Usability

Benefits and ROI. (Why Usability?)

All Those Opposed: Making the case for user experience in a budget-conscious climate – Jesse James Garrett.
Calculating ROI for Usability.
Case Study: Intranets, Usability, and Value – Jeffery Veen.
Myths and Measurements: Evaluating the ROI of Design – Steve Calde.
Professional usability testing and return on investment as it applies to user interface design for web-based products and services – Charles Mauro.
Return on Investment for Usability – Jakob Nielsen.
ROI faulty as measurement of IT success – ComputerWire.
ROI Is Not a Silver Bullet: Five Actionable Steps for Valuing User Experience Design – Scott Hirsch.
ROI of Usability: A Collection of Links – Rashmi Sinha.
Selling Usability – Jeff Atwood.
Selling Usability to Your Manager – User Focus.
Seven Myths of Usability ROI: Daniel Rosenberg Presentation – Presentation report by Nerija Sinkeviciute.
Streamlining UX Increases Conversion by 20 Percent – Jared Spool.
The Cost of Frustration – Jared M. Spool.
The bottom line on ROI – Alan Cohen.
The Red Herring of Usability ROI – Scott Hirsch.
The Return on Investment (ROI) for Personas – Submitted by Ann Light.
The ROI of Usability – Aaron Marcus.
The Value of Usability – All things Web.
Usability & ROI: A Collection of Links – rashmi sinha.
Usability is good management – Gerry McGovern.
Usability Is Next to Profitability – Jane Black.
Web Design: ROI Is Not a Silver Bullet – Scott Hirsch.
Why People Matter – Whitney Quesenbery.
Why Is Usability Important? – Usability.gov.
Why Usability is Important to You – John S. Britsios.

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Children

Children and Accessibility: It Matters – Derek Featherstone.
Evaluating the Usability of Educational Websites for Children – Shiva Naidu.
Kids’ Corner: Website Usability for Children – Jakob Nielsen.
The Effects of Line Length on Children and Adults’ Online Reading Performance – Michael Bernard, Marissa Fernandez, and Spring Hull.
Usability Testing with Children – Tim Fidgeon.
Which Fonts Do Children Prefer To Read Online? – Talissa Frank and Jan McKown.

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Chunking

Chunking Principle.
Cognitive load and the rule of seven (or how many is too many) – Nick Finck.
Debunking Miller’s Magic 7 – Bryan Eisenberg.
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information – George A. Miller originally published in The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97.
The Myth of “Seven, Plus or Minus 2″ – James Kalbach.
Three Numbers That (Should) Have Nothing To Do With User Interface Design – Denny C. LeCompte.

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Consistency

Consistency in Design is the Wrong Approach – Jared Spool.
Creativity vs. Standard Layouts – Garrett Dimon.
Design Consistency. – University of Minnesota.
Ensure Consistency of Display, General Advice – Skills for Access.
How To Avoid Foolish Consistency – Scott Berkun.
In the Race With Google, It’s Consistency vs. ‘Wow’ – Saul Hansell.
- Customer Experience and the ‘Wow’ Factor – Mark Hurst.
MIT‘s Homepage: Preposterous or Ingenious? – Joshua Porter.
More Alike Than We Think – Whitney Quesenbery.
Seeking Clarity on Consistency – Kath Straub.
Glossary: consistency.
Why Consistency is Critical – Gerry Gaff.

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Content

A Rant (Mostly) About Web Content – D. Keith Robinson
Are You Publishing Too Much On Your Website? – Gerry McGovern.
Be a web editor, not administrator By Gerry McGovern.
Content Brief – D. Keith Robinson.
Content Development, Writing for the Web – websitetips.com.
Content vs. Design – D. Keith Robinson.
Delivering the Right Information is Hard – Jared M. Spool.
Do You Manage a Website or a Warehouse? – Gerry McGovern.
Heart Surgery for Dummies – Gerry McGovern.
How Web Influenced US Elections – Gerry McGovern.
Is Your Content a Waste of Time and Money? – Gerry McGovern.
Less is More for Government Websites – Gerry McGovern.
Measuring Value of Web Content – Gerry McGovern.
No News This Week: Only Publish What Is Useful – Gerry McGovern.
No Silver Bullet for Web Content – Gerry McGovern.
Quality, Not Quantity: Delivering Value From Web Content – Gerry McGovern.
Raising the Perceived Value of Your Website – Gerry McGovern.
Stop Creating ROT – Rachel McAlpine.
Take Full Responsibility For Your Web Content – Gerry McGovern.
The Goldilocks Content Framework: Identifying Just-Right Information – Jared M Spool and Joshua Porter.
The True Cost of Content – Gerry McGovern.
Usable Content Manifesto – D. Keith Robinson.
What Is Content Strategy and Why Should You Care? (Series Intro) – Amy Gahran.
Web Content is a Hidden Asset – Gerry McGovern.
Web Content Management Depends on Trust – Gerry McGovern.
Web Content Management Is Not Data Management – Gerry McGovern.
Web Content Management: Top 10 Predictions for 2005 – Gerry McGovern.
Website Content and Usability – Trenton Moss.
Web Content Management is Not Data Management – Gerry McGovern.
Web Content Versus Print Content – Gerry McGovern.
Web Manager: You Can’t Serve Everybody – Gerry McGovern.

