“Better prioritization, fewer interruptions, and concentrated information that’s easy to find and manage helps people become more productive and stop wasting their colleagues’ time.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Final manuscript: Except for proofing. Do NOT tell me about mistakes. These files are riddled with errors. I believe that all have been found and corrected. And if not, well, it is too late.” (Don Norman – NN/g) – courtesy of ben hyde

“Once a curmudgeonly champion of ‘usable’ design, cognitive scientist Donald A. Norman argues that future machines will need emotions to be truly dependable.” (W. Wayt Gibbs – Scientific American) – courtesy of lucdesk

“Respected technology commentators say that they now prefer instant messaging (IM) over e-mail as their medium of choice for computer-mediated communication. The main reasons are that e-mail has become an overloaded channel for readers and that you can’t be sure to get a timely response from the recipients of your e-mail.” (Jakob Nielsen – ACM Queue)

“Sites are getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“A website needs to be as close to perfect as possible before it is presented to the intended audience, and the adherence to a formal test plan and test procedures will assist in making sure that all bases are covered before the site is launched.” (Julie Price – Thread Inc.)

“Open-source is becoming an increasingly popular software development method. This paper reports a usability study of the open-source Greenstone Digital Library collection-building software. The problems highlighted by the study are analysed to identify their likely source within the social context of Greenstone’s development environment. We discuss how characteristics of open-source software development influence the usability of resulting software products. ” (David M. Nichols, Kirsten Thomson and Stuart A. Yeates – Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand)

“Transactional email can be a website’s customer service ambassador, but messages must first survive a ruthless selection process in the user’s in-box. Differentiating your message from spam is thus the first duty of email design.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“On average across many test tasks, users fail 35% of the time when using websites. This is 100,000 times worse than six sigma’s requirement, but Web usability can still benefit from a six sigma quality approach.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“There are ten usability mistakes that about two-thirds of corporate websites make. The prevalence of these errors alone warrants attention, especially since they appear on sites with significant investment in usable design.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“One common concern raised by managers and engineers alike is this: how usable is enough? This question, and the absence of an easy answer, is often the first defense people offer against investing in usability and ease of use. The smart usability engineer or designer has at least one response: the usability benchmark. By capturing the current level of ease of use of the current product or website, a reference point is created that can be measured against in the future. It doesn’t answer the question of how usable is enough, but if the benchmark is done properly, it does enable someone to set goals and expectations around ease of use for the future.” (Scott Berkun – uiweb) – courtesy of lawrence lee

Presentation by Eugene Chen (Aaron Marcus and Associates), Steve Krug (Advanced Common Sense), and Keith Instone (Usable Web) (AIGA Experience Design) – courtesy of croc o’lyle

“(…) a comic strip written for a very specific audience, but much of what we talk about is quite universal. Most everybody can relate to things in the world which don’t work like they should — and you needn’t be a usability specialist, interaction designer, industrial designer or any sort of designer to appreciate that frustration. But if you ARE any of those aforementioned people or have had the pleasure and pain of working with one or more of this rare breed, this strip is for you. ” (Kevin Cheng & Tom Chi)

All files on this site are PDFs. (Usability.gov)

“I find that by basing hypotheses on a site or application’s goals, I can integrate usability testing into the design process. By thinking in terms of hypotheses based on design goals I can generate relevant, action-oriented findings. In this way, usability doesn’t stifle creativity, it focuses it.” (Avi Soudack – Boxes and Arrows)

“Study participants searched websites for background information ranging from company history to management biographies and contact details. Their success rate was 70%, leaving much room for usability improvements in the ‘About Us’ designs.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Value” is like ‘quality’Ý– no one seems to be able to define it, and yet everyone knows it when they see it. This ATW feature explores the concept of ‘value’ in a Web site and looks at how creating usable Webspace is an integral part of creating valuable Webspace.” (All Things Web)

“U-Pods focuses on the business of usability and the people charged with the responsibility of managing that business. As a peer-based community, U-Pods brings the right people together within the right scale and structure to foster the right type of dialog, support, relationships, and history. U-Pods’ creation of small-scale pods collectively forming a large-scale organization gives you the best of both worlds. ” (About U-Pods) – courtesy of usability news

“This year’s winning intranet designs emphasized workflow support, self-service content management, and offloading tasks from email to collaboration tools. On average, companies spent three years between redesigns, and one year on the redesign itself.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive, says usability is at the heart of the company’s approach. He adds that it was one of the first to realise that ease of use had to become the main goal in design.” (Neil McCartney – Financial Times) – courtesy of croc o’lyle