“It’s difficult to find someone who doesn’t believe it’s beneficial to make a more usable design. However, in today’s design environment, it’s often difficult to justify the expense of usability work against other business priorities.” (Jared Spool – webpronews.com) – courtesy of john rhodes

“Both candidates for president of the United States offer email newsletters with much good content to excite supporters, but miserable subscription interfaces and several other usability problems.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Many university websites are poorly organized, and filled with out-of-date content that has been directly published from print. Delivering a better service to students and staff faces challenges because of decentralized management structures and concepts such as academic freedom.” (Gerry McGovern)

“(…) there are simple, clear ways to accommodate linguistic, cultural, and monetary differences when conducting user research. Follow these four easy steps for a successful interview abroad.” (Indy Young – Adaptive Path)

“Simplicity may be the most important usability design principle as well as being the common thread through many other design principles.” (Jeff Brace)

“This article reports on a study which used results from 119 scenario-based evaluations of 36 museum Web sites to develop a conceptual framework for analyzing the usability flaws of museum Web sites. It identifies 15 unique dimensions, grouped into five categories, that exemplify usability problems common to many museum Web sites. Each dimension is discussed in detail, and typical examples are provided, based on actual usability flaws observed during the evaluations. The availability of this conceptual framework will help the designers of museum Web sites improve the overall usability of museum Web sites in general.” (Paul F. Marty and Michael B. Twidale – First Monday 9.9)

“Users expect 77% of the simpler Web design elements to behave in a certain way. Unfortunately, confusion reigns for many higher-level design issues.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“If it’s your job to design the homepage for a newspaper website, you already deserve sympathy. The organization chart may show you have one boss. But you know better. You must drive traffic from that one page to everything else on the site. So everyone else at your company whose job depends on that traffic becomes your boss when design decisions affect his or her interests.” (Jay Small – Eyetrack) – courtesy of jakob nielsen

“Reduce the bounce rate for organic landing pages, collect data to manage PPC for maximum ROI, and take five other steps to maximize your site’s holiday sales potential before it’s too late.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Simple, unobtrusive designs that support users are successful because they abide by the Web’s nature — and they make people feel good.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Unless you have explicit links to product pages from article content, users who visit articles directly from search engines might never realize that you sell related products.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“The purpose of this article is to challenge a core belief in usability. An argument is made that profits are more important than users since organizations cannot survive without profits. Although the business value is high, usability is only one mechanism for driving profits and success.” (John S. Rhodes – Oristus)

“The website is becoming a less prominent locus of experience as people use search engines to bring up answers to their current questions. How can sites cope with masses of freeloaders?” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“This spreadsheet allows you to measure task completion rates, analyse questionnaire data, and summarise participant comments. It even includes a timer so you can measure time-on-task.” (Userfocus) – courtesy of column two

“So, for anyone out there who feels like failing to get a job in usability, here’s a brief checklist of steps.” (Caroline Jarrett)

“Users will often overlook the actual location of information or products if another website area seems like the perfect place to look. Cross-references and clear labels alleviate this problem.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“A usability overview of one of the larger open source software projects: the 2.6 version of the GNOME desktop and developer platform. We look at how well GNOME lives up to its challenge of being the desktop for the masses, including a lengthy survey of a group of new users and their reactions to the system.” (User Instinct)

“Usability is great when it comes to most applications – unless one of the criteria for the application is ‘challenging for the user’. Such is the dilemma of video game design.” (Kevin Cheng – OK/Cancel)

“The best way for ecommerce sites to increase subsequent orders is to treat customers well after they place their initial order.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Listening to customers and making sure your website is usable are important to website success. It is much more important, however, to have a website that delivers real value both to the organization and the reader. Going for value can sometimes mean going against customer feedback and usability best practice.” (Gerry McGovern)