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Definitions

Accessibility and Usability
- Accessible Doesn’t Mean Usable – Sara Michael.
- Accessibility Is Not Enough – Jakob Nielsen.
Definition of Usability.
Dimensions of Usability: Defining the Conversation, Driving the Process – Whitney Quesenbery.
Introduction to Usability – Usability First
Understanding Usability – Richard Spindler.
Usability 101 By Jakob Nielsen.
Usability Basics – Usability.gov.
Usability Redefined: Howability, Taskability, Recommendability, Profitability – John Rhodes.
User Experience is a Quality, Not A Discipline – Peter Merholz.
The 5 E’s of usability – Whitney Quesenbery.
- Using the 5Es to Understand Users – Whitney Quesenbery.
- Usability != User Experience – Peter Merholz.
Web Usability: The Basics – WebCredible.
What does ‘usability’ mean? Looking beyond ‘ease of use’ – Whitney Quesenbery.
What is Usability? By Donna Maurer.
What is Usability? – Usability Professionals Association.

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Efficiency

Usability 101 By Jakob Nielsen.
Usability 101: Efficiency – Tristan Louis.
Usability Glossary: efficiency – Usability First.

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Error Tolerance

Simplified Form Errors – Adam Kalsey.
Usability 101 By Jakob Nielsen.
Usability 101: Errors – Tristan Louis.
User Recalled Occurrences of Usability Errors: Implications on the User Experience – Helena Mentis and Geri Gay.

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Fitts Law

A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts – Bruce (Tog) Tognazzini.
Fitts at 50: For Link Design, Size Does Matter – William Hudson.
Fitts’ Law and Text Links – David Benton.
Fitts’ Law By Dave Shea.
Fitts’ law By Wikipedia.
Fitts’s UI Law Applied to the Web – Scott Berkun.
Giving You Fitts – Jensen Harris.
Mouse Sensitivity challenges Scope of Fitts’ Law – Christian Lagerkvist.
Usability Glossary: Fitts’ Law.

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Flash Usability (see Flash page)

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Forms Usability

10 Tips To A Better Form – Chris Campbell.
5 Ways To Make Sure That Users Abandon Your Forms – Eric G. Myers.
Better Web Forms By D. Keith Robinson.
Better Web Forms By Paul Scrivens.
Clearly label those buttons – Garrett Dimon.
Check User ID Button – Jared Spool.
Checkboxes, Radio Buttons, and Drop Downs – Garrett Dimon.
Checkboxes vs. Radio Buttons – Jakob Nielsen.
Colons at the End of Labels? – Ann Light.
- Colons at the End of Labels – Caroline Jarrett.
Creating Bulletproof and Easy to Complete Web Forms – Jason Fried, Matthew Linderman.
Designing Intersection Flows – Henrik Olsen.
Developing an Online Form.
Enhancing form usability with instructions and validation – Michael? Meadhra.
Evaluating the Usability of Search Forms Using Eyetracking: A Practical Approach – Matteo Penzo.
Eyetracking of Forms: should we accept the Conclusions? – Caroline Jarrett.
Eyetracking Web Forms – Luke Wroblewski.
Forms: The importance of getting it right – Lift.
Forms, usability, and the W3C DOM – Peter-Paul Koch.
Forms vs. Applications – Jakob Nielsen.
Four Ideas For Better Forms – Caroline Jarrett.
How to Indicate Required or Optional Form Fields – Thomas Watson Steen.
Implementing Online Forms – James Robertson.
Initial Focus to a Text Field – Good or Bad? – Robert Nyman.
It’s Not About Size, It’s About Context – Radio Buttons Or Drop-Downs – Donna Maurer.
Labeling Buttons – Garrett Dimon.
Label Placement in Forms – Matteo Penzo.
Long Forms: Scroll or Tab? – Caroline Jarrett.
Multi-Select Lists vs. Checkboxes – Garrett Dimon.
Proper Usage of Check Boxes and Radio Buttons – Michael Meadhra.
Registration Forms – What To Do If You Can’t Avoid Them – Caroline Jarrett.
Reset and Cancel Buttons – Jakob Nielsen.
Rules for Labeling Buttons – Caroline Jarrett.
Sentence or Title Case for Labels? – Caroline Jarrett.
Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist – Brian Crescimanno.
Simple Tricks for More Usable Forms – Simon Willison.
Simplified Form Errors – Adam Kalsey.
Two-Column Forms are Best Avoided – Caroline Jarrett.
The Piece of HTML created just for Me: Reset – Caroline Jarrett .
Usability and HTML Forms – Andrew Starling.
Web Application Form Layout – Luke Wroblewski.
Web Forms: Death By a Thousand Textboxes – Jeff Atwood.
Why People Persist with Using Paper Forms – Caroline Jarrett.

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Frames Usability

Who Framed the Web: Frames and Usability – Roger Johansson.
Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time) – Jakob Nielsen.

Guidelines & Principles (see Standards)

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Homepages

Don’t Fight Over Your Home Page – Laurence Veale.
Full Site Redesign – Start by Addressing the Home Page – Iain Barker.
- More on Starting with the Intranet Homepage – James Robertson.
Graphics on Link-Rich Home Pages – Jared Spool.
Home Page Goals – Derek Powazek.
Home Page Googlization – Jared Spool.
Homepage Real Estate Allocation – Jakob Nielsen.
How Google Manages Its Homepage – Gerry McGovern.
Is Home Page Design Relevant Anymore? – Jared Spool.
Is Your Homepage Immature? – Indi Young.
Lifestyles of the Link-Rich Home Pages – Jared M. Spool.
MIT‘s Homepage: Preposterous or Ingenious? – Joshua Porter.
Prioritizing Design Time: A Long Tail Approach – Joshua Porter.
The Canonical Intranet Homepage – Jakob Nielsen.
The Intranet Homepage, Protect it with a Policy – Cairo Walker.
The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines – Jakob Nielsen.
Top Ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability – Jakob Nielsen.
Quantitatively Test the Effectiveness of Your Home Page – Iain Barker.

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Intuitive

Intuitive – Adam Kalsey.
What Makes a Design Seem Intuitive? – Jared M. Spool.

