15 Valuable Usability

Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2006)

Usability.gov should be in any usability fan’s list. This is actually not one PDF, but 18 that cover the entire process of researching, designing and usability testing a web site. Written in plain English, and being user-friendly itself, this is an excellent resource for anyone dealing with web sites or usability.

A Comparison of Questionnaires for Assessing Website Usability
Assessing Website Usability by Tullis and Stetson, from the UPA 2004 Conference (2004)

How well do web site usability questionnaires apply to the assessment of websites? Can a web site questionnaire work well as an adjunct to a usability test, with a relatively small number of users? This is a handy reference I use from time to time when putting together new usability questionnaires. It contains good reminders of best practices.

25 Point Usability Checklist
The User Effect 2009 25-point Website Usability Checklist (2009)

Nice one-page checklist of usability (and non-usability) items to look for when designing. I’m not sure I would classify all of them strictly with the label “usability” but it’s a handy list of reminders of what to look for from a heuristic standpoint.

Usability Issues in Web Site Design by Bevan, from the UPA 1998 Conference (1998)

Excellent brief overview of usability issues to consider in designing web sites. Don’t let the age of this document throw you, all of these items are just as pertinent to web site usability today as they were in 1998.

Remote Web Site Usability Testing by Gardner, from the International Journal of Public Information Systems (2007)

Very nice summary and how-to of remote testing the UNECE Statistical Division’s web site. Remote usability testing, if conducted properly and with an understanding of the trade-offs vs in-person testing, is an excellent way to gather useful usability feedback with reduced cost and maximum geographic reach.

Examining the Usability of Web Site Search by English, Hearst, Sinha, Swearington, and Yee, School of Information Management & Systems University of California, Berkeley (2002)

We all know that Metadata is important for search (or we should!). This paper clearly defines Metadata’s appliction in a search context and provides results from a test of three search interfaces. By the way, one of the authors, Rashmi Sinha is the creator of one of my favorite remote usability / survey tools: The Mind Canvas

Guidelines for Usability Testing with Children by Hanna, Risden & Alexander, Microsoft (1997)

As more and more teens and children use the internet and web-based applications, it becomes necessary to consider usability testing with children. There are differences to conducting usability testing with children versus adults. A smart usability practitioner will consider the special requirements needed to conduct usability testing with children. This article is a good introduction, with excellent how-to tips to conduct usability testing with children.

WordPress Usability Testing Report by Ball State University’s Center for Media Design (2008)

Very interesting usability study of one of the most popular blog authoring tools in the world. Provides detailed description of the usability testing method and results, including the use of eye-tracking. Provides a wealth of ideas for those designers who develop publishing platforms.

Net Rage A Study of Blogs and Usability by Catalyst Design Group (2005)

Blogging and social media have mass attention these days, but what makes for a good blog consumer experience? This is a good example of a usability test of a blog, in this case the WellSpent blog from Businessweek.com. Included are the findings, which can be applied equally well today against any blog. If you own or manage a blog, or need to usability test one, this is a great primer.

Key Questions to Ask Your Usability Testing Supplier by UK Usability Professionals Association (2003)

If you are not experienced in usability and are seeking a vendor to assist you with usability testing, this is a nice, simple checklist to use to ensure your vendor actually knows what they are talking about, and will provide you with a professional usability study. If you are a usability practitioner, you may wish to consult with this guide, and make sure you include these items in any response you provide to a prospective client.

Designing for Usability: Key Principles and What Designers Think by Gould and Lewis, IBM, from Communications of the ACM (1985)

One of the Grand-daddys of usability articles, this article proposed the Three Principles of Design: 1. Early Focus on Users and Tasks, 2. Empirical Measurement and 3. Iterative Design. The discussion in this article is ageless and still holds true today as it did in the 1970s and 1980s.

Usability Testing of Mobile Applications: A Comparison between Laboratory and Field Testing by Kaikkonen, Kallio, Keklinen, Kankainen, Cankar, Journal of Usability Studies (2005)

Usage of mobile applications has exploded in the past few years, so conducting usability testing of the holistic user experience of a mobile hardware/software application is important. But how do you do it? If you test in a controlled lab environment, you have a more precise test, but miss the other environmental variables that might have a dramatic impact on the user experience. If you test in the field, you have less control and thus a less precise test, but can include those all-important environmental variables. This article explores the issues, and presents some findings and suggestions on the best way to conduct mobile application usability testing.

Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt by Whitten and Tygar (1999)

Another oldie but goodie. Good explanation of how usability testing of security encryption software was developed and conducted, along with the findings. Don’t laugh at the screen-shots of the user interface, we all thought those gray square buttons were cool in 1999.

A Study of Vote Verification Technology Conducted for the Maryland State Board of Elections, Part II: Usability Study by The Center for American Politics and Citizenship and The Human-Computer Interaction Lab University of Maryland (2006)

For those of you in the United States, do you remember that whole “hanging-chad” issue of vote counting in Florida? A flurry of proposed electronic and other more user-friendly (and accurate) voting systems were proposed, and all of a sudden the study of voting usability took off. This is a good summary of the usability testing portion of a study conducted for the State of Maryland to recommend a better voting system.

Making Usability Recommendations Useful and Usable by Molich, Jeffries and Dumas, Journal of Usability Studies (2007)

As it turns out, even usability practitioners can sometimes produce work that is not very user-friendly. This article is based on the results from the Comparative Usability Evaluation 4 (CUE-4) study, in which 17 professional usability teams separately diagnosed and made improvement recommendations on a hotel web site. The teams’ recommendations were evaluated and the results… Well, I won’t spoil the ending for you, but let’s just say there’s plenty of room for improvement in how to make useful and usable usability recommendations. This is a very helpful best-practices document to review prior to putting together a recommendations document based on usability testing results.