Summary: Users expect 77% of the simpler Web design elements to behave in a certain way. Unfortunately, confusion reigns for many higher-level design issues.
The Need for Web Design Standards
Unfortunately, much of the Web is like an anthill built by ants on LSD: many sites don't fit into the big picture, and are too difficult to use because they deviate from expected norms.
Several design elements are common enough that users expect them to work in a certain way.
Here's my definition of three different standardization levels:
Standard: 80% or more of websites use the same design approach. Users strongly expect standard elements to work a certain way when they visit a new site because that's how things always work.
Convention: 50-79% of websites use the same design approach. With a convention, users expect elements to work a certain way when they visit a new site because that's how things usually work.
Confusion: with these elements, no single design approach dominates, and even the most popular approach is used by at most 49% of websites. For such design elements, users don't know what to expect when they visit a new site.
How Many Design Elements Are Standardized?
To estimate the extent to which Web design complies with interface standards, I compared two studies: my own study of twenty-four features on fifty corporate homepages, and a University of Washington master's thesis that studied thirty-three features on seventy-five e-commerce sites.
Following are the extent to which websites have standardized on the fifty-seven design approaches studied:
Standard: 37% of design elements were done the same way by at least four-fifths of the sites. Standard design elements included:
* A logo in the upper left corner of the page
* A search box on the homepage
* An absence of splash pages
* Breadcrumbs listed horizontally (when they were used)
Convention: 40% of design elements were done the same way by at least half the sites (but less than four-fifths of the sites). Conventional design elements included:
* Using the label "site map" for the site map (which is recommended from user research on site map usability)
* Changing the color of visited links (recommended to help navigation)
* Placing the shopping cart link in the upper right corner of page
* Placing links to sibling areas (neighboring topics at the same information architecture level as the current location) in the left-hand column
Confusion: 23% of design elements were done in so many ways that no single approach dominated. Confusion reigned in several areas, including:
* The main navigation schemes, which included left-hand menu, tabs across the top, navbar across the top, Yahoo-style directory in the middle, and so on
* Placement of the search feature, which included upper right, upper left, middle, and elsewhere on the page
* The sign-in process
* Placement of Help
At first glance, it might seem wonderful that only 1/4 of the design issues created confusion.
But look at the design element examples at each standardization level. Unfortunately, the most firmly standardized issues are the simplest and most localized ones, such as where to put the logo or how to display breadcrumb trails.
The confusing design elements are the bigger issues that contribute more strongly to users' ability to master the whole site, as opposed to dealing with individual pages. Navigation is confusing. Search is confusing. Sign-in is confusing. Even Help is confusing, reducing the usability of the user's last resort when all else has failed.
Why Design Standards Help Users
We must eliminate confusing design elements and move as far as possible into the realm of design conventions. Even better, we should establish design standards for every important website task.
Standards ensure that users
* know what features to expect,
* know how these features will look in the interface,
* know where to find these features on the site and on the page,
* know how to operate each feature to achieve their goal,
* don't have to ponder the meaning of unknown design elements,
* don't miss important features because they overlook a non-standard design element, and
* don't get nasty surprises when something doesn't work as expected.
Why Websites Should Comply With Design Standards
One simple reason:
Jakob's Law of the Internet User Experience: users spend most of their time on other websites.
In visiting all these other sites, people become accustomed to the prevailing design standards and conventions. Thus, when users arrive at your site, they assume it will work the same way as other sites.
In my recent research into Web-wide user behavior, users left websites after 1 minute and 49 seconds on average, concluding in that time that the website didn't fulfill their needs.
With so little time to convince prospects that you're worthy of their business, you shouldn't waste even a second making them struggle with a deviant user interface.
Going forward, we must produce and follow widely-used conventions and design patterns for the bigger issues in Web design, including:
* the structure of product pages,
* workflow (beyond simplistic shopping carts),
* the main types of information a corporate site should provide, and
* the information architecture for that information (where to find what).
Intranet Standards
Design standards are one area in which intranets are better off than public websites.
A key distinction between an intranet and the Internet is that the intranet has a single authority in charge.
The intranet team can define a design standard and promote it throughout the corporation. The team can also implement a single publishing system that ensures consistency by placing all content into a single set of well-designed templates.
Source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, September 13, 2004:
The Need for Web Design Standards
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040913.html
The Need for Web Design Standards (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Friday, September 25, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Sep 21 - Nielsen, 10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities (Alertbox)
10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities
Summary: Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website.
Following here are 10 Internet tactics with a particularly high return on investment (ROI).
1. Email Newsletters
Email newsletters let you maintain a relationship with your customers that lasts beyond their visits to your site.
The newsletter is the perfect website companion because it answers a different user need: newsletters keep customers informed and in touch with the company; websites give customers detailed information and let them perform business transactions.
Newsletters are fairly cheap. They require little technology and mustn't be published too frequently.
If you don't have a newsletter, then publishing one is probably the single-highest ROI action you can take to improve your Internet presence.
If you do have a newsletter, then improving it according to research findings will likely make it several times more valuable to your organization.
Newsletters have one more benefit: they are the primary way to liberate your site from dependence on search engines.
2. Informative Product Pages
The product pages on e-commerce sites, marketing sites, and B2B sites all suffer from information deficit. It's rare to see product descriptions that tell prospects everything they need to know to make a purchasing decision.
In my recent book, I present data showing that poor product information accounted for 8% of the usability problems on the websites we tested. Even worse, poor product information accounted for 10% of the user failures (that is, cases where users gave up, as opposed to "just" being delayed or annoyed).