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Learnability

Usability 101 By Jakob Nielsen.
Usability 101: Learnability – Tristan Louis.
Usability Glossary: learnability – Usability First.
Usability vs. Learnability – Jeff Atwood.

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Line Length

How Physical Text Layout Affects Reading From Screen – Mary C. Dyson.
- Line Lengths When Reading From a Screen – Joe Clark.
Ideal line length for content – Russ Weakley.
Effects of Line Length on Children and Adults’ Online Reading Performance – M. Bernard, M. Fernandez, & S. Hull.
The Effects of Line Length on Reading Online News – A. Dawn Shaikh.
Text Columns: How Long is Too Long? – Jeff Atwood.
What is the optimal line length when reading prose text from a monitor? – Bob Bailey.

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Link Color (see Navigation)

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Link Text (see Navigation)

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Link Rot

A longitudinal study of Web pages continued: a consideration of document persistence – Wallace Koehler.
Broken links and poor information architecture design – Gerry McGovern.
Check your links regularly to prevent link rot.
Cool URIs don’t change – Tim Berners-Lee.
Fighting Linkrot – Jakob Nielsen.
“Link Rot” Are You a Culprit? – Jennifer Kyrnin.
Link rot by Adam Kalsey.
Link Rot in your Family Tree? A Case Study in the Dynamics of Internet Genealogy – Mark Howells.
Managing URIs – Olivier Thereaux.
The 410 Gone HTTP status- from the HTTP specification.
- Explanation of “410 Gone” – Mark Pilgrim (with configuration examples for the Apache Web server).
Web Pages Must Live Forever – Jakob Nielsen.

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Liquid/Elastic/Fluid/Fixed Design

800×600, Should I Really Care? – Martin Ringlein.
A Dao of Web Design – John Allsopp.
A List Too Far Apart? – Jeremy Keith.
Actual Browser Sizes (final) – Thomas Baekdal.
Arguments For Flexible Webpage Layouts – Mike Davies.
Accessible Layouts – Alastair Campbell.
Defensive Design, Part 1: Elastic Design – Paul Griffin.
Design for Browser Size – Not Screen Size – Jesper Ronn-Jensen.
Elastic Design – Patrick Griffiths.
Features Of The Jello Mold – John Gallant and Holly Bergevin.
Fixed Fashion – Jeremy Keith.
Fixed or fluid, you decide – Andy Clarke.
Fixed vs. Fluid – Patrick Griffiths
Fixed vs Liquid vs Elastic – Tommy Olsson.
Fixed Width vs. Liquid Layout – Your Take – D. Keith Robinson.
Fixing Your Width: What’s the Optimal Size for a Site? – Joe Dolson.
Flexible design of web sites – Stephen Poley.
Flexible Layouts with CSS Positioning – Dug Falby.
Fluid Thinking – Peter-Paul Koch.
Full page zoom – Simon Willison.
Is 1024 OK? – Jon Hicks.
Jello: A Different Liquid Layout – Mike Purvis.
Jello Generator – Mike Purvis.
Jello Molds & Width Control – Mike Purvis.
Let Your Users Scroll – Roger Johansson
Liquid Design for the Web – Adrian Roselli.
Liquid Layout By Jenifer Tidwell.
Liquid Layout (CSS).
Liquid layouts – the easy way – Russ Weakley.
Liquid Tables – Rudy Limeback.
Liquid vs. Fixed – Garrett Dimon.
Liquid vs. Fixed – Paul Scrivens.
Liquid Web Design: Build it right and it will work no matter what the container – Nick Finck.
Make Liquid Pages – projectcool.
Making Popular Layout Decisions – Eric Meyer.
min-width for IE – Stu Nicholls
More on Fixed Widths – Richard Rutter.
Not Designing for Most Common Screen Resolution – S.R. Emerson.
On Fixed vs. Liquid Design – Douglas Bowman.
Optimal Width for 1024px Resolution? – Cameron Moll.
Relative Sizing and Images.
Root Causes – Mark Pligrim.
Screen Resolution and Page Layout – Jakob Nielsen.
The Jello Mold: A New Look at Min- and Max-width For Web Pages – John Gallant and Holly Bergevin.
The Myth of 800×600 – James Kalbach.
The Ridiculous Discussion About Monitor Sizes and Screen Resolutions – Robert Nyman.
The Struggles of Having an Elastic Layout – Robert Nyman.
The Trouble with Tables – ATW.
The Web is Not Print (Design Rant) – Owen Briggs
The Web is Not Print – Colin Lieberman.
Understanding Liquid Design – Eddy R.
Websites require flexible not fixed design – Gerry McGovern.
What is Liquid Design? – Nick Wilson.
Why Is It So Hard to Grasp Scrolling? – Ethan Kaplan.
Zeldman Presents: 15 questions for Glen Davis.

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Memorability

But Is It Memorable? – Kathy Sierra.
Memorable Session on Memorable Systems – Alistair Kilgour.
Usability 101: Memorability – Tristan Louis.

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Open Source Usability

Open Source Usability: The Birth of a Movement – Rashmi Sinha.
Open Usability.

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PDF

Again, a newspaper PDF experiment is fatally flawed – Adrian Holovaty.
Gateway Pages Prevent PDF Shock – Jakob Nielsen.
No PDF Press Releases, Please! – Amy Gahran.
Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents – Jakob Nielsen.
- Back to the Opening New Windows Issue? – Shirley Kaiser.
PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption – Jakob Nielsen.

