Web Usability

A Heuristic Evaluation of a World Wide Web Prototype - Experiment by the Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS)finding a large number of usability problems that were identified and suggestions for correction.
http://stats.bls.gov/ore/htm_papers/st960160.htm

Spool, Jared: Hard Evidence from Research - Spool uncovers the lessons his research has taught him about how best to design a site so that users don't end up thwarted
http://www.ddj.com/184412959

AnyBrowser.com - Web page viewer presents a site as it might be seen by visitors with different browsers.
http://www.anybrowser.com/

alt tags - Muddling Through - Web site designers should think hard about how to keep users from muddling around on their sites. "Users muddle when it isn’t clear what they are supposed to do in any given situation."
http://www.alttags.org/usability/muddling-through/

AgeLight Institute - Guidelines written for webmasters, communicators and marketers to assist with website design for maximum usability for seniors and older internet users.
http://www.agelight.com/Resources/webdesign.htm

Usable Webs - Information on basic web usability principles, including hints on helping search engines find your site. Web usability assessments and content development are available.
http://www.usablewebs.com/

eShopability - Provides design and usability information and advice on how to convert browsers into buyers and keep them, analysis and trends. Free fortnightly newsletter.
http://www.eshopability.com

Tognazzini, Bruce: First Principles - Bruce Tognazzini discusses basic prinicples of usability for both traditional applications and web services.
http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html

Designing a More Usable World - Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin. Excellent guidelines for universal web design.
http://trace.wisc.edu/world/

Usefo.com - Web design resources, Usableword newsletter, and web usability guidelines to make web sites faster, more educational, and usable.
http://patsula.com/usefo/

Some Simple Techniques In Making Your Website Accessible - Tutorial by Andrew Pae, Technical Coordinator at the ADAPTS Office at Georgia Tech. General design principles plus resources for additional information.
http://www.adapts.gatech.edu/general_resources/webaccess.htm

Five Usability Principles For Web Design - Ilise Benun elaborates on the principles of consistency, interaction, instruction, choices and control. (Publish.com) <small>(August 30, 2003)</small>
http://www.publish.com/c/a/Graphics-Tools/Five-usability-principles-for-Web-design/

BBC News - Web design 'causes confusion' - Web designers are not on the same wavelength as surfers when it comes to creating sites, says a US study.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2041040.stm

Something 4 Nothing Web Pages - Tips for building pages which are visually pleasing, and yet still download quickly and make information easy to access. From Webdeveloper.com.
http://www.webdeveloper.com/html/html_something_4_nothing.html

Klariti Guide to Usability and Information Architecture - Directory contains over 500 links, mainly to scholarly articles.
http://www.klariti.com/information-architecture/

Navigation 101 - A simple, understandable navigation scheme is a critical aspect of site design and has a direct effect on the bottom line.
http://wdvl.com/Location/Navigation/101/

ShoreWalker - Covers every area of site design as well as what not to do. Steers the user away from hype and towards more practical, user-friendly Web design. Based in Australia.
http://www.shorewalker.com/

Various: WebWord Interviews with the Experts - Usability articles written by John S. Rhodes. This page is a good starting point.
http://webword.com/interviews/index.html

A List Apart - The Perfect 404 - Ian Lloyd gives strategies for building custom 404 error pages that enhance usability. <small>(January 16, 2004)</small>
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/

Usability Professionals' Association - The UPA's purpose is to promote usability concepts and techniques worldwide.
http://www.upassoc.org/

All Things Web: The Usable Web - Tips and techniques for building reader-friendly Web pages.
http://www.pantos.org/atw/usable.html

Internet Brothers: Helpware for the Cybercommunity - Expanding web community by offering free tips and tutorials about HTML and DHTML, graphics editing, site promotion, digital photography, and desktop publishing. Presented often with a touch of humor, and always with examples.
http://internetbrothers.com/

Morville, Peter: Building a Synonymous Search Index - Help users find the documents they're looking for by incorporating a 'thesaurus-like' hierarchy for your site.
http://www.ddj.com/184412944

Usable Web - Collection of links and accompanying information about human factors, user interface issues, and usable design specific to the World Wide Web.
http://usableweb.com/