Designing product pages according to user needs is a highly targeted way to encourage sales at a point where users have already indicated interest by virtue of visiting the page.
You need detailed product information, but it must be written in a way that makes sense to people who aren't experts in your field.
3. High-Quality Photography
One of the simplest ways to improve product pages is to show better photographs.
For the hero shot at the top of the page, show the most representative photo in a small size. Below that, offer several additional photos that show different angles and close-up details. Also, remember mistake #10 of the top-10 Web-design mistakes of 2005: linking from small pictures to pictures that are only slightly bigger. Instead, link to photos that are as close to full-screen enlargements as possible.
Using huge enlargements might seem to contradict the guideline about fast response times for downloading Web pages. But there's a big difference between bloating a navigational page with irrelevant graphics and showing a big photo after the user asked for it.
In the first case, the slow download interrupts the user's flow. In the second case, the delay is expected, and while delays are never welcome, they are less of a problem when they're clearly necessary to fulfill a user request.
For software products or online services, show full-resolution screenshots instead of photos.
4. Product Differentiation and Comparisons
You must soothe user fears about buying the wrong product, or they'll postpone their purchases and probably never buy from your site.
When you have multiple products in the same category, you must explain product differences so clearly that it's obvious to people without industry expertise why they should buy one particular product over the others.
Even if you have a small and clearly defined product line, you must make the differences blatantly obvious on your site.
Comparison tools can also help users choose and thus overcome decision paralysis and facilitate sales. But such tools work well only when they illustrate key differences in a concise and unambiguous manner.
Too often, websites take the easy way out and simply throw up a huge table of specifications without highlighting the points where products differ.
5. Support for Reordering
To make people spend more money, make it easy to reorder.
People often need the same things again and again. Why require them to navigate five levels down your site each time? In B2B, customers often need to order supplies, spare parts, or accessories for equipment they've already bought, so you should also facilitate those types of supplementary orders.
In one of our studies last month, test participants especially appreciated it when FreshDirect, an online grocer, let them reorder from their previous shopping lists.
Reordering is a matter of total user experience, beyond the website's user interface. Compose your product line with a view toward reordering. Continue to carry classic products so that people can order new copies of things they like. If you need to launch new products, keep sizes and similar parameters the same.
6. Simplified Text
You can usually double website or intranet usability simply by rewriting the text to follow the guidelines for online content.
Better writing is probably the single most important improvement you can make to your site, but it appears fairly far down the top-10 list because it's not a one-time fix.
You must hire good writers for all your projects, train them in writing for the Web, and have all of their content edited by even better editors who are even more knowledgeable about content usability.
7. Catering to Seniors
Older people are the fastest-growing segment of Internet users. In fact, they are virtually the only remaining growth market in rich countries, where most of the younger people who want to get online already have accounts.
Best of all, you can take advantage of the fact that most websites discriminate horribly against older users. Even government websites that supposedly target retirees are designed according to guidelines for thirty-somethings.
Because so many sites are hard for them to use, seniors will shower you with business if you're the honorable exception who acknowledges their special needs. (And, those needs aren't even that special -- it's much easier to make sites usable for seniors than for users with disabilities, plus there are many more seniors and they tend to be richer.)
8. Gift-Giving Support
Wishlists and gift certificates are low-cost features that give you incremental sales and introduce your site to new customers.
9. Search
Users increasingly depend on search as a primary interface to the Web.
While search is getting fairly good for the Internet at large, it remains miserable on most websites and intranets.
You must fix your content so that it's searchable. For example, you have to write meaningful page titles that actually explain the page's content so that people will know what they'll get when they click on a search hit. You also have to write using your users' vocabulary.
While it's expensive to rewrite your content for findability, doing so also improves your standing in external search engines, and SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the highest-ROI Internet marketing tactics.
10. User Testing
User testing should really be #1 on this list because of its ability to set your project right with almost no investment.
However unpopular, I still recommend that you do your own user testing. There are always issues that are unique to your own industry that can't be resolved by reading general research insights.
And remember: usability studies can be cheap, especially when you use low-cost paper prototypes that let you test an interface while it's still in the early design phase.
Bonus Tactic: Loyalty Program
For 10 years, I've recommended loyal-user programs, such as frequent-browser points modeled after airlines' frequent-flyer miles.
We've recently been observing people shopping online and are seeing some user loyalty emerge: more users are now starting out at a preferred site rather than a search engine. Perhaps we're finally seeing some websites that are good enough to be worthy of a bit of loyalty.
To encourage more loyalty, reward your repeat users.
Serving Customers, Not Chasing Hype
The high-ROI ideas I have highlighted here have one thing in common: they add value to your site by enhancing its value for customers. That is, they give users what they want and need. These ideas are not the latest over-hyped stories the trade press loves to cover.
Users want you to get back to basics and invest in the simple things that really matter to them.
Interface design is about making money for the company. Execution and workmanship are what you need, not fashion and advanced features. Do the basics, and do them well.
Source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, March 12, 2007:
10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/high-roi.html
10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Summary: Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website.
Following here are 10 Internet tactics with a particularly high return on investment (ROI).
1. Email Newsletters
Email newsletters let you maintain a relationship with your customers that lasts beyond their visits to your site.
The newsletter is the perfect website companion because it answers a different user need: newsletters keep customers informed and in touch with the company; websites give customers detailed information and let them perform business transactions.
Newsletters are fairly cheap. They require little technology and mustn't be published too frequently.
