WebWord

“The KDE Usability Project reports I posted last week received a lot of feedback. There were several motivations for posting the reports, and I think it was a success. They are a useful reference for developers and other usability specialists as well as provides a public appearance for what the project does. Some of the […]

“The concept is simple – the new wall outlets have receptacles that rotate a full 360 degrees in both directions. The receptacles click and hold in 18 different positions, enabling you to find a way to plug in those big fat problem plugs without eclipsing the next outlet.” (Source: Gizmag)
More usable but not the result […]

“In this article, I’ll present findings from eyetracking tests we did to evaluate the best solutions for label placement in Web forms.”
Evaluating the Usability of Search Forms Using Eyetracking

Your Call Should Be Important to Us, but It’s Not (New York Times)
Gethuman Database — secret phone numbers and codes to get to a human when calling a company for customer service
Second Generation Tag Clouds
Why is it so Hard to Make Products that People Love?
Why Features Don’t Matter Anymore: The New Laws of Digital Technology
Avoid […]

“Ajax, at least for now, is best suited to making user interfaces more intuitive and useful. Pop-up, context-sensitive information balloons (like those on Netflix.com), data lists that regularly update without reloading a page: These are the types of things that Ajax can offer right now to help you spruce up your browser-based tools.” (Source: CIO.com, […]

“In this article, I provide some practical tips for designing usable RIAs, based on fundamental principles of HCI.” (Author: Donna Maurer, Source: Digital Web Magazine)
Usability for Rich Internet Applications

All resources in this list are freely available. I deliberately avoided references and links to material hidden behind the dark curtain of registration. Why should I pass along the punishment?
If you would like to recommend another reference simply leave a comment. I’ll evaluate it and add it to the list. I expect this to […]

Short Answer: Of course. I hope you’re not suprised.
“It was found that the usability expert evaluation and testing provided both novel and useful data for game development. Based on these and the other results it is argued that the usability expert evaluation and testing have considerable face validity in game development.” (Author: Sauli Laitinen, Source: […]

“Usability is an integral part of software development and has been so for the past 20 years. For one reason or another, usability has not gained similar popularity in game development. This, however, is about to change. Ease of use and optimal user experience are already important in games and will become even more so […]

I’m looking for examples of really great email signatures for the book I’m writing. There’s a catch. The signature absolutely must include some “call to action” related to UX. It has got to include a link to a UX article or web site. Or, maybe it includes a wonderful UX quote that has generated a […]

“Programs come and go, but data lives forever. Any time you’re working with data that isn’t in a well-documented standard format, you should therefore try to include format information in the data itself, so that it can’t ever be lost.” (Author: Greg Wilson, Source: ONLamp)
From a usability perspective this is excellent advice. I’ll admit the […]

“While doing this work, one thing became evident to me: there is no way to cheat democracy on the web. That is, there is no “magic number” of votes that your link needs to fly to the top of the list. The conclusion can then logically be drawn: if you want your web site to […]