Guide to Usability for Software Engineers (GUSE) - Pages collected by the University of Maryland, Masters of Software Engineering. These guidelines will assist software engineers to create effective user interfaces.
http://otal.umd.edu/guse/

Lynx Friendly - The key to being Lynx Friendly is to be consciously aware of the HTML which goes into creating a web page and to ensure that those using a non-graphical browser are not ignored.
http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~djc/personal/lynxfriend.html

7 Debilitating Diseases of Business Websites - Illnesses make websites inefficient. The cures, by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson:Web Marketing Today, Issue 41, February 1, 1998. <small>(February 1, 1998)</small>
http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/7diseases.htm

Starling Access Services - Interesting definition of Accessible Web Design. For use by "anyone, any web browsing technology and any site".
http://www.starlingweb.com/webac.htm

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003 (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) - Sites are getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show. <small>(December, 2003)</small>
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031222.html

Web Usability - International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Special issue of WWW Usability arising from a symposium entitled "The Missing Link: Hypermedia Usability Research and The Web".
http://ijhcs.open.ac.uk/

Theory - A weekly column by Adam Baker that discusses web usability, interface, and interaction design. Includes previous columns for review.
http://www.merges.net/theory/

Spool, Jared: Web Graphic Design Is Not What You Think, A Usability Perspective - "The number one activity on the Web is information retrieval." In part of his tutorial, Spool explained his findings on graphic design and users' success.
http://www.ddj.com/web-development/184412961

Bohmann Usability - News weblog covering web usability in Europe.
http://www.bohmann.dk/observations/

Vaspers the Grate: Web Credibility Destroyers - List of design issues that pollute an overall impression of trustworthiness and dependability.
http://vaspersthegrate.blogspot.com/2004/06/web-credibility-destroyers.html

Publish.com - Usability Matters - Article by Marcia Ludkin. "Again and again... usability experts discover that real people may not understand what may be obvious to a site’s designers." <small>(February 11, 2003)</small>
http://www.publish.com/article2/0,,1762078,00.asp

Roger C. Parker - Eleven Common Web Page Design Frustrations and How To Cure Them - How to keep web page design from interfering with communication to visitors.
http://www.newentrepreneur.com/Resources/Articles/12_Com_Mis/12_com_mis.html

WDVL: Usability Testing in Practice - Reveals one company's usability testing practices and procesures.
http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/Design/UsabilityTesting/

Universal Usability - Includes an online version of the book "Access by Design: A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers" by Sarah Horton, along with links to other useful resources.
http://universalusability.com/

User Interface Design - Software Design Smorgasbord - A resource page on UI Design, maintained by Craig Marion, the webmaster of Chester County Internet Services.
http://www.chesco.com/~cmarion/Design/UIDesign.html

Webmaster's Corner - A commentary on web usability, design, and direction aimed at the beginning web developer.
http://www.newramp.com/webmasters/archive.asp

Human Factors International - Web Usability Tips - These tips are provided to help you improve the interaction between humans and computers in your web design.
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/10tips.asp

Principia Hypertextica: Introduction - A mathematics educator's view of web design. Encourages speed, accessibility, validity, and navigability. Discusses difficulties of math typesetting on the web.
http://www.cst.cmich.edu/users/chaff1ra/m132/WWW/type/

Schaffer, Eric: How to Develop a Corporate Intranet Standard - From the consultants of Human Factors International. [PDF]
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/webstandards.pdf

Usability Matters - From the Usability Matters Group at the Linköping University in Sweden. Their goal is to make computer systems more usable. The 1995 essay "Perspectives on Usability" by Jonas Löwgren is available for download in PDF format.
http://www.ida.liu.se/labs/aslab/groups/um/

Web Usability Findings - Compilation of surveys of web usability engineering and test results.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bing/oversite/webusefind.html

Szuc, Daniel: Usability in Hong Kong - Interview detailing the approach to web usability in Hong Kong.
http://webword.com/interviews/szuc.html

Vaspers the Grate - Insights into web writing, user-focused web design, and web credibility enhancement.
http://vaspersthegrate.blogspot.com/