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Pop-Ups (Opening New Windows)

10.1 Until user agents allow users to turn off spawned windows, do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear and do not change the current window without informing the user. – W3C.
A Farewell to Pop-Ups – Caroline Jarrett
Accessible Pop-up Links – Caio Chassot.
An Alternative Method for Opening New Windows – Jon Brundage.
Avoid Forcing Links to Open in a New Window – John S. Britsios.
Back to the Opening New Windows Issue? – Shirley Kaiser.
Beware of Opening Links in a New Window – Neil Turner.
Bunnyfoot Research into Pop-Ups shows Users Hate Them – Ann Light.
Don’t force new windows on users – Jesper Tverskov.
Firms squelching pop-up ads: Online companies find ads can be counter-productive – Verne Kopytoff.
How Evil is the Target Attribute? – Robert Nyman.
Launching New and Pop-up Windows – D. Keith Robinson.
Most Web Users Hate Pop-up Ads: Nielsen – Sam Varghese.
New-Window Links in a Standards-Compliant World – Kevin Yank.
Not opening new windows – Mark Pilgrim.
On Spawned Windows – Shawn Lawton Henry.
Opening Links in a New Window – Gez Lemon.
Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents – Jakob Nielsen.
Opening New Browser Windows: A User-Centred Approach – Dey Alexander.
Pop-up ‘suicide’ can kill your brand – Tim Richardson.
The perfect pop-up – Ian Lloyd.
The Slippery Slope – Drew McLellan.

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Redesign

A redesign recipe for tough times – David Walke.
Coding for Easier Redesigns – Jeffrey Zeldman.
CNN Changes Home Page (again) – Joshua Porter.
Designing Embraceable Change – Jared M. Spool.
Early and Often: How to Avoid the Design Revision Death Spiral – Dave Cronin.
Failed Redesigns – Joe Clark.
Full Site Redesign – Start by Addressing the Home Page – Iain Barker.
Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign – Cameron Moll.
- Realigning Design – D. Keith Robinson.
Grow Your Site, Keep Your Users – Mathew Schwartz.
How to Redesign a Website – net.
Nielsen: It’s Time for a Redesign – Brad Wieners.
Progressive Development: Stop Postponing Joy! – Steven Champeon.
Site Evolution – Paul Boag.
Site Redesign Tutorial Overview – Web Monkey.
Tackling Usability Gotchas in Large-scale Site Redesigns – Jeffrey Zeldman.
Think twice before re-designing your website – Gerry McGovern.
The Art of the Incremental Redesign – Jeffrey Veen.
The Quiet Death of the Major Re-Launch – Jared Spool.
- More on Why Major Relaunches are a Bad Idea – Jared Spool.
“ReDesign” is not a Dirty Word – Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian.
Redsign Case Study – D. Keith Robinson.
Website Redesign – a Case Study – Gerry Gaffney and Philipp Pagendarm.

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Scanning/Reading Online

Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web – John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen.
Determining Readability.
Effective Skimming and Scanning – Bryan Eisenberg.
Hidden Keys to Reader-Friendliness – All things Web.
How Users Read on the Web – Jakob Nielsen.
Is Reading on the Web Really Different? – Caroline Jarrett.
Lower-Literacy Users – Jakob Nielsen.
Methods for Measuring Text Readability – Peter Krantz.
Online Readability – Adam Kalsey.
Readability – Ben Hunt.
Readability Of Websites With Various Foreground/Background Color Combinations, Font Types And Word Styles – Alyson L. Hill.
Reading Design – Dean Allen.
Reading Online Text with a Poor Layout: Is Performance Worse? – Barbara S. Chaparro, A. Dawn Shaikh, and J. Ryan Baker.
Reading Text Online – Susan Weinschenk.
The Effect of Color and Typeface on the Readability of On-Line Text – Marelys L. Garcia and Cesar I. Caldera.
Why Web Users Scan Instead of Read – Jakob Nielsen.
Writing for Readers Who Scan – Kathy Henning.
Maximize Text Readability – Skills For Access.
Mechanics of Reader-Friendliness – All things Web.
What Is “Reader-Friendly” – All things Web.
Why People Don’t Read Online and What to do About It – Michelle Cameron.

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Scent

Does Scent Apply The Same to Intranets? Yes. And No. – Jared Spool.
Intranet Portals and Scent are Made for Each Other – Jared M. Spool.

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Scrolling

Above the Fold is Obsolete (and digibuy is a good company) – Darrel Austin.
Changes in Web Usability Since 1994 – Jakob Nielsen
Hands Across the Screen: Why scrollbars are on the right – Alan Dix.
Horizontal Scrolling Must Die! – Jeanne A. E. DeVoto.
Let Your Users Scroll – Roger Johansson.
Long Forms: Scroll or Tab? – Caroline Jarrett.
Long Versus Short Pages – Free Usability Advice.
Reading Text Online – Bernard and Baker.
Scroll, Flicker: Three Ways to ruin your Website – Caroline Jarrett.
Scrolling and Scrollbars – Jakob Nielsen.
The Impact of Paging vs. Scrolling on Reading Online Text Passages – J. Ryan Baker.
The Paper Of Record Goes Long – Jared Spool.
Usability vs. Learnability – Jeff Atwood.
Utilizing the Cut-Off Look to Encourage Users To Scroll – Jared Spool.
Why Is It So Hard to Grasp Scrolling? – Ethan Kaplan

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Security

Are Usability and Security Opposites in Computing? – Jeff Coburn.
Minimal-Feedback Hints for Remembering Passwords – Morten Hertzum.
Password Usability & Typability – Chad Lundgren.
People and Processes Should be Important than Technology – Robert Jaques.
Security vs. Usability: No One’s Winning – Rodney Gedda.
User Education Is Not the Answer to Security Problems – Jakob Nielsen.
With Safety and Security, More Can Be Less – Don Norman.

