Articles
Local councils experience declining Usability
Local councils in the UK have experienced a downturn in website usability over the last year as they fail to address key transactional facilities, according to a new study released today.
The 2010 Local Council Website Usability report from user experience consultancy, Webcredible looked at the top 20 Local Councils outlined by the Society of IT Management (Soctim) and revealed that the average usability score achieved overall was 58.7 per cent, a dip in comparison with last year’s average score of 59.9 per cent.
HFI Launches Usability Certification for Organisations and Designs
Human Factors International (HFI) has just announced an extension of its successful program for certification of usability practitioners (Certified Usability Analysts) which currently provides certification to about 10% of the world's usability practitioners. As a service to the industry, the company will enable organizations to gain certification for their level of institutionalization of usability. They can be certified as Level III, IV, and V depending on their achievement on HFI's Usability Maturity Model.
The Five most Influential Papers in Usability
By Jeff Sauro
I compiled a list of papers that have had a large and lasting influence on the field of Usability and User Experience. I then asked Jim Lewis and Joe Dumas, two pioneers in this field for their top five. There was considerable overlap in both the papers and topics suggesting that while there may be some disagreement with the conclusions of the papers there is strong agreement on their impact.
1. Designing for usability: key principles and what designers think. Gould, J. D. and Lewis, C. (1985)
Poof! After Wireless, the Computer Mouse Turns Invisible
By Priya Ganapati
In a magic trick that only geeks can pull off, researchers at MIT have found a method to let users click and scroll exactly the same way they would with a computer mouse, without the device actually being there. Cup your palm, move it around on a table and a cursor on the screen hovers. Tap on the table like you would click a real mouse, and the computer responds. It’s one step beyond cordless. It’s an invisible mouse.
Does Great Usability Equal Great User Interface Design?
By Martin Metz
What is usability?
Deeply personal information experience, not better technology
Computer component maker Intel is investing in research and development projects that provide insight into how technology can be used to better the human-computer experience.
"Better technology isn't enough these days," said Justin Rattner, Intel Senior Fellow, Chief Technology Officer and Director Intel Labs. "What the individual values today is a deeply personal, information experience. When I look ahead, this is the biggest change in computing I see coming."
Information Architecture – Rocket Science Simplified
I can’t count how many times in the past couple years I’ve heard people talk about how important information architecture (also referred to as IA) is to SEO. Yet it’s almost always presented in a way that calls upon a lot of highly technical lingo. Taxonomy. UX. Contextual browsing. Mental model. Ontology. Semantic web… Honestly speaking, I don’t even know what half the lingo means in the moment I hear some of these words.
Reading Speeds on iPad, Kindle and Print books Compared
By Adam Hartley
A new in-depth, qualitative study has compared the average reading speeds from reading long-form texts on four different reading devices – the traditional printed book, the PC, the Apple iPad and the Amazon Kindle. Jakob Nielsen's reading usability study looked to answer one simple question: are the latest e-books and tablet PCs as good as printed books?
iPad versus Kindle versus Book
Intel announces new User Experience R&D group
Intel Corporation Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner has just announced a new research division, called Interaction and Experience Research (IXR), that is focused on defining new user experiences and new computing platforms. The innovations coming out of the labs are expected to help re-imagine how we will all experience computing in the future.