Eyetools Research - Greg Edwards on design and content optimization through eyetrack testing: measuring what people read, look at, skip, and ignore on webpages.
http://blog.eyetools.net/

Norman, Don: Human Centred Design - Don Norman discusses the approach to usability when building his own website. This includes links to related content by Jakob Nielsen.
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/gratuitous_grap.html

Readability Of Websites With Various Foreground/Background Color Combinations, Font Types And Word Styles - 1997 psychology research project by Alyson L. Hill at Stephen F. Austin State University. Participants scanned simulated websites for a target word; readability was inferred from reaction time.
http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/AHNCUR.html

CNET.com - Study: Design lacking in e-tail sites - The design of some of the leading online stores is mediocre at best, but, according to a new study, it is improving. <small>(June 3, 2002)</small>
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-931274.html

Croc O' Lyle - Weblog by a practicing User Experience Architect. Usually about usability, design information architecture and e-business.
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com

Adobe - Flash : Usability - Usability tips, examples, test case, quotes, related articles and a Flash forum for site developers.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/testing_usability.html

The Scent of Information - The reason why so many people lose their way on the Web, according to usability expert Jared Spool, is because they lose the scent of the information they are looking for. Jared shares his thoughts and perspectives on the Web, usability, and the user's quest for information. <small>(May 15, 1998)</small>
http://www.ddj.com/web-development/184413077

STC SIG - Usability - Forum to share information, resources and experiences on issues related to the usability and user-centered design. It is the home of the Usability Special Interest Group of the Society for Technical Communication.
http://www.stcsig.org/usability/

Schroeder, Will: Testing Web Sites with Eye-Tracking - Describes an experiment carried out to monitor the eye movements of visitors to a prototype web site.
http://www.uie.com/articles/eye_tracking/

Web Usability Articles - Several years of usability-related articles from Digital Web Magazine.
http://www.digital-web.com/topics/usability/

Morville, Peter: Virtual Documents: The Challenges of Chunking - Advice for determining a level of granularity in breaking up documents for online viewing.
http://www.ddj.com/184412896

Nielsen Norman Group - Reports and columns on usability and human interface design by Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman, and Bruce 'Tog' Tognazzini.
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/

Publish.com - Flash and Usability - Guidelines for usable Flash, By Ilise Benun.
http://www.publish.com/article2/0,,1757914,00.asp

Web Pages That Suck - Learn good web page design by looking at bad web pages.
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

Usability Engineering - "Designing for Ease Use", Article written by Corporate Solutions Consulting (UK)on usability engineering.
http://www.consult-me.co.uk/csc-usability-engineering-page.htm

WEBehavior - A behavioral research, usability testing, and customer experience evaluation firm.
http://www.webehavior.com/

IBM DeveloperWorks: Web Architecture - Offering tools needed to understand usability and accessibility issues. Includes materials that can help you create user-centered applications and gain insight into accessibility challenges.
http://www-136.ibm.com/developerworks/web/

Java Software Human Interface - Essential information about human interface design and usability for applications and applets written in the Java programming language.
http://java.sun.com/developer/techDocs/hi/

Useit.com - Jakob Nielsen shares his thoughts on usability.
http://www.useit.com

The WDVL: Designing Attractive Web Pages - Before you can design avant-garde Web pages, you have to know what the rules are before you try to break, bend or amend them.
http://wdvl.com/Authoring/Design/Pages/

WebMetric Tools - Good usability is vital to the success of any web site. This site has downloadable sets of web evaluation tools to assist in analysis of a web page based on numerous usability guidelines. Registration is required (free).
http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/

HTML Authoring Tools - Provides free services to assist web authors who wish to make their information available to the largest audience.
http://www.delorie.com/web/

Scottberkun.com - Expert columns on web usability, interaction and web design.
http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/

Usability First - Diamond Bullet Design offers their experience and knowledge on website and software usability.
http://www.usabilityfirst.com/

Don't Link to Us - Highlights stupid linking policies by linking to web sites that attempt to impose substantial restrictions on other sites that link to them.
http://www.dontlink.com

Jeffrey Veen: The Usability of Subscribing to Feeds - RSS feeds are surprisingly difficult for the average user to use.
http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000733.html

