“Breadcrumbs use a single line of text to show a page’s location in the site hierarchy. While secondary, this navigation technique is increasingly beneficial to users.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Making users suffer a drop-down menu to enter state abbreviations is one of many small annoyances that add up to a less efficient, less pleasant user experience. It’s worth fixing as many of these usability irritants as you can.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Although the gains don’t fall into traditional profit columns, there are clear arguments for improving usability of non-commercial websites and intranets. In one example, a state agency could get an ROI of 22.000% by fixing a basic usability problem.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Find out how people View your website or image and which areas are getting most of the attention. The ViewFinder Heatmap service, simulates human visual attention and creates an attention heatmap.”

“Although gift features leverage the online medium and draw new users to a site, they also introduce many usability pitfalls. Among them are poorly designed email notifications, which many users simply ignore.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“This year’s winners emphasized an editorial approach to news on the homepage. They also took a pragmatic approach to many hyped ‘Web 2.0’ techniques. While page design is getting more standardized, there’s no agreement on CMS or technology platforms for good intranet design.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Our objectives were simple yet bold: The leaders of the China chapter wanted to raise the profile of usability engineering and user-centered design in China and create the biggest usability conference in the region. We also wanted an event that the China usability industry could call its own. We figured that the best way to do this was to target people who are passionate about integrating usability into their products and give them a chance to meet, network, and attend talks and tutorials by leaders in user experience.” (Daniel Szuc and Paul J. Sherman – UXmatters)

“The sooner you complete a usability study, the higher its impact on the design process. Slower methods should be deferred to an annual usability checkup.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“User interfaces in film are more exciting than they are realistic, and heroes have far too easy a time using foreign systems.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Progressive disclosure defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“The Internet can be an empowering tool that lets people find good deals, manage vendors, and control their finances and investments. But it can just as easily be an alienating environment where people are cheated. Members of the Internet elite don’t realize the extent to which less-skilled users are left out of many of the advancements they cheer and enjoy. Ultimately, I’m extremely optimistic about the economic divide, which is vanishing rapidly in industrialized countries. The usability divide will take longer to close, but at least we know how to handle it — it’s simply a matter of deciding to do so. I’m very pessimistic about the empowerment divide, however, which I expect will only grow more severe in the future.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“As more examples are posted to this website we’ll be encouraging visitors to cast their votes for what they think are worthy inductees to the Usability Hall of Shame and the Usability Hall of Fame. On 14 November, World Usability Day, we’ll be announcing the first ever inductees!” (About MLE) – courtesy of bloug

“How do you keep usability, accessibility, and user experience requirements on track while developing standards? It is part of the very nature of standards to focus on details—and in the process, to sometimes lose sight of the real goals. This is especially true when a standards-making process goes on for a long time, a situation is highly political, or most people are focused on technology issues. For over two years, I’ve worked in just such a situation as part of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) creating federal standards for voting systems in the United States.” (Whitney Quesenbery – UXmatters)

“The early Web’s explosive growth rate has slowed, but even the mature Web is still expanding and recently crossed the 100 M websites mark.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Creating successful online social spaces requires attention to usability and sociability. Online social interaction involves individuals interacting with the technology (i.e., usability) and with each other via the technology (i.e., sociability). Attending to issues such as how users create and send messages, and communicate non-verbal cues are examples of usability design; attending to moderation, facilitation, politeness, leadership, and social support online are examples of sociability design. Both are needed for thriving social interaction online.” (Jenny Preece – Oxford Internet Institute)

“A study of the benefits of big monitors fails on two accounts: it didn’t test realistic tasks, and it didn’t test realistic use. Productivity is a key argument for workplace usability, but you must measure it carefully.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Passwords are a widely used mechanism for user authentication and are thus critical to the security of many systems. To provide effective security, passwords should be known to the password holder but remain unknown to everybody else. While personal information and real words are relatively easy for a user to remember, they make weak passwords from a security point of view because vulnerable to informed guessing and dictionary attacks.” (Morten Hertzum – uiGarden)

“In most online systems, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Interface standards provide context-specific guidance for implementing a system based on the task goals and functions within it. A solid standard provides guidance at two levels. At the level of look and feel, it ensures consistency throughout the application or site. To be meaningful in usability terms, the standard also must provide guidance to support a consistent experience at the functional level.” (Kath Straub – uiGarden.net)