If you don't have a newsletter, then publishing one is probably the single-highest ROI action you can take to improve your Internet presence.
If you do have a newsletter, then improving it according to research findings will likely make it several times more valuable to your organization.
Newsletters have one more benefit: they are the primary way to liberate your site from dependence on search engines.
2. Informative Product Pages
The product pages on e-commerce sites, marketing sites, and B2B sites all suffer from information deficit. It's rare to see product descriptions that tell prospects everything they need to know to make a purchasing decision.
In my recent book, I present data showing that poor product information accounted for 8% of the usability problems on the websites we tested. Even worse, poor product information accounted for 10% of the user failures (that is, cases where users gave up, as opposed to "just" being delayed or annoyed).
Designing product pages according to user needs is a highly targeted way to encourage sales at a point where users have already indicated interest by virtue of visiting the page.
You need detailed product information, but it must be written in a way that makes sense to people who aren't experts in your field.
3. High-Quality Photography
One of the simplest ways to improve product pages is to show better photographs.
For the hero shot at the top of the page, show the most representative photo in a small size. Below that, offer several additional photos that show different angles and close-up details. Also, remember mistake #10 of the top-10 Web-design mistakes of 2005: linking from small pictures to pictures that are only slightly bigger. Instead, link to photos that are as close to full-screen enlargements as possible.
Using huge enlargements might seem to contradict the guideline about fast response times for downloading Web pages. But there's a big difference between bloating a navigational page with irrelevant graphics and showing a big photo after the user asked for it.
In the first case, the slow download interrupts the user's flow. In the second case, the delay is expected, and while delays are never welcome, they are less of a problem when they're clearly necessary to fulfill a user request.
For software products or online services, show full-resolution screenshots instead of photos.
4. Product Differentiation and Comparisons
You must soothe user fears about buying the wrong product, or they'll postpone their purchases and probably never buy from your site.
When you have multiple products in the same category, you must explain product differences so clearly that it's obvious to people without industry expertise why they should buy one particular product over the others.
Even if you have a small and clearly defined product line, you must make the differences blatantly obvious on your site.
Comparison tools can also help users choose and thus overcome decision paralysis and facilitate sales. But such tools work well only when they illustrate key differences in a concise and unambiguous manner.
Too often, websites take the easy way out and simply throw up a huge table of specifications without highlighting the points where products differ.
5. Support for Reordering
To make people spend more money, make it easy to reorder.
People often need the same things again and again. Why require them to navigate five levels down your site each time? In B2B, customers often need to order supplies, spare parts, or accessories for equipment they've already bought, so you should also facilitate those types of supplementary orders.
In one of our studies last month, test participants especially appreciated it when FreshDirect, an online grocer, let them reorder from their previous shopping lists.
Reordering is a matter of total user experience, beyond the website's user interface. Compose your product line with a view toward reordering. Continue to carry classic products so that people can order new copies of things they like. If you need to launch new products, keep sizes and similar parameters the same.
6. Simplified Text
You can usually double website or intranet usability simply by rewriting the text to follow the guidelines for online content.
Better writing is probably the single most important improvement you can make to your site, but it appears fairly far down the top-10 list because it's not a one-time fix.
You must hire good writers for all your projects, train them in writing for the Web, and have all of their content edited by even better editors who are even more knowledgeable about content usability.
7. Catering to Seniors
Older people are the fastest-growing segment of Internet users. In fact, they are virtually the only remaining growth market in rich countries, where most of the younger people who want to get online already have accounts.
Best of all, you can take advantage of the fact that most websites discriminate horribly against older users. Even government websites that supposedly target retirees are designed according to guidelines for thirty-somethings.
Because so many sites are hard for them to use, seniors will shower you with business if you're the honorable exception who acknowledges their special needs. (And, those needs aren't even that special -- it's much easier to make sites usable for seniors than for users with disabilities, plus there are many more seniors and they tend to be richer.)
8. Gift-Giving Support
Wishlists and gift certificates are low-cost features that give you incremental sales and introduce your site to new customers.
9. Search
Users increasingly depend on search as a primary interface to the Web.
While search is getting fairly good for the Internet at large, it remains miserable on most websites and intranets.
You must fix your content so that it's searchable. For example, you have to write meaningful page titles that actually explain the page's content so that people will know what they'll get when they click on a search hit. You also have to write using your users' vocabulary.
While it's expensive to rewrite your content for findability, doing so also improves your standing in external search engines, and SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the highest-ROI Internet marketing tactics.
10. User Testing
User testing should really be #1 on this list because of its ability to set your project right with almost no investment.
However unpopular, I still recommend that you do your own user testing. There are always issues that are unique to your own industry that can't be resolved by reading general research insights.
And remember: usability studies can be cheap, especially when you use low-cost paper prototypes that let you test an interface while it's still in the early design phase.
Bonus Tactic: Loyalty Program
For 10 years, I've recommended loyal-user programs, such as frequent-browser points modeled after airlines' frequent-flyer miles.
We've recently been observing people shopping online and are seeing some user loyalty emerge: more users are now starting out at a preferred site rather than a search engine. Perhaps we're finally seeing some websites that are good enough to be worthy of a bit of loyalty.
To encourage more loyalty, reward your repeat users.
Serving Customers, Not Chasing Hype
The high-ROI ideas I have highlighted here have one thing in common: they add value to your site by enhancing its value for customers. That is, they give users what they want and need. These ideas are not the latest over-hyped stories the trade press loves to cover.