Web Development - A summary of the complete life cycle of web development: planning, analysis, design, implementation, and promotion. Key practices and online resources are given for each process. By John December, author of numerous material for web development methodology.
http://www.december.com/web/develop.html

Rosenfeld, Lou: Yahoo! is Dead. Long Live Yahoo! - Discussion on the inevitable collapse of Yahoo directory due to its size and complexity. He Predicts mini-yahoo sites within corporate intranets.
http://www.ddj.com/184412919

Fifth Conference on the Human Factors and the Web - A forum for sharing information among a community of human factors engineers, designers, and developers who are interested in producing web sites that are more useful and usable. Site contains proceedings of the most recent (3/Jun/1999) conference and archives of all previous conferences.
http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/hfweb/index.html

User-Friendly Web Sites for All Ages, Microsoft PressPass - Guidelines for businesses, developers and web designers on how to make their web sites more user-friendly and accessible for the adult community. A white paper issued by Microsoft, "Effective Web Design Considerations for Older Adults." is available for download. <small>(May 12, 1999)</small>
http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/1999/May99/GuidelinePR.asp

Alertbox - Jakob Nielsen's bi-weekly column on current issues in Web usability, focusing on simple and minimalist design based on real user needs.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/

Usability.gov - Provided by the National Cancer Institute. Includes information and resources on making web sites and other user interfaces more useful, usable, and accessible. News and current publications and additional links are provided.
http://www.usability.gov/

Rosenfeld, Lou: Is Less Really More? - When it comes to the usability factor of tables of contents, is less really more?
http://www.ddj.com/184412956

Usability Must Die - Examines what's wrong with the usability movement, with some humour, and experiences from the coal face of software design.
http://www.usabilitymustdie.com

Designing Information-Abundant Web Sites - This article is extracted and adapted from Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction 3rd edn., Reading, MA: Addison Wesley (forthcoming). Longman Publishers, Copyright 1998.
http://ijhcs.open.ac.uk/shneiderman/shneiderman.html

Adaptive Path - 90% of All Usability Testing is Useless - Lane Becker writes, "Rather than a validation done once before completing a product... internal, qualitative usability testing [should be] done earlier, more frequently, and as part of the design process - not separate from it." <small>(June, 2004)</small>
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000328.php

How to Develop an Effective GUI Standard - Eric Schaffer of Human Factors International describes the result of his experiences of working Eric working on over 150 user interface standardization projects. [PDF]
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/guistandards.pdf

Jef Raskin - A site by and about Jef Raskin, interactive systems design expert.
http://jef.raskincenter.org/

Pointafter.com - 20 Do's and Don'ts of Web Usability - Tips from George Prociuk.
http://www.pointafter.com/Archives/nl0204.htm

Hot Text: Web Writing That Works - Articles from trainer-writer team Jonathan and Lisa Price. Ideas and services for web writers, editors, and content managers.
http://www.webwritingthatworks.com/

Opquast - A list of best practices intended to improve the quality of on-line services.
http://www.opquast.com/

JavaScript and Web Site Usability - An Interview with JavaScript Guru, Mr. Danny Goodman on how JavaScript can make a web site easier to use.
http://webword.com/interviews/goodman.html

100 Things to Do to Make a Better Site - List of several (actually, eight) ways to make a more user-friendly site. Also has other reader comments on the same topic.
http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/100-things

CNN.com - Analysis: Web sites are locking out the disabled - Office buildings have wheelchair ramps and TV has closed captioning, but many Web sites are inaccessible to people with disabilities. Things don't have to be that way. <small>(August 7, 2000)</small>
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/08/07/web.site.accessibility.idg/index.html

WebWord Usability Consulting - Usability and human factors for the Internet. Including book list, expert articles and interviews, and recommended sites.
http://www.webword.com/

Stevesdomain.net - Focuses on furthering the education of web related topics, including web design and navigation tips, advice and techniques.
http://www.stevesdomain.net/

Art and the Zen of Web Sites - Suggestions and guidelines for putting together a usable and attractive web site.
http://www.tlc-systems.com/webtips.shtml