Research-based usability guidelines

This site should be near the top of the list in everyone's bookmarks folder. Usability.gov's suite of resources have been around for a long while, and the site's just had an overhaul.

Usability.gov is a one-stop source for government web designers to learn how to make websites more usable, useful, and accessible. The site addresses a broad range of factors that go into web design and development.

Usability.gov - learn how to make websites more usable

Before you embark on any significant usability testing, check your site or application against the recommendations covered here. This document (pdf'ed by chapter) may save you time and effort.

Throughout your Web design or redesign project, you should take advantage of what is already known about best practices for each step of the process. The Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines, compiled through an extensive process of research and review, bring you those best practices.

Research-based usability guidelines from usability.gov

Persona resources #2

I particularly like this introduction to personas by Tina Calabria at Step Two Designs:

An introduction to personas and how to create them - Tina Calabria

It includes links to some impressively detailed resources I've yet to explore fully from Cooper Interaction Design:

Online journal of persona development - Cooper Interaction Design

And further to my last post on persona, where I covered a blog promoting a book I've been reading by Steve Mulder. A set of slides from Steve Mulder:

The User Is Always Right: Making Personas Work for Your Site - presentation slides by Steve Mulder

Summary text usability

In this article Jakob Neilsen describes the iterative process he went through developing text for a tweet (a short message sent out via Twitter).

The principles apply to writing short items on webpages that you want to grab the reader's attention with: headings, summary paragraphs and link text.

Neilsen's conclusion on this kind of writing:

In fact, the shorter it is, the more important it is to design text for usability.

Twitter Postings: Iterative Design - article by Jakob Neilsen

Persona creation resources

What's a persona? Part of a definition, taken from the Fluid Project:

Personas are a model used to describe users' goals, skills, abilities, technical experience and context... They are used by the design team (and larger project team) to describe, and keep front and center the user(s) for whom the system will be built.

I've been working on persona development the last couple of months.

The Fluid Project wiki is proving to be a great resource.

Persona development resources - the Fluid Project

I also bought a book the other month: "The User Is Always Right" by Steve Mulder with Ziv Yaar. Steve's blog promotes the book and he also posts links to related material and resources.

Practical Personas blog by Steve Mulder

Branding and usability

A couple of interesting articles from Jared Spool on branding.

Firstly, an old one based around Jared's observations of user experience on big, well-established brand sites.

...eBay's direct-experience branding works better than Ford's indirect-message branding at giving users a positive opinion of the brand. Therefore, we believe that usability is essential for effective branding. It appears that any obstacles users face will directly (and negatively) affect how they perceive the brand.

Branding and Usability by Jared Spool


A second, more recent article giving an overview of his research on a range of e-commerce competitors. Jared observes that when people are done shopping on certain e-commerce sites, their perceptions of the brand are often strengthened, while other sites seem to consistently weaken their brands.

...when we create designs that focus on ensuring users accomplish their goals, we are likely having a long-term positive effect on the strength of the brand.

Determining How Design Affects Branding by Jared Spool

The merits of quick, lo-fi testing

A recent article on Jared Spool's website www.uie.com by Dana Chisell on the merits of quick-and-dirty usability testing. And also her opinions on when this isn't the best way to go.

"Most of the value in doing testing – let’s say about 70% – comes from just watching someone use a design."

It's definitely my preferred approach. Possibly because it's often the only route available...

Testing in the Wild, Seizing Opportunity by Dana Chisnell

McGovern on website redesigns

Gerry's just come back from a summer break but judging by the tone of his latest newsletter post he could do with another one.

Still, he makes a strong and valid point - as is usually the case.

"...the site was "redesigned and ready to help you plan your adventures. Take a few minutes to customize your account profile to ensure you take advantage of all that our new site has to offer."

And you know what, I didn't take those few minutes.

...I just wanted to quickly check availability and see if there were any good deals. I had zero interest in designs, redesigns...

...I just wanted the website to work."

Harsh, but true...

Full article: Nobody cares about your website by Gerry McGovern

Content management online seminars by Gerry McGovern

Gerry McGovern is well worth listening to when it comes to content management.

Of course, there's a sales pitch involved but then his online seminars are free and there's lots to learn.

I've found his approach to task-driven web publishing easy to understand, and equally important, easy to communicate to others.

I've done a number of surveys based on his approach and found the data collected a very useful extra dimension when viewed alongside webstats.

Seeing the relative importance of a small number of website tasks way ahead of numerous others is pretty powerful and great when helping content owners focus on the really important stuff.

Gerry McGovern's online seminar archive - free videos and slides to download

Usable web forms

Forms that Work by Caroline Jarrett is a book that nicely compliments Ginny Redish's Letting Go of the Words. Both sit on my bookshelf.

Web forms are incredibly frustrating when they're badly designed, and can be a barrier to successful eCommerce or even just basic interaction between the web publisher and their readers.

Caroline's website has useful free resources, so there's lots to learn without even buying the book.

Forms that Work - free online resources and book promotion

Web writing resources

Without a shadow of a doubt, there is one book out there ahead of the rest on writing for the web:

Free sample chapters of Letting Go of the Words




Editing that Works is a website inspired, at least in part, by Ginny's book. It's got a couple of sections worth a look - the principles, and a list of recommended resources.

Editing that Works - Caroline Jarrett's website

Usability testing resources

A list of resources, articles and do-it-yourself materials for those interested in usability and the user experience from Information & Design, an Australian usability company.

Usability resources from Information & Design

Lots of great stuff here. For those new to usability testing, read the page on common mistakes before you go any further.