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Senior Citizens

Designing for Older People – Hints and Tips – Ann Light.
Designing “Senior Friendly” Websites: Do Guidelines Help? – Traci A. Hart.
Designing Websites for Older Users – Tim Fidgeon.
Designing Websites With Senior Citizens in Mind – Emily Shartin.
Determining the Best Online Font for Older Adults – Michael Bernard, Corrina Liao and Melissa Mills.
Evaluation of Websites for Older Adults: How ‘Senior-Friendly’ Are They? – By T. Hart.
Exploring How the Elderly Use the Web – Loren Groff, Corrina Liao, Barbara Chaparro and Alex Chaparro.
Improve Usability for Older Users – Tim Fidgeon.
Less Is More in Web Search Interfaces For Older Adults – Anne Aula and Mika Kaki.
Making Your Web Site Senior Friendly – National Institute on Aging/National Library of Medicine.
New Research Study Shows 57 Percent of Adult Computer Users Can Benefit From Accessible Technology – Microsoft.
Older Adults and Web Usability: Is Web Experience the Same as Web Expertise? – Ann Chadwick-Dias, Donna Tedesco, and Tom Tullis.
Usability for Senior Citizens – Jakob Nielsen.
Usability for Older Web Users – Tim Fidgeon.
Selling Older Users Short – Susan Weinschenk.
Typography and the Aging Eye: Typeface Legibility for Older Viewers with Vision Problems – Paul Nini.
Web Usability For Older People – Joe Clark.
Website Design Considerations for Older People – Ann Light.

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Simplicity

Achieving Greater Simplicity Involves Managing Increasing Complexity – Gerry McGovern.
Complexity Delivers Short-Term Gain But Long-Term Pain – Gerry McGovern.
Guidelines For An Uncomplicated Web – D. Keith Robinson.
Improving User Workflows with Single-Page User Interfaces – Joost Willemsen.
No Instruction Necessary, Part 1 – Andy Rutledge.
Oh, That Kind of Better…On the Trade-Off Between Feature-Laden and Usable – Kath Straub.
Simplicity and Goovite – Mark Hurst.
Simplicity Demands Difficult Choices – Gerry McGovern.
Simplicity Is Hard Work – Gerry McGovern.
So the Necessary May Speak – Luke Wroblewski.
The Beauty of Simplicity – Kristiina Karvonen.
The Beauty of Simplicity – Linda Tischler.
The Laws of Simplicity – John Maeda.
The Paradox of Choice – Luke Wroblewski.
The Truth About Google’s So-Called ‘Simplicity’ – Donald A. Norman.

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Speed

10 new ways to speed up download time – Trenton Moss.
10 Realistic Steps to a Faster Web Site – Alexander Kirk.
Are We There Yet? Effects of Delay on User Perceptions of Web Sites – Kath Straub.
Are Websites Judged in the Blink of an Eye? – Gerry McGovern.
Balancing Image Quality and Speed:? How to Shave? Seconds off Your Download Time – Laurie Larsen and Christine Phillips.
Cost-Effective Website Acceleration – Thomas Powell and Joe Lima.
Examining Tolerance for Online Delays – Paula Selvidge.
Fast-downloading websites are still important – Gerry McGovern.
First Impressions Count for Web.
First Impressions Count in Website Design – Andrew B. King.
How Long is Too Long to Wait for a Website to Load? – Paula Selvidge.
Multimedia: Use Weighted Optimization – Andrew B. King.
Optimizing Page Load Time – Aaron Hopkins.
Optimization Week – Andrew B. King.
- Scary Download Times at Halloween Sites – Andrew B. King.
- Shipping Bits: Who’s Faster on the Web? FedEx, UPS, or DHL? – Andrew B. King.
- Slow Shopping Sites Delay Santa: Scrooge Response Times – Andrew B. King.
- Super Bowl Site in No Rush – Andrew B. King.
- Overweight Travel Sites Delay Holiday Travelers – Andrew B. King.
- Valentine Flower Sites No Bed of Roses: Usability Thorns Await – Andrew B. King.
Speed Tweak of the Week – Andrew B. King.
Ten Ways to Speed Up the Download Time of Your Web Pages – Webcredible.
The Average Web Page – Andrew B. King.
The Bandwidth Report – Andrew B. King.
The Truth About Download Time – Christine Perfetti.
Usability four times more important than speed or branding – Optimum Web.
Web Users Judge Sites in the Blink of an Eye – Michael Hopkin.
Your Site Judged in 1/20th of a Second? – Brian Donohue.

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Splash Pages

Do you Need a Splash Page? – Mike Cherim.
Flash: 99% Bad – Jakob Nielsen.
How to Convince a Client They Don’t Need a Splash Page – Matt Inman.
Sink the Splash Pages – Andrew B. King.
Splash page – Usability First.
Splash Pages May Drown Your Site – Larisa Thomason.
Splash Screens Must Die – Jakob Nielsen.
Top Five SEO Design Mistakes – Shari Thurow.

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Subjective Satisfaction

Aesthetics and Apparent Usability: Empirically Assessing Cultural and Methodological Issues – Noam Tractinsky.
Aesthetics and Usability: A Look at Color and Balance – Laurie Brady and Christine Phillips.
Beauty is Only Screen Deep – Sarah Horton.
Design and Usability: Part 2 – Dan Rubin.
Design is not a therapy session – David Walker.
Form follows function – Peter-Paul Koch.
Form Vs Function: Why You Should Not Separate Usability From Web Design – Robin Good.
Graphic Design Plays a Minor Role on the Web – Gerry McGovern.
- Graphic Design on The Web – D. Keith Robinson.
- Gerry McGovern’s Clear Lack of Understanding – Mark Boulton.
Is Beauty The New Usability Attribute? – Mark Hall and Kath Straub.
Is Ugly the new Black? – Jared Spool.
Is perceived usability/aesthetics more important than real? – Don Norman.
Measure Engagement, Not Satisfaction – Brian Manning.
Measuring the Usability of Reading on the Web – Jakob Nielsen.
Subjectivity and Objectivity in Practice – Steve Baty.
The Role of Aesthetics in Design – Tom Chi.
The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites – Mark Daoust.
Ugly
- The Ugly Conversation – Josh Lehman.
- Ugliness, Social Design, and the MySpace Lesson – Joshua Porter.
- Ugly – Ze Frank.
- Ugly Design Getting Too Much Credit – Paul Scrivens.
Usability 101: Satisfaction – Tristan Louis.
Usability 101 By Jakob Nielsen.
Usability Doesn’t Have to be Ugly – Gerry McGovern.
Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization – Luke Wroblewski.