Users want you to get back to basics and invest in the simple things that really matter to them.
Interface design is about making money for the company. Execution and workmanship are what you need, not fashion and advanced features. Do the basics, and do them well.
Source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, March 12, 2007:
10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/high-roi.html
10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Sep 21 - Nielsen, Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First (Alertbox)
Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First
Summary: Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.
Top Three Design Priorities
Indeed, the biggest design flaws destroying business value typically involve:
1. Communicating clearly so that users understand you.
Users allocate minimal time to initial website visits, so you must quickly convince them that the site's worthwhile.
2. Providing information users want.
Users must be able to easily determine whether your services meet their needs and why they should do business with you.
3. Offering simple, consistent page design, clear navigation, and an information architecture that puts things where users expect to find them.
Get these three right, and you'll enhance your site's credibility, ease a user's way through the site, and thus do far more for the site's business value than any JavaScript trick.
Better Content
Content rules. It did ten years ago, and it does today. People don't use things they don't understand. Writing for the Web is still undervalued, and most sites spend too few resources refining the information they offer to users.
The same goes for photos: On countless sites, product images are too small, fuzzy, or murky, or they're simply shot from a bad angle, making the product hard to see.
Generally, all you need are plainspoken words and clean photos.
Elite Experience vs. User Experience
A final reason why attention flows to things that matter little to mainstream business websites: the Web's chattering classes tend to be overly engaged in the "Internet elite experience."
They actually care about the 'Net for its own sake, and go gaga over new ways of showing maps.
In contrast, average users just want to complete tasks online. They don't particularly like the Web, and they'd like to get back to their jobs or families as quickly as possible.
One of usability's most hard-earned lessons is that "you are not the user."
If you work on a development project, you're atypical by definition.
Design to optimize the user experience for outsiders, not insiders.
The antidote to bubble vapor is user testing: find out what representative users need. It's tempting to work on what's hot, but to make money, focus on the basics that customers value.
Source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, March 20, 2006:
Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/design_priorities.html
Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Summary: Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.
Top Three Design Priorities
Indeed, the biggest design flaws destroying business value typically involve:
1. Communicating clearly so that users understand you.
Users allocate minimal time to initial website visits, so you must quickly convince them that the site's worthwhile.
2. Providing information users want.
Users must be able to easily determine whether your services meet their needs and why they should do business with you.
3. Offering simple, consistent page design, clear navigation, and an information architecture that puts things where users expect to find them.
Get these three right, and you'll enhance your site's credibility, ease a user's way through the site, and thus do far more for the site's business value than any JavaScript trick.
Better Content
Content rules. It did ten years ago, and it does today. People don't use things they don't understand. Writing for the Web is still undervalued, and most sites spend too few resources refining the information they offer to users.
The same goes for photos: On countless sites, product images are too small, fuzzy, or murky, or they're simply shot from a bad angle, making the product hard to see.
Generally, all you need are plainspoken words and clean photos.
Elite Experience vs. User Experience
A final reason why attention flows to things that matter little to mainstream business websites: the Web's chattering classes tend to be overly engaged in the "Internet elite experience."
They actually care about the 'Net for its own sake, and go gaga over new ways of showing maps.
In contrast, average users just want to complete tasks online. They don't particularly like the Web, and they'd like to get back to their jobs or families as quickly as possible.
One of usability's most hard-earned lessons is that "you are not the user."
If you work on a development project, you're atypical by definition.
Design to optimize the user experience for outsiders, not insiders.
The antidote to bubble vapor is user testing: find out what representative users need. It's tempting to work on what's hot, but to make money, focus on the basics that customers value.
Source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, March 20, 2006:
Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/design_priorities.html
Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Friday, September 18, 2009
Sep 19 - Nielsen, Four Bad Designs (Alertbox)
Four Bad Designs
Summary: Bad content, bad links, bad navigation, bad category pages... which is worst for business? In these examples, bad content takes the prize for costing the company the most money.
Bad Content: Jazz at Lincoln Center
Here's the information I found about a Jazz at Lincoln Center performance:
What information? The site provides the musicians' names and a photo of the lead trombonist. That's it. No player biographies, no description of the type of jazz they play, no quotations from reviews, no links to independent reviews, no audio clips so you could actually hear the band.
On the page above, however, there's simply a hopeful request (in big letters) that you'll "make a reservation" without knowing anything about the concert. Not likely, unless you're already well acquainted with the band.
Links without Information Scent: New York Times
Who'd want to click on "Next Article in Business"? Maybe a few more people than the eager audience for "article 19," but not many.
I thought I'd seen the end of offering links to articles with no information beyond their number — a design I panned in my review of Slate.com 12 years ago. Links need information scent to help people determine what they'll get if they click. People don't have time to click on everything.
Interior Splash Pages: Christopher Norman Chocolates
When you select a category from the main navigation menu, you don't get a page listing the corresponding products. Instead, you get a splash screen, like this one for "Geometrics & Fruits."
Splash screens are bad enough when they sit in front of a site's real homepage, but at least users encounter those screens only once. With a splash screen for every category, users have to click through many extra pages to see all the products.
Metaphor Run Amok: Specialized Bicycles
3D navigation is almost always bad. It's harder to manipulate, it doesn't show the choices as well as a 2D interface, and it tends to be slower to use.
Metaphors sometimes make a user interface easier to learn because they let users transfer their existing knowledge from the reference domain.
Websites that use metaphors almost always go way overboard and end up reducing usability. It's as if the metaphor becomes an evil attraction that diverts the design team's attention from the actual content it's supposed to communicate.
