Justifying usability research

A great article which provides stock answers you can use when challenged about how or why you're conducting testing.

Title tag guidelines

Web page titles are so easily overlooked at times, when they are fundamental to both usability and search engine performance.

Colour blind views of websites

A great website dedicated to highlighting the experiences of colour blind people. There are good and bad examples, as well as a simulator.

Good and bad examples at We Are Color Blind

Usability, UX & UI guidelines

A couple of articles that pull together a range of guidelines - from big companies and from governments.

Axure mistakes to avoid

Axure's a great tool for prototyping, communicating and testing potential user experiences. Here, Webcredible's Alexander Baxevanis highlights 5 beginners' mistakes. 5 mistakes people make using Axure

Why customer experience matters

A couple of articles that go through why your customer experience should be at the top of your agenda. 'Customer experience' is an increasingly popular term these days, but you could just as easily say 'target audience experience' or 'student experience'.

Accessibility guidelines - SUPA Edinburgh session

The next session run by the Scottish Usability Professionals Association will be on developing web accessibility guidelines and a web accessibility culture.

Free IA session Edinburgh

Edinburgh usability consultants User Vision are running another of their free breakfast briefing sessions on Thursday 26 April. This time the topic is Information Architecture.

Web managers conference - Edinburgh, June 2012

The annual university web managers conference - IWMW 2012 - is being held at Edinburgh this year. I'm running a workshop on user centred design.

Usability ROI Nielsen report - Free to University of Edinburgh colleagues

I contributed to the 4th edition of Jakob Nielsen's Usability Return on Investment report, getting a site licensed copy for the University in the process.

Why mobile matters

There's an awful lot of talk about what we need to be doing with regards to mobile. This is a great article - thoughtful, informed by data and best of all, holistic in its outlook.

Usability tips for agile teams

A great article from Jared Spool on the challenges involved in getting real user focus and design iteration into the agile process.

How organisation goals can impede the user experience

A great (if long and detailed!) piece about how if you don't understand the motivations of all stakeholders in a project, you're unlikely to deliver a great user experience.

Customer service across channels

A couple of items from usability company Webcredible, who seem to be giving a lot of attention to how big brands deal with customer service across the board - in person, the website, email and all the social media channels people are using these days. Not directly relevant to higher education but a word of caution to all of us spreading our engagement wider.

Form hint text guidance

A nice article from Caroline Jarrett explaining why it's not a good idea to put hint text in form fields you expect your user to complete.

Boag on social media management

An excellent and thought provoking piece by Paul Boag. It's so easy to establish an online community these days with social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. But it's also very easy to get it wrong.

Higher Education content strategy views

An article from a web content manager at a US university which, while quite long and rambling, hits the mark I think.

Collaborative design presentation User Vision

Last month I went to a great breakfast briefing session hosted by Edinburgh usability company User Vision on collaborative design.

Free prototyping breakfast session at User Vision, Edinburgh - 15 March

Edinburgh usability company User Vision are running a free breakfast session on rapid prototyping on 15th March 2012.

How style & design impact usability

A nice piece that summarises the key areas of style and design that impact on a website or application's ease of use.