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Teenagers

Designing Usable Sites for Children and Teens Grace Bernhardt.
Nielsen Norman Group Study Finds that Teenagers Are a Group Unto their Own, Even When it Comes to Web Use.
Usability of Websites for Teenagers – Jakob Nielsen.
What Websites Do to Turn On Teens – Daniel Terdiman.

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White Space, Clutter, and Density

More Website Knick Knack – Chris Heilmann.
Reading Online Text: A Comparison of Four White Space Layouts – B. Chaparro, J.R. Baker, A.D. Shaikh, S. Hull, and L. Brady.
The Effects of Contrast and Density on Visual Web Search – D. Weller.

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Writing

10 Tips on Writing the Living Web – Mark Bernstein.
Applying Writing Guidelines to Web Pages – John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen.
Attack of the Zombie Copy – Erin Kissane.
Choose your words carefully on the Web – Gerry McGovern.
Be succinct – Jakob Nielsen.
Bulleted Lists: The Online Writer’s Friend – Amy Gahran.
Calling All Designers: Learn to Write! – Derek Powazek.
Choose Customer Words, Not Organization Words – Gerry McGovern.
Clear Language and Effectiveness Tool.
‘Dumbing Down’ vs ‘Writing More Intelligently’ – Russ Weakley.
Effective Web Writing – Crawford Kilian.
Elements of Style – William Strunk.
Fruit Flies Like a Banana: Writing Unambiguously – Kathy Henning.
Gentle Reader, Stay Awhile; I Will Be Faithful – Amber Simmons.
Headings
- Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines – Jakob Nielsen.
- Secrets of Great Web Headings and Summaries – Gerry McGovern.
- The Hot Headline How-To – Georgina Laidlaw.
How to Design a Website for the Tunnel Reader – Gerry McGovern.
How to Write Great Website Content – Hurol Inan.
How to Write Technical Documentation – Jeff Atwood.
Inverted Pyramid/Summaries
- How to Write Summaries for Web and Intranet Pages, and Why – Rachel McAlpine.
- Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace – Jakob Nielsen.
- Inverted-Pyramid Style of Writing.
List of articles about writing web content – Quality Web Content.
New Brown University Home Page: Breaking Too Many Rules? – Christian Watson.
Reduce Redundancy – Jakob Nielsen.
Standards for Online Content Authors – Rachel McAlpine.
Ten Tips For Writing For the Web – Lea Sadler.
Quick Guide to Writing for the Web – webdevtips.
Resurrect Your Writing, Redeem Your Soul – Jennie Robinson.
Structured Writing – An Outline – Joel D. Canfield.
Taglines
- Tagline Blues: What’s the Site About? – Jakob Nielsen.
- How to Write a Tagline – Peter Van Dijck.
Titles
- Good Web Page Titles – D. Keith Robinson.
- Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines – Jakob Nielsen.
- Two Kinds of Titles for Web Pages – Dennis G. Jerz.
- The Page Title and Description: Write them Well – Nick Usborne.
- Writing Usable Titles for Web Pages – Dey Alexander.
The Elements of Style for Designers – Christina Wodtke.
The Writing on the Web – Joshua Allen.
Take the Fat Out of Your Writing – Kathy Henning.
This Boring Headline Is Written for Google – Steve Lohr.
Ten Mistakes Writers Don’t See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do) – Pat Holt.
The Importance of Tone and Style – D. Keith Robinson.
The need for simple English on the Web – Gerry McGovern.
The Seven Qualities of Highly Successful Web Writing – Kathy Henning.
The Web Content Style Guide Excerpt: Writing for the Web: Part 1 – Gerry McGovern.
- The Web Content Style Guide Excerpt: Writing for the Web: Part 2 – Gerry McGovern.
To Know Your Customer, Know Their Carewords – Gerry McGovern.
User Focused Language for Intranets and Websites – Nick Besseling.
Validate that Grammar – Sheri German.
Web writing for many interest levels – Nathan Wallace.
What is good hypertext writing? – Jutta Degener.
What’s Different About Writing for the Web – Trenton Moss.
Why the Tech Industry Needs to Change Its Language – Jonathan Follett.
Words come before looks in web design – Gerry McGovern.
Writing for the Web – How to Write Web-Friendly Content for your Site – Steve Lee.
Writing for the Web by Ben Hunt.
Writing for the Web by Jakob Nielsen.
Writing for the Web from webreference.com.
Writing for the Web: Guidelines for MIT Libraries.
Writing for the Web Workbook – Thom Haller, et al.
Writing Online – Nick Usborne’s column at ClickZ.
Writing photo captions for the Web – Ruth Garner, Mark Gillingham, and Yong Zhao.
Writing Well for the Web – Catherine Titta.
www.gooddocuments.com.
Your About Page Is a Robot – Erin Kissane.

Up to Page Index

Articles & Related Links

9 Lessons From 9 Years of Interface Design – Luke Wroblewski.
1. Insights Come in All Shapes and Sizes – Luke Wroblewski.
2. Writing it Down Forces You to Think it Through – Luke Wroblewski.
3. Less is More…- Luke Wroblewski.
4. …Except When More is More – Luke Wroblewski.
5. Patterns Occur at All Levels – Luke Wroblewski.
6. Documentation Takes Time. Make It Worth the Effort. – Luke Wroblewski.
A Crash Course in User Interfaces – Nate Kohari.
CEOs and Usability – John S. Rhodes and Daniel Szuc.
CHI Video Retrospective – The Open Video Project.
Contingency Design – Kevin Leitch.
Creating a Universal Usability Agenda – Whitney Quesenbery.
Creating Online Application Power Users Using Graduated Usability – Robert Buffone.
Design for rule, not exception – Gerry McGovern.
Designing for the ‘Average User’ – Frank Spillers.
Designing the User Interface, 4e – Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant.
Designing User Experiences for Applications Versus Information Resources on the Web – Leo Frishberg.
Digital Divide: The Three Stages – Jakob Nielsen.
Displays
- Are developers people? – Jakob Nielsen.
- Display 2.0: A Look Forward to the High-Definition Web and Its Effect on Our Digital Experience – Jonathan Follett.
- Screen Resolution and Page Layout – Jakob Nielsen.
- Vision Quest: How Low-Resolution Displays Have Changed the Way We Read, Write, and Interact – Jonathan Follett.
- Microsoft Finds That More Screens are Better – Ann Light.
- Productivity and Screen Size – Jakob Nielsen.
Dimensions of Usability: Defining the Conversation, Driving the Process – Whitney Quensenbery.
Dividing User Time Between Goal And Tool – Jared Spool.
Discovering Web App Structure – Jared M. Spool.
Don’t Make Me Think, Second Edition: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (Chapter 11) – Steve Krug.
Durability of Usability Guidelines – Jakob Nielsen.
E-Learning, Online Learning Usability
- Usability, Accessibility, and Equity: Understanding the Anomalies in Online Learning – Joanne McInnerney, Lissa McNamee, and Tim Roberts.
- Usability in E-Learning – Michael J. Miller.
Eight Problems That Haven’t Changed – Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger.
Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion – Jakob Nielsen.
Evaluating Low Spatial Frequency Compositions – Matt Queen.
Five Usability Challenges of Web-Based Applications – Jared M. Spool.
Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction – Nick Usborne.
Forging a partnership between designer and use – Sarah Horton.
Free Usability Advice – Expero.
HCC (Human-Centered Computing) Education Digital Library – Brainchild of Jim Foley and Stephen Fleming.
Help Is For Experts – Jensen Harris.
History of the Button Blog – Bill DeRouchey.
How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Relinquish Control – Peter Merholz.
How Much Effort Does It Take to Create a Great User Experience? – John Rhodes.
How Product Teams Benefit from Usability – John Rhodes.
How to Create User Friendly Web Sites – Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger.
How Usable Are University Websites? A report on a study of the prospective student experience – Dey Alexander.
How we really use the Web – Steve Krug.
Hyped Web Stories Are Irrelevant – Jakob Nielsen.
If yuo can raed this yuor brian wroks – Kath Straub.
Inferences from Mouse Movement – Jared Spool.
Internationalization Primer – Jonathan Snook.
Introducing User-Centered Design – Free Usability Advice.
It’s The User, Stupid – Ken Magill.
Give Up Control Or You’ll Lose It Forever: Experience Designers Beware – Web 2.0 Interfaces Change Everything – Joshua Porter.
Google and Microsoft Understand the Power of the Default – Joshua Porter.
Gorilla Usability – D. Keith Robinson.
Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center – This site from Georgia Tech is a tremendous resource for usability and interaction reports and resources.
Information and Design Usability Toolkit – Gerry Gaffney.
Low-End Media for User Empowerment – Jakob Nielsen.
Making the Customer CEO – Gerry McGovern.
More On Salary By Gender – Paul Sherman.
Much Ado About Sex and Web Sites…Or Why It’s Still Important to Know Who Your Users Are – Kath Straub.
No Website is Better than a Bad One – Gerry McGovern.
Not everyone is worth supporting – Gerry McGovern.
Organization in the Way: How Decentralization Hobbles the User Experience – Peter Merholz.
On Beyond Help: User Assistance and the User Interface – Whitney Quesenbery.
Panic! How it Works and What To Do About It – Bruce ‘Tog’ Tognazzini.
Participatory Design – and Why It’s More Than UCD – Ann Light.
Personable ‘About Us’ Page Lifts Ecommerce Conversions 30% – Marketing Sherpa.
Planning a Usable Website: A three-step guide – Trenton Moss.
Preventing Usability Problems from the Get-go – Jared M. Spool .
Podcasting Fails to Impress, Claims Forrester – Ann Light.
Poor Usability Implicated in Rejection of Mobile Internet – Ann Light.
Power to the People – D. Keith Robinson.
Production For Use – Jeffery Zeldman.
Put The Friendly Back In User-Friendly – D. Keith Robinson.
Putting Context Into Context – Jared M. Spool.
Programmers are People, Too – Ken Arnold.
QA and Usability – Position Paper for the Usability Workshop – W3C.
Quality From Design: Implementing a sane process for application development – Alan Cooper.
Rapid Contextual Design: A How-To Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design – Karen Holtzblatt, Jessamyn Burns Wendell, and Shelley Wood.
Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines – usability.gov.
RIAs: The Technology Is Exciting, but They Really Do Help Users – David Heller.
R.I.P. WYSIWYG – Jakob Nielsen.
- Beware of False Prophets… – Peter Merholz.
Salary Trends for Usability Professionals – Jakob Nielsen.
SAP Design Guild Articles – SAP Design Guild.
Server Side Usability: How to make web servers behave – Henrik Olsen.
Seven Reasons Why Applications Fail – Joshua Porter.
Seven Screen Reader Usability Tips – Trenton Moss.
Shneiderman demands Computing Renaissance – Ann Light.
Sink the Splash Page – Andrew B. King.
Site Design – Jakob Nielsen (Chapter 4 from his Designing Web Usability book).
Site usability must guide web designers – Steve Barrett.
Site use – insights from user research – Donna Maurer.
Some Historical Usability Research – Colin Lieberman.
Strategic usability – Scott Berkun.
Situate Follow-Ups in Context – Jakob Nielsen.
Status of ISO 9241 – User Focus.
Task Marketing Brings You Web Success – Gerry McGovern.
Ten Best Intranets of 2005 – Jakob Nielsen.
Ten Best Intranets of 2006 – Jakob Nielsen.
Ten Most Persistent Design Bugs – Bruce Tognazzini.
Ten Ways to Continuously Improve Your Intranet – Donna Maurer and Tina Calabria.
The Battle Between Usability and User-Experience – Thomas Baekdal.
The Benefits of Footnotes in Webpages – Jesper Tverskov.
The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004 – Vincent Flanders.
The complexity principle – Andrei Herasimchuk and Donna Driscoll.
The End of Deference and the Rise of Customer Power – Gerry McGovern.
The iceberg analogy of usability – Dick Berry.
The Backlash against Jakob Nielsen and What it Teaches Us – George Olsen.
The difference between usable and useful – James Robertson.
The Day Alertbox Died – Chris McEvoy.
The End of Usability Culture – Dirk Knemeyer.
- The End of Usability Culture, Redux – Dirk Knemeyer.
The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications – Julie A. Jacko and Andrew Sears, Editors.
The Long Neck – Gerry McGovern.
- Do You Know What’s in Your Long Neck? – Gerry McGovern.
The Persistence of Usability Myths – John Knight and Marie Jefsioutine.
The Power of Defaults – Jakob Nielsen.
The Power of Positive Whining – Jeffrey Zeldman.
The Problem With Many Web Applications Is The Front-End – D. Keith Robinson.
The Rebooter’s Children Go Rebootless – Jeffery Zeldman.
- Zeldman Wonders Where The Content and Usability Are – D. Keith Robinson.
The Sphere of Design – Ben Hunt.
The Ultimate Webdesign Usability Checklist – Rogier Bikker.
The Usability Methods Toolbox – James Hom.
Things That Need To STOP – Mark Hurst.
Thumbnail: Jakob Nielsen – Clifford Anderson.
Top 10 Usability Blunders of the Big Players – Trenton Moss.
Top 10 Ways to Lose Your Intranet Users – Paul Chin.
Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002 By Jakob Nielsen.
Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003 – Jakob Nielsen.
- Comments on 10 Design Mistakes – Meryl K. Evans.
- Part 2 of Web Design Mistakes of 2003 – Meryl K. Evans.
Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005 – Jakob Nielsen.
True Web Usability – Principles Over Laws – Jon Jackson.
Truth Sells on the Web – Gerry McGovern.
Trust and Blame – Whitney Quesenbery.
UI Conf: My Higlights from UI11 – Jesper Ronn-Jensen.
University Websites Come of Age – Gerry McGovern.
Usable?…Or Not?…Factors Affecting the Usability of Web Sites – Rakhi Rajani and Dr. Duska Rosenberg.
Usable Web – Keith Instone.
Usability and Games: 17 Excellent References – John Rhodes.
Usability Book of Knowledge – Usability Professionals Association.
Usability Book of Knowledge – Usability Professionals Association.
Usability Case Library – Rosson and Carroll.
Usability Experts Are From Mars, Graphic Designers Are From Venus – Curt Cloninger.
Usability for Rich Internet Applications – Donna Maurer.
Usability in One Easy Step (First Draft) – Joel Spolsky.
User Interface Design Principles for Web Applications – Aral Balkan.
Usability Studies 101: Forests and Trees – Joseph Carrabis.
- Usability Studies 101: Maslow’s Hammer – Joseph Carrabis.
User Interface Design – Taking the Good with the Bad – Mike Padilla.
Users Interleave Sites and Genres – Jakob Nielsen.
User Expectations – John S. Rhode.
Userism – Jeffrey Zeldman.
UXmatters – Pabini Gabriel-Petit, Publisher & Editor in Chief.
Visual Communication and Web Application Design – Luke Wroblewski.
Voodoo Usability – Jakob Nielsen.
WAI self-examination – Joe Clark.
Web Course Usability – Dave Smulders.
Web Design for All the Senses – Dirk Knemeyer.
Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes – Jakob Nielsen.
- Business Blog Web Design Mistakes – Meryl Evans.
- If You’re Reading This, You Are a Low-Value Demographic – Jeff Atwood.
- In Praise of Web Experts – Gerry McGovern.
- Jakob Only Has Two Weblog Mistakes Right – Garrick Van Buren.
Web Pages That Suck.
Web Usability: A New International Standard – David Travis.
What is the Best Layout for Multiple-Column Web Pages? – Michael Bernard and Laurie Larsen.
What Makes a Good Web Site? – Chris Heilmann.
What Your Website can Learn from Starbucks – Gerry McGovern.
When the Web Team Gets it Totally Wrong – Gerry McGovern.
Why Award-Winning Websites Are So Awful – Gerry McGovern.
Why HTML in E-Mail is a Bad Idea – Scot Hacker.
Why Your Web App Sucks – Paul Scrivens.
Workers Waste 10 Percent of Their Time Fighting with Technology – Lyle Kantrovich.
Your Website is for Your Most Important Customers – Gerry McGovern.

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