too Much of a Good Thing?

STC Usability Newsletter: Our position is that users do not need every possible procedure in the online help. Furthermore, placing all procedures within the online help may potentially reduce its usability. Consequently, a new approach to the design of online help should be adopted that includes the information the user may really need. We suggest that such information is associated with usability problems of the system and that usability tests can identify the critically needed information. This information can then be implemented in a way that reflects the severity of the problem. (2001-04-29)

EdwardTufte.com

This website describes Edward Tufte's books, one-day course, and artwork. Edward Tufte has written seven books, including Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. He writes, designs, and self-publishes his books on information design, which have received more than 40 awards for content and design. He is Professor Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught courses in statistical evidence, information design, and interface design. (2001-04-29)

70 Ways To Handle Text-Intensive Web Sites

Web Review: Numerous articles and books are devoted to creating graphics, but relatively little attention is paid to the problems associated with formatting text-intensive Web sites, or sites whose content consists primarily of relatively long articles. Yet, most of what you see on the majority Web sites is HTML text! This article provides some ideas and guidelines for designing text intensive sites. (2001-03-04)

Looking for Metadata in All the Wrong Places

WebReference.com: "Controlled vocabularies and thesauri have huge value: not only can they improve how successful users are at searching and browsing, but they can also make it easier for content owners to manage their information. For example, tagging your records or documents becomes so much easier when you know that the preferred term to use is "cell phone" instead of "mobile phone." (2001-02-04)

Using Words, Words, Words to Set your Site Apart

The eCom Resource Center: Here's the lesson: Whether it's product copy, web content, or e-mail promotion, words are going to be your primary medium of exchange, your main currency of persuasion, and your direct channel for online branding. On the Internet, content is where it's at - and when your Flash intro expires, your language must have the power to back up your pyrotechnics. This means that your words have to grab attention. And let's be honest: if Internet users are making return visits to your site, it's not just because of your graphics. It's because you have sturdy, compelling content. (20001-01-28)

Implementing Information Across Your Site

Web Review: "At a recent workshop, we asked one group of people to structure information for a restaurant that allows people to order pizza online. At the same time, a second group was asked to pretend that they were actually planning to order dinner using the site, and to put down all the information they would look for. When we compared notes after 15 minutes, we found that the group doing the information structuring had gone into great depths on issues like "positioning," "brand building," and "competitive strengths." The group that wanted to use the site had a lot more mundane questions like, "Can I pay the person who will deliver?" "Will there be free oregano and chili flakes?" "Do I need to give directions to my house?" and "Can I place an order for tomorrow?" The earlier group had also considered some of these questions, but in the hierarchy of their information, this wasn't top-drawer stuff. For the consumer, this formed the bulk of the critical information." (2001-01-28)

Effective Web Writing

WebTechniques, Crawford Killian: Advise about writing for the web, including: "Don't be tender with your text, but be tender with visitors who read it. That means writing "use" instead of "utilize," which is identical in meaning but has two more syllables. It means writing "decided" instead of "made a decision." And cutting whole paragraphs of non-essential information. Every word and phrase should have to fight for its life." (2001-01014)

Information Architecture and Personalization

This white paper demonstrates the use of information architecture components as a foundation for thinking about personalization. After defining the information architecture components, it describes a model that combines the components into a complete personalization system. This model could be used to guide your personalization system development methodology, evaluate a set of personalization systems, or merely to give you the terminology to help you communicate about personalization. (2001-01-01)

Empirical Studies of Online Help

Hui-Fang Wen, University of Maryland: This paper examines major issues of designing online help system. A well designed online help system should bring relevant information to users when they need it and guide them through the interface just as a human teacher would. It helps users with a problem as efficiently as possible without requiring the users to study a topic in depth. Guidelines and recommendations about how to design such a good online help system will be provided in this paper (2000-12-10)

The Ethics of Information Architecture

Argus Center for Information Architecture: Are you aware that the practice of information architecture is riddled with powerful moral dilemmas? Do you realize that decisions about labeling and granularity can save or destroy lives? Have you been designing ethical information architectures? (2000-12-10)

A Comparison of Still, Animated, or Nonillustrated On-Line Help

Susan M. Harrison, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire: This report describes a study in which 176 undergraduates received on-line help instructions for completing seven computer-based tasks. Instructions were provided in either written or spoken form with or without still graphic or animated visuals. Results consistently revealed that visuals, either still graphic or animated, in the on-line help instructions enabled the users to significantly perform more tasks in less time and with fewer errors than did users who did not have visuals accompanying the on-line help instructions. (2000-12-10)

Getting the Right Information for Your Site

Webreview.com: "You need to know each kind of person who will access the site. You then need to understand why they are coming here. This will tell you what information will be appreciated and what will be extraneous. Often a little research uncovers that there are actually many audiences that a site wants to target." (2000-11-12)

The Art of Information Architecture

iBoost.com: "There are many factors in a quality Web site Design, development, creativity, writing, color balance, and organization are all contributors, but careful planning is what makes or breaks the site. The old adage 'It'll come out in the wash' rarely works in practice. Lack of planning usually results in unorganized material and plenty of headaches along the way." (2000-11-05)

Information Architecture and Business Strategy

Business strategy and information architecture are closely inter-related. For most organizations, the days of slapping a web site on top of an existing business strategy are gone. Web sites, extranets, and intranets play key roles in defining relationships between a company and its customers, investors, suppliers, and employees. The structure and organization of these sites is critical to success. (2000-10-15)

Webnotes: Writing for the Web

This Web Reference article presents a series of tips on writing Web content. Some of these tips are based on usability studies conducted by various organizations. (2000-10-08)

Tufte:Information design’s magical curator

According to this Information Research Institute article: "Edward Tufte is the magical curator of information design. Following in the grand tradition of 19th century museum curators, his books are masterpieces of the exhibitor’s art. The exhibits are extracted from their daily contexts of use and beautifully displayed with his engaging and fascinating commentary. Tufte has given us another wonderful show and continues to stimulate a wide public interest in the information designers’ craft and achievement." (2000-10-08)

Graphics and Web Design Based on Edward Tufte's Principles

This is an outline of Edward Tufte's pioneering work on the use of graphics to display quantitative information. It mainly consists of text and ideas taken from his three books on the subject. (2000-09-30)

Educating the Information Architect

The good news is that the job market for information architects is exploding. Searches on sites like Monster.com regularly turn up 200 to 300 postings for "information architects. The bad news is that there's no established educational degree program geared specifically to meet the needs of aspiring information architects." (2000-09-04)

Edit-Work.com

Edit-Work.com's purpose is to help editors make their site's content work as effectively as possible, whether the site is thousands of pages or a dozen. The site provides information on creating web site style guides and editorial procedures, as well as other useful resources. (2000-08-20)

Presentations from ASIS 2000 Conference on Information Architecture

The presenters at the American Society for Information Science included William Horton, Mark Hurst, Patrick Lynch and Louis Rosenfeld. (2000-07-15)

Getting from Concept to Reality

In this Journal of Electronic Publishing article, Chris Kartchner describes Content Management Systems. They are systems that "...allows content to be stored, retrieved, edited, updated, controlled, then output in a variety of ways such that the incremental cost of each update cycle and output production shrinks dramatically over time. CMS solutions involve the integration of database, workflow, and editorial tools. (2000-07-15)

Language: The Ultimate User Interface

Why do we—as web-builders—overlook even the most basic aspects of language so frequently when we build our sites? Is language so transparent in our lives that we fail to recognize its importance? Do we even think about it at all? If we do, who manages the language in our sites? (2000-04-16)

About Information Architecture

The main difference between information architecture and customer experience is the foundation of each. Customer experience is founded on empathy with, and understanding of, the customer. Information architecture, on the other hand, is based on an understanding of information. (2000-04-09)

Information Design: Call to Action

But the truth is, companies are painfully short of actionable information, and their CIOs are not using information design practices to create it. In spite of the fact that IT leaders rate actionable information important for decision making—4.8 out of 5, on average—most are not on a track to get there. (2000-04-09)

Writing Web Documentation

This tutorial guides you through the three phases of developing procedural information for your Web audience: define the scope, develop the procedures, and design the online information. (via tremendo.com) (2000-03-19)

An Interview with Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville

An interview with the authors of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web a book that "...helps you understand the foundations of the field: organizing, labeling, navigating, and searching information. The book also places information architecture within the broader context of Web-site development, from research to conceptual design to production; and it provides practical advice to help get you through that process." (2000-02-06)

Writing for the Web - Jackob Nielsen Alertbox

Links to articles and studies about writing for the web and reading online. (2000-02-06)

Information Mapping - Show Me

Highly Recommended - This is an excellent exercise for demonstrating the clear advantages of structuring the presentation of information using the information mapping technique. (1999-12-27)

Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)

Reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from paper. Even users who don't know this human factors research usually say that they feel unpleasant when reading online text. As a result, people don't want to read a lot of text from computer screens: you should write 50% less text and not just 25% less since it's not only a matter of reading speed but also a matter of feeling good. (1999-12-27)

What is an Information Architect?

"From my own experience, I would say that the practitioners are professionals, versed in every aspect of web design, adept communicators, and gifted visualizers - they are people who eat, sleep and dream web design and structure." (1999-12-20)

Animation: Uses and Abuses

Sometimes, text or still images aren't the most efficient or effective way to communicate. When used with care, animation can be a powerful content tool that speaks to Web site visitors on a number of levels. However, when used gratuitously, or when the intent of the animation is solely to benefit the site's owner (rather than the audience), animation interferes with content. (1999-11-28)

Getting Tufte

According to the Mappa Mundi article, Edward Tufte "...believes that the task of information design is to make it easier for the information consumer to compare data relevant to a cause and effect process. Tufte teaches (and he is, most of all, a teacher) that we must “enforce visual comparisons” and “show causality”. The best information displays allow people to understand large and complex data sets, not just in terms of what the data is, but also in terms of the process it represents." (1999-09-18)

Writing for the Web

This Netscape Netcenter page contains links to several articles and interviews about the art of writing web content. (1999-09-05)

Information Design Link Page

This page contains many links to web sites, articles and resources about information design. (Apr-18-99)

The Data Artist

A Salon Magazine article about Edward Tufte. (Apr-18-99)

Tufte on Visualizing Information

This article by Eugene Kim reports on one-day course taught by Edward Tufte. According to the author, Tufte believes: "The most common user activity of a web site is to flee as quickly as possible." (Mar-13-99)