I recently attended a seminar by Northwords Software in Brown Deer, WI. by the CEO Pat Bieser. Pat's an excellent presenter, and gave some great examples of usability scenarios. I met some other programmers and designers, and met up with Jeff Horvath from Informed Balance, a Usability firm in Madison. I attended a seminar recently where Jeff presented on usability. He is another good presenter, and had I not seen his presentation, I probably wouldn't have been interested in this one. Well, this was a good one too, I'm glad I went...
The presentation opened with a quick review of “Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability“, by Steve Krug.
A quick study of Amazon followed, where a few big usability solutions were pointed out:
* Immediate search (left, upper part of screen)
* 1-click checkout gives impression of immediate results
* Simple graphics on the site
* Substance: rich detail per item, including reviews, sample text, wav samples for CDs
* Beautiful Login dialog: Email textbox, and a question: Do you have a password, with radio buttons to 1. No, I'm a new customer, and 2. Yes I have a password, followed by a textbox with a submit button.
Other Sites were also displayed as good examples of usability:
* Craigslist.com
* Southwest Airlines - 1 page entry for filling in flight info, immediately returns a quote for the flight
* Midwest Airlines - The result grid for a flight quote displayed other options with better rates near the original date & time
A few writing tips:
* Write to be scanned
* 1 thought per paragraph (especially on the homepage!)
* Cut words in half, then do it again
* Use graphic accents to draw attention, not to show off design skill
A few webpage tips:
* Never use marketing lingo or brands in your navigation
* Images to sell, not words - display images of products instead of describing them
* No “happy talk” or instructions. Instructions should never be necessary.
Home page tips:
* No welcome message
* Show a small number of core tasks (7 +/- 1 links)
* Group utilities like search, login, etc
* Group corporate info like contact info, about us, etc
* Don't make content look like an ad
Essentials for usability:
* Breadcrumbs
* Search
* Site Map
Practicing Usability
* Base UI on the Top 10 tasks of the site
* Paper Prototyping
* Check web & search logs regularly to monitor trends in site use:
> Check for spelling errors in search and route appropriately
> Isolate high-occurrence searches
Print | posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 8:17 PM