My Comments: Lousy design and poor usability would cause the website to be ineffective. That eventually would mean less sales resulting from the website if it is an e-commerce website.
The Business Cost of Bad Design
How much do these bad design ideas cost the site owners?
The New York Times is probably losing the least money; most users will simply skip the no-scent link. At the same time, of course, the generic link has an opportunity cost: in its place, the newspaper could offer a link to content that's closely related to the current article. People who actually read to the end of the page would be quite likely to click the link. The site could thus gain maybe 2–5% more pageviews through better use of that space.
My bet for biggest business loss is the content-poor jazz page. Our user testing of product pages shows that people are much more likely to buy when a page answers their questions about its offerings. With virtually no information, it's pretty much guaranteed that this Jazz at Lincoln Center page only closes the sale for strongly committed fans who would attend any performance with Wycliffe Gordon.
My guess is that, by adding more information, the site could sell at least 5 times as many tickets to non-fans. In studying the ROI of usability improvements, we sometimes find a sales increase of 1,000% or more.
So, adding meaningful content might even make this page a tenbagger for non-fanatical customers. How much the overall sales would increase depends on the ratio between the rabid adherents of this artist and the people who simply like some jazz from time to time. My guess is that the second group is so much larger that better content would make sales explode.
The last two sites are an intermediate case. For large sites, offering awkward navigation is a prescription for doom: users wouldn't stand for interstitial splash pages or bloated metaphors if they had to find their way through 10,000 products or more.
But when dealing with just a handful of products — like those offered by Christopher Norman and Specialized — motivated users can overcome bad navigation.
Of course, less motivated users will leave the first time they get even a bit lost. Bad design costs a company money, no matter how small the site.
source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, April 14, 2008:
Four Bad Designs
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/bad-design.html
Four Bad Web Designs (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Summary: Bad content, bad links, bad navigation, bad category pages... which is worst for business? In these examples, bad content takes the prize for costing the company the most money.
Bad Content: Jazz at Lincoln Center
Here's the information I found about a Jazz at Lincoln Center performance:
What information? The site provides the musicians' names and a photo of the lead trombonist. That's it. No player biographies, no description of the type of jazz they play, no quotations from reviews, no links to independent reviews, no audio clips so you could actually hear the band.
On the page above, however, there's simply a hopeful request (in big letters) that you'll "make a reservation" without knowing anything about the concert. Not likely, unless you're already well acquainted with the band.
Links without Information Scent: New York Times
Who'd want to click on "Next Article in Business"? Maybe a few more people than the eager audience for "article 19," but not many.
I thought I'd seen the end of offering links to articles with no information beyond their number — a design I panned in my review of Slate.com 12 years ago. Links need information scent to help people determine what they'll get if they click. People don't have time to click on everything.
Interior Splash Pages: Christopher Norman Chocolates
When you select a category from the main navigation menu, you don't get a page listing the corresponding products. Instead, you get a splash screen, like this one for "Geometrics & Fruits."
Splash screens are bad enough when they sit in front of a site's real homepage, but at least users encounter those screens only once. With a splash screen for every category, users have to click through many extra pages to see all the products.
Metaphor Run Amok: Specialized Bicycles
3D navigation is almost always bad. It's harder to manipulate, it doesn't show the choices as well as a 2D interface, and it tends to be slower to use.
Metaphors sometimes make a user interface easier to learn because they let users transfer their existing knowledge from the reference domain.
Websites that use metaphors almost always go way overboard and end up reducing usability. It's as if the metaphor becomes an evil attraction that diverts the design team's attention from the actual content it's supposed to communicate.
My Comments: Lousy design and poor usability would cause the website to be ineffective. That eventually would mean less sales resulting from the website if it is an e-commerce website.
The Business Cost of Bad Design
How much do these bad design ideas cost the site owners?
The New York Times is probably losing the least money; most users will simply skip the no-scent link. At the same time, of course, the generic link has an opportunity cost: in its place, the newspaper could offer a link to content that's closely related to the current article. People who actually read to the end of the page would be quite likely to click the link. The site could thus gain maybe 2–5% more pageviews through better use of that space.
My bet for biggest business loss is the content-poor jazz page. Our user testing of product pages shows that people are much more likely to buy when a page answers their questions about its offerings. With virtually no information, it's pretty much guaranteed that this Jazz at Lincoln Center page only closes the sale for strongly committed fans who would attend any performance with Wycliffe Gordon.
My guess is that, by adding more information, the site could sell at least 5 times as many tickets to non-fans. In studying the ROI of usability improvements, we sometimes find a sales increase of 1,000% or more.
So, adding meaningful content might even make this page a tenbagger for non-fanatical customers. How much the overall sales would increase depends on the ratio between the rabid adherents of this artist and the people who simply like some jazz from time to time. My guess is that the second group is so much larger that better content would make sales explode.
The last two sites are an intermediate case. For large sites, offering awkward navigation is a prescription for doom: users wouldn't stand for interstitial splash pages or bloated metaphors if they had to find their way through 10,000 products or more.
But when dealing with just a handful of products — like those offered by Christopher Norman and Specialized — motivated users can overcome bad navigation.
Of course, less motivated users will leave the first time they get even a bit lost. Bad design costs a company money, no matter how small the site.
source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, April 14, 2008:
Four Bad Designs
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/bad-design.html
Four Bad Web Designs (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Sep 18 - Nielsen, Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes (Alertbox)
Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes
Summary: Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with search and across subsites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, and clumsy UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need.
