Archive for the 'Usability' Category

Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini Talks About the iPhone

Monday, July 30th, 2007

The iPhone User Experience: A First Touch (Ask Tog) — “The “fit and finish” of the device are extraordinary, both in terms of industrial design and human-computer interaction.”
Don’t miss: The iPhone User Experience: A First Look

It’s important to ask the right questions…

Monday, July 30th, 2007

Ask Great Questions — “When testing people in front of the computer screen, you need to guide them in some way through the process. The usability goals need to be operationalized in order to check if the product meets them. Operationalization means to take an abstract goal and describe it in terms that can be […]

Andy Edmonds on User Experience at FreeIQ

Monday, July 30th, 2007

Free IQ CXO Andy Edmonds on Free IQ Usability — “The site has a “clean”, frictionless look and feel. Think about the best search engines (Google), and content publishers (Amazon). Forget “talking heads”, banner city and intrusive pop ups. Free IQ is a true e commerce platform that hosts and streams video- for free. A […]

I’m giving Twitter a second chance…

Saturday, July 28th, 2007

A while ago I looked at Twitter and I was not very impressed. I just didn’t see the point. But I’m going to give it a second chance. I’m going to try it out for, um, maybe a week or so. Two things have to happen to keep me going.
1. It’s gotta be deadly easy, […]

Subscriptions Are Flowing: WebWord Newsletter

Thursday, July 26th, 2007

Since the announcement yesterday of the Rebirth of the WebWord Newsletter there have been a lot of subscriptions. Apparently there is a lot of pent up demand.
I really should have started the newsletter back up a couple of years ago. Even periodic updates would be useful to WebWord readers, like you. More importantly there are always […]

Rebirth of the WebWord Newsletter

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

I’ve been quietly working to start publishing the WebWord Newsletter once again. This is a serious decision because writing and publishing the newsletter takes a lot of time and effort, as you can probably imagine.
Despite the fact that I don’t post on this blog as much as did a few years ago, I still stay […]

Let’s Revisit the Perceived Information Architecture Test (PIA)

Sunday, July 15th, 2007

It’s been a very long time since I talked about the Perceived Information Architecture Test (PIA). However, some folks are redesigning a web site and they’re looking to use the PIA. Here are some of the questions they asked:

Have you written anything new about the PIA?
It’s been 5 years since the article, do you use […]

Why The NYT Usability Article Was a Good Thing

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

Matthew Oliphant writes I Can Exist Now. The NYT Said So. where he tells us how he feels about the NYT times article on usability. For the most part, he’s frustrated with the New York Times article. Here are some snippets:
“Had it been written 5 years ago, I’d be really pleased about it. But it isn’t […]

Usability Field is Becoming More Legitimate Every Day

Saturday, July 7th, 2007

Technology’s Untanglers: They Make It Really Work (NY Times) — “Enter the usability professional, whose work has recently developed into a solid career track, driven mostly by advancements in technology.”
Good, solid article. Usability is here to stay. I also liked this piece a lot because it was in the NY Times and it felt very real. […]

How to Deliver Bad News to Customers

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

How to Deliver Bad News to Customers (John S. Rhodes) — “The intention of usability testing and user experience (UX) research is to help clients and end users. If you want to help people, you must first understand problems and issues. You have to explain the challenges you discover. After all, you can’t fix what […]

TransformersMovie.com Usability Problems

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

Unmasking the Decepticon: TransformersMovie.com Battles Usability — “Maybe I’m not the target (ugh) audience, here, but I don’t see a lot of 13 year olds having much more patience than I. I’ve seen a representative of your key demographic use a computer multiple times (many of which consist of me leaning over his shoulder to […]

How a six-month-old startup got bought by Google

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

Focus on the user — This is possibly the single most important thing for entrepreneurs to remember. “Every startup that dies fails to do this,” Graham says. “A lot of startups focus on their competitors or lawsuits, but what really kills startups is if users think it’s boring. It’s a much quieter and dangerous reason, […]