Usability testing mistakes

Eye tracking research - an insight into online reading and navigation behaviour

A couple of great repositories of eye tracking study findings.

Eye track 3 was the third (surprise!) publicly published study by The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools. It provides advice based on their findings on:

• Homepage designs
• Eye viewing patterns
• Headlines & blurbs
• Headline size
• Font size
• Navigation
• Photos & images
• Compact & extended pages

The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes

Jakob Nielsen has published lots of his findings over the years. He has a page on his site useit.com that pulls all these articles together, the most famous one being the F-shaped pattern for online reading.

Jakob Nielsen’s eyetracking research summaries

Effective search results pages - through hard work, not technology

An excellent 2 part article by Jared Spool of uie.com on what makes effective search results pages.

Having watched hundreds of people search on numerous sites he draws out attributes that make some search engine results pages more effective than others.

The bottom line is that you can't just trust the technology driving your search engine to deliver an effective service. Understanding your users and tweaking your results pages accordingly is the route to ensuring the most visited part of your site does the job you want it to.

Producing Great Search Results: Harder than It Looks, Part 1
Producing Great Search Results: Harder than It Looks, Part 2

Click analysis tools

I've been using a click analysis tool - Crazy Egg - for over a year now and find it a useful addition to webstats. There's another notable click analysis provider - Click Density. I suspect that Click Density is a better, more sophisticated tool but I went with Crazy Egg because their free service was much more generous when I was dipping my toe in the water.

For me, Crazy Egg does two things that our webstats package Google Analytics doesn't do:

• It shows me which links are most popular on a particular page, when the same link appears more than once
• It breaks down time to click statistics into modal groups (less than 1 sec, less than 2 sec, less than 5 sec, 5-10 sec etc). Google Analytics only provides an average, which is obviously skewed every time a site visitor stops mid-surf and wanders off to make a cuppa.

It's great to stick click analysis on a homepage for a few days to illustrate with a heatmap all the click hotspots, and to show to site manager just how many people click through in a matter of seconds. That's the vast majority, in case you hadn't guessed.

All those carefully crafted welcome messages that just never get read...

Crazy Egg
Click Density

Prototyping with Axure

This week I've been on a course on Axure - a piece of software I've played with in the past but not used in earnest.

I was amazed at how quickly I could knock up prototypes for a range of search interfaces we've been comparing.

I've been using Visio for a good while now, but am definitely an Axure convert.

Axure - "...for rapidly creating wireframes, prototypes and specifications for applications and web sites."
AX Trainers - Axure training delivered by usability professionals

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug

Absolutely the best book I've read on usability, bar none. Everyone should own a copy.

The book’s tagline reads: “A common sense approach to web usability”. It’s exactly that.

Easily read in a matter of a few hours, it will leave you thinking differently about your website and the ‘obvious’ mistakes we all make.

The chapters on how to conduct usability testing are available to download from Steve Krug’s website:

Steve Krug’s website: www.sensible.com

A couple of chapters have also been turned into articles for Adobe. They give a real flavour of what you can expect from the book.

How we really use the web - Scanning, satisficing, and muddling through
Usability as common courtesy

"Religious debates" cartoon from the book. If you've never experienced this as you've worked on a website you're either very fortunate or you work alone.

Checking content scannability: Five second tests

Five second tests are a quick and easy way to check the quality of your content pages.

I use this technique informally all the time when I write content. It's a great way to hone your writing.

Well worth giving this a try.

Five second tests article from www.uie.com

Follow up

I've since discovered and blogged a podcast on 5 second tests, also by Jared Spool:

5 second test podcast - content usability

Prototyping resources

Prototyping - in a nutshell, it's testing new developments out before you either build the website or change an existing one. Saves a lot of pain in the long run. And probably a few heated discussions too.

For those new to the idea of prototyping:

Introductory article on paper prototyping from www.alistapart.com

Prototyping with MS Visio is pretty quick and easy. Particularly with this tutorial and free templates:

Visio templates for paper prototyping, plus supporting article, from www.guuui.com

Nielsen in Edinburgh September 09

Well, not quite.

It doesn't look like Jakob Nielsen himself will be visiting, but his company - Nielsen Norman Group - will be delivering training over five days in the week beginning 14 September.

The sessions cover information architecture, website and application usability.

Agenda for Nielsen Norman Group training in Edinburgh, September 09

Customer opinions vs traditional marketing

This week's article from Gerry McGovern covers ground well known to many these days - online customers place a great deal of value in the opinions of other customers.

A couple of bits of research he quotes:

According to a July article in Revolution magazine, "In the UK 68 per cent of internet users were found to trust online consumer opinions, while only 58 per cent said they trust brand websites."

The article also refers to a Harris Interactive poll which found that "46 per cent of US internet users say they ignore banner ads, with just one per cent finding banner ads helpful in making a purchase decision."

A recent Nielsen study found that, "Personal recommendations and opinions posted online are the most trusted forms of advertising among Internet users around the world."

So while collecting student quotes and graduate profiles may be a bit of a pain, it's probably well worth the effort to keep them relevant and up to date.

Gerry goes on to his usual mantra. No harm in repeating it...

To succeed on the Web we need to change our mentality from seeing ourselves as a master to seeing ourselves as an apprentice. The customer is the master and we need to learn about what they need to do right now, and help them do that.

The web customer is purposeful, directed, action-oriented. They are on a journey and we need first and foremost to help them get to their destination. Then and only then have we any chance of introducing to them the idea of taking a new journey.

Web turns marketing and communications on its head - full article on Gerry McGovern's website