Introduction
Bad information architecture causes the majority of outright user failures and isn't improving at the rate of other Web usability issues. To determine why, I've identified 10 long-term sore thumbs that together cost websites billions of dollars each year.
I divided the following list of worst IA mistakes into two parts, structure and navigation. ...The invisible way the site is structured and the visible way users understand and manage that structure.
Structure Mistakes
1. No Structure
...common on news sites and catalog-based e-commerce sites, where each item (articles and products, respectively) is treated as a stand-alone unit without connections to related items. No wonder users leave those sites so quickly.
2. Search and Structure Not Integrated
We've long known that users often exhibit search-dominant behaviors.
SERP (search engine results page) usability increases when each search hit exposes its location within the site structure. External search engines like Google can't always do this because they don't know the site's structure or which navigational dimensions are most relevant to common site tasks. But you do know your site's structure and should therefore include the info on your own SERPs.
Sadly, search and navigation fail to support each other on many sites. This problem is exacerbated by another common mistake: navigation designs that don't indicate the user's current location. That is, after users click a search result, they can't determine where they are in the site — as when you're searching for pants and click on a pair, but then have no way to see more pants.
3. Missing Category Landing Pages
We recommend that sites have a series of categories that each link to their own landing page that gives users a section overview. Sometimes, sites forego the overview page and simply offer links directly to individual pages within a section. This might reduce the number of site pages, but when no page is clearly identified as a sub-topic page, users can misunderstand the site's scope and miss important details, products, and services.
Category pages also help SEO because they're the most prominent landing place when people search for a type of product, service, or information. (Breadcrumbs facilitate users' ability to easily move up the levels.)
4. Extreme Polyhierarchy
...polyhierarchy can easily become a crutch. Rather than spend time upfront to develop several intuitive and logical top-level categories, teams rush through this important process, creating numerous weak categories and listing products multiple times within them. The usability impact? Users spend too much time agonizing over top-level categories and then get confused when they see items showing up in multiple places ("are these the same thing?").
With too many classification options and too many structured dimensions, users are forced to think harder to move forward.
5. Subsites/Microsites Poorly Integrated with Main Site
It's typically best to forego independent microsites and place new information on subsites within the main site. But you still need to integrate these subsites within the overall site structure.
For example, on both microsites and subsites, we often see product-specific pages that fail to link to information about the company or organization behind the offering. Further, many sites poorly represent their subsites in the main site search — which often ignores microsites altogether.
Navigation Mistakes
6. Invisible Navigation Options
The very worst mistake might be to have no navigation, but that's so rare that I'm not going to discuss it. Still, any feature that users can't see might as well not exist; invisible navigation is thus nearly as bad as no navigation.
Uncovering navigation shouldn't be a major task: Make it permanently visible on the page. Small children like minesweeping (passing the mouse around the screen to see what's hidden), but teenagers don't like it, and adults hate it.
7. Uncontrollable Navigation Elements
Two common offenders here are overly sensitive rollovers that launch and block content, and elements that move, spin, or rotate of their own accord. Users routinely complain about these types of elements. Designers and programmers who include them in websites severely underestimate the business impact of user frustration.
8. Inconsistent Navigation
Navigation exists to help users, not to be a puzzle in its own right. Users should be able to understand it immediately, and apply that understanding throughout the site. Sadly, lots of sites change their navigation features as users move around. Options come and go, making users feel a loss of control. How do I get that menu choice back? I saw it just a few pages ago.
9. Too Many Navigation Techniques
Our full-day seminar on navigation design covers 25 different website navigation techniques. Each approach has its own usability advantages and potential downsides, leading to the seminar's focus on design trade-offs — that is, when to use what form of navigation.
One thing is clear: each navigation technique has its place on certain types of websites and intranets. But, if you use them all, you don't get the sum of each technique's benefits. You get a mess.
10. Made-Up Menu Options
...made-up navigation terms also hurt search; users can't find something if they don't know what it's called.
Old words are better. When users understand their choices, they're more likely to pick the right one. Speak plainly and speak simply. If users don't understand a menu item, they're less likely to click on it. Paradoxically, companies are particularly prone to making up fancy terms for their newest and most important offerings, thus shooting themselves in the foot with a double-barreled rifle.
source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, May 11, 2009:
Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ia-mistakes.html
Top-10 Information Architecture (IA) Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Summary: Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with search and across subsites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, and clumsy UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need.
Introduction
Bad information architecture causes the majority of outright user failures and isn't improving at the rate of other Web usability issues. To determine why, I've identified 10 long-term sore thumbs that together cost websites billions of dollars each year.
I divided the following list of worst IA mistakes into two parts, structure and navigation. ...The invisible way the site is structured and the visible way users understand and manage that structure.
Structure Mistakes
1. No Structure
...common on news sites and catalog-based e-commerce sites, where each item (articles and products, respectively) is treated as a stand-alone unit without connections to related items. No wonder users leave those sites so quickly.
2. Search and Structure Not Integrated
We've long known that users often exhibit search-dominant behaviors.
SERP (search engine results page) usability increases when each search hit exposes its location within the site structure. External search engines like Google can't always do this because they don't know the site's structure or which navigational dimensions are most relevant to common site tasks. But you do know your site's structure and should therefore include the info on your own SERPs.
Sadly, search and navigation fail to support each other on many sites. This problem is exacerbated by another common mistake: navigation designs that don't indicate the user's current location. That is, after users click a search result, they can't determine where they are in the site — as when you're searching for pants and click on a pair, but then have no way to see more pants.
3. Missing Category Landing Pages
We recommend that sites have a series of categories that each link to their own landing page that gives users a section overview. Sometimes, sites forego the overview page and simply offer links directly to individual pages within a section. This might reduce the number of site pages, but when no page is clearly identified as a sub-topic page, users can misunderstand the site's scope and miss important details, products, and services.
Category pages also help SEO because they're the most prominent landing place when people search for a type of product, service, or information. (Breadcrumbs facilitate users' ability to easily move up the levels.)
4. Extreme Polyhierarchy
...polyhierarchy can easily become a crutch. Rather than spend time upfront to develop several intuitive and logical top-level categories, teams rush through this important process, creating numerous weak categories and listing products multiple times within them. The usability impact? Users spend too much time agonizing over top-level categories and then get confused when they see items showing up in multiple places ("are these the same thing?").
With too many classification options and too many structured dimensions, users are forced to think harder to move forward.
5. Subsites/Microsites Poorly Integrated with Main Site
It's typically best to forego independent microsites and place new information on subsites within the main site. But you still need to integrate these subsites within the overall site structure.
For example, on both microsites and subsites, we often see product-specific pages that fail to link to information about the company or organization behind the offering. Further, many sites poorly represent their subsites in the main site search — which often ignores microsites altogether.
Navigation Mistakes
6. Invisible Navigation Options
The very worst mistake might be to have no navigation, but that's so rare that I'm not going to discuss it. Still, any feature that users can't see might as well not exist; invisible navigation is thus nearly as bad as no navigation.
Uncovering navigation shouldn't be a major task: Make it permanently visible on the page. Small children like minesweeping (passing the mouse around the screen to see what's hidden), but teenagers don't like it, and adults hate it.
7. Uncontrollable Navigation Elements
Two common offenders here are overly sensitive rollovers that launch and block content, and elements that move, spin, or rotate of their own accord. Users routinely complain about these types of elements. Designers and programmers who include them in websites severely underestimate the business impact of user frustration.
8. Inconsistent Navigation
Navigation exists to help users, not to be a puzzle in its own right. Users should be able to understand it immediately, and apply that understanding throughout the site. Sadly, lots of sites change their navigation features as users move around. Options come and go, making users feel a loss of control. How do I get that menu choice back? I saw it just a few pages ago.
9. Too Many Navigation Techniques
Our full-day seminar on navigation design covers 25 different website navigation techniques. Each approach has its own usability advantages and potential downsides, leading to the seminar's focus on design trade-offs — that is, when to use what form of navigation.
One thing is clear: each navigation technique has its place on certain types of websites and intranets. But, if you use them all, you don't get the sum of each technique's benefits. You get a mess.
10. Made-Up Menu Options
...made-up navigation terms also hurt search; users can't find something if they don't know what it's called.
Old words are better. When users understand their choices, they're more likely to pick the right one. Speak plainly and speak simply. If users don't understand a menu item, they're less likely to click on it. Paradoxically, companies are particularly prone to making up fancy terms for their newest and most important offerings, thus shooting themselves in the foot with a double-barreled rifle.
source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, May 11, 2009:
Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ia-mistakes.html
Top-10 Information Architecture (IA) Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Sep 18 - Nielsen, Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design (Alertbox)
Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design
Summary:
The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.
1. Bad Search
Search is the user's lifeline when navigation fails. Even though advanced search can sometimes help, simple search usually works best, and search should be presented as a simple box, since that's what users are looking for.
2. PDF Files for Online Reading
PDF is great for printing and for distributing manuals and other big documents that need to be printed. Reserve it for this purpose and convert any information that needs to be browsed or read on the screen into real web pages.
> Detailed discussion of why PDF is bad for online reading
3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
A good grasp of past navigation helps you understand your current location, since it's the culmination of your journey. Knowing your past and present locations in turn makes it easier to decide where to go next. Most important, knowing which pages they've already visited frees users from unintentionally revisiting the same pages over and over again.
When visited links don't change color, users exhibit more navigational disorientation in usability testing and unintentionally revisit the same pages repeatedly.
> Usability implications of changing link colors
> Guidelines for showing links
4. Non-Scannable Text
Write for online, not print. To draw users into the text and support scannability, use well-documented tricks:
* subheads
* bulleted lists
* highlighted keywords
* short paragraphs
* the inverted pyramid
* a simple writing style, and
* de-fluffed language devoid of marketese.
> Eyetracking of reading patterns
5. Fixed Font Size
CSS style sheets unfortunately give websites the power to disable a Web browser's "change font size" button and specify a fixed font size. About 95% of the time, this fixed size is tiny, reducing readability significantly for most people over the age of 40.
Respect the user's preferences and let them resize text as needed. Also, specify font sizes in relative terms -- not as an absolute number of pixels.
6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
The humble page title is your main tool to attract new visitors from search listings and to help your existing users to locate the specific pages that they need.
The page title is contained within the HTML [title] tag and is almost always used as the clickable headline for listings on search engine result pages (SERP). Search engines typically show the first 66 characters or so of the title, so it's truly microcontent.
Page titles are also used as the default entry in the Favorites when users bookmark a site. For your homepage, begin the with the company name, followed by a brief description of the site. Don't start with words like "The" or "Welcome to" unless you want to be alphabetized under "T" or "W."
For other pages than the homepage, start the title with a few of the most salient information-carrying words that describe the specifics of what users will find on that page. If all your page titles start with the same words, you have severely reduced usability for your multi-windowing users.
Taglines on homepages are a related subject: they also need to be short and quickly communicate the purpose of the site.
7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement
Unfortunately, users also ignore legitimate design elements that look like prevalent forms of advertising. Therefore, it is best to avoid any designs that look like advertisements.
Follow these rules:
* banner blindness means that users never fixate their eyes on anything that looks like a banner ad due to shape or position on the page
* animation avoidance makes users ignore areas with blinking or flashing text or other aggressive animations
* pop-up purges mean that users close pop-up windoids before they have even fully rendered; sometimes with great viciousness (a sort of getting-back-at-GeoCities triumph).
8. Violating Design Conventions
Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles: when things always behave the same, users don't have to worry about what will happen. Instead, they know what will happen based on earlier experience. The more users' expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the more they will like it. And the more the system breaks users' expectations, the more they will feel insecure.
Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience states that "users spend most of their time on other websites."
This means that they form their expectations for your site based on what's commonly done on most other sites. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave.
9. Opening New Browser Windows
Designers open new browser windows on the theory that it keeps users on their site. But even disregarding the user-hostile message implied in taking over the user's machine, the strategy is self-defeating since it disables the Back button which is the normal way users return to previous sites. Users often don't notice that a new window has opened, especially if they are using a small monitor where the windows are maximized to fill up the screen. So a user who tries to return to the origin will be confused by a grayed out Back button.
Links that don't behave as expected undermine users' understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows.
10. Not Answering Users' Questions
The ultimate failure of a website is to fail to provide the information users are looking for.
The worst example of not answering users' questions is to avoid listing the price of products and services.
No B2C ecommerce site would make this mistake, but it's rife in B2B, where most "enterprise solutions" are presented so that you can't tell whether they are suited for 100 people or 100,000 people.
Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line.
Even B2C sites often make the associated mistake of forgetting prices in product lists, such as category pages or search results. Knowing the price is key in both situations; it lets users differentiate among products and click through to the most relevant ones.
source:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox:
Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design
Summary:
The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.
1. Bad Search
Search is the user's lifeline when navigation fails. Even though advanced search can sometimes help, simple search usually works best, and search should be presented as a simple box, since that's what users are looking for.
2. PDF Files for Online Reading
PDF is great for printing and for distributing manuals and other big documents that need to be printed. Reserve it for this purpose and convert any information that needs to be browsed or read on the screen into real web pages.
> Detailed discussion of why PDF is bad for online reading
3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
A good grasp of past navigation helps you understand your current location, since it's the culmination of your journey. Knowing your past and present locations in turn makes it easier to decide where to go next. Most important, knowing which pages they've already visited frees users from unintentionally revisiting the same pages over and over again.
When visited links don't change color, users exhibit more navigational disorientation in usability testing and unintentionally revisit the same pages repeatedly.
> Usability implications of changing link colors
> Guidelines for showing links
4. Non-Scannable Text
Write for online, not print. To draw users into the text and support scannability, use well-documented tricks:
* subheads
* bulleted lists
* highlighted keywords
* short paragraphs
* the inverted pyramid
* a simple writing style, and
* de-fluffed language devoid of marketese.
> Eyetracking of reading patterns
5. Fixed Font Size
CSS style sheets unfortunately give websites the power to disable a Web browser's "change font size" button and specify a fixed font size. About 95% of the time, this fixed size is tiny, reducing readability significantly for most people over the age of 40.
Respect the user's preferences and let them resize text as needed. Also, specify font sizes in relative terms -- not as an absolute number of pixels.
6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
The humble page title is your main tool to attract new visitors from search listings and to help your existing users to locate the specific pages that they need.
The page title is contained within the HTML [title] tag and is almost always used as the clickable headline for listings on search engine result pages (SERP). Search engines typically show the first 66 characters or so of the title, so it's truly microcontent.
Page titles are also used as the default entry in the Favorites when users bookmark a site. For your homepage, begin the with the company name, followed by a brief description of the site. Don't start with words like "The" or "Welcome to" unless you want to be alphabetized under "T" or "W."
For other pages than the homepage, start the title with a few of the most salient information-carrying words that describe the specifics of what users will find on that page. If all your page titles start with the same words, you have severely reduced usability for your multi-windowing users.
Taglines on homepages are a related subject: they also need to be short and quickly communicate the purpose of the site.
7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement
Unfortunately, users also ignore legitimate design elements that look like prevalent forms of advertising. Therefore, it is best to avoid any designs that look like advertisements.
Follow these rules:
* banner blindness means that users never fixate their eyes on anything that looks like a banner ad due to shape or position on the page
* animation avoidance makes users ignore areas with blinking or flashing text or other aggressive animations
* pop-up purges mean that users close pop-up windoids before they have even fully rendered; sometimes with great viciousness (a sort of getting-back-at-GeoCities triumph).
8. Violating Design Conventions
Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles: when things always behave the same, users don't have to worry about what will happen. Instead, they know what will happen based on earlier experience. The more users' expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the more they will like it. And the more the system breaks users' expectations, the more they will feel insecure.
Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience states that "users spend most of their time on other websites."
This means that they form their expectations for your site based on what's commonly done on most other sites. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave.
9. Opening New Browser Windows
Designers open new browser windows on the theory that it keeps users on their site. But even disregarding the user-hostile message implied in taking over the user's machine, the strategy is self-defeating since it disables the Back button which is the normal way users return to previous sites. Users often don't notice that