Usability

There are those who see design and usability as opposing forces, but it is our view that the best design is usable design: both focus on users, their habits, and their expectations. Following is a selection of resources to introduce a sampling from the Web's top usability experts and practitioners. The articles range from general discussions of what makes Web sites more usable to specific articles on paper prototyping and how to conduct a usability test.

Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox
Searchable archives of this periodic online column from the outspoken senior statesman of Web usability. Nielsen is a minimalist; in his words, "The Alertbox was founded on the principle that success on the Web comes from simple rather than glitzy design and from making it easy for users to do what they want to do rather than imposing your own internal perspective on the users." One of the best of his columns is "Ten Good Deeds in Web Design," in part because it also points to three more of Nielsen's top-ten lists. Another is Neilsen's own recommended list of Web sites on usability. Worth the time.

Web Teaching: Do-it-yourself assessment
An excellent article describing the process for testing usability on a class Web site, from Sara Horton at Dartmouth College. Covers testing environment, objectives, task list, planning the test, administering it, and analyzing the data.

Keith Instone's Writings
Keith Instone, a frequest presenter at Web conferences. Formal usability testing can be elaborate and expensive, but you will learn a great deal by finding some typical users, giving them a list of tasks to perform on your site, then sitting back and watching what they do. Instone's valuable page Usable Web is a rich collection of links about information architecture, human factors, user interface issues, and usable design on the Web.

User Testing
Another advocate of the simple approach to usability testing, Jennifer Fleming's article in the ahref.com's Web site discusses the testing set-up, choosing the right participants, asking the right questions, and analysing the results.

Designing a More Usable World
The TRACE center at the University of Wisconsin provides a useful site of resources on universal design issues.

Flash usability tips
Tips and examples from the Web design and development community on how to keep the focus on the user when building sites with Macromedia's Flash.

Web Style Guide
Subtitled Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, this site, and companion book by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, is an essential guide for Web site designers, incorporating the fundamentals of usable design.

WebReference.com usability links
Excellent collection of links on all aspects of usability from one of the most respected Web development sites.

Books

Nielsen, Jakob. Designing Web Usability. New Riders Press, 2000

Nielsen, Jakob. Usability Engineering. Academic Press, 1993
(paperback available from Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc.)

Spool, Jared M., Tara Scanlon, Will Schroeder, Carolyn Snyder, Terri DeAngelo. Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999