Xpert Web Development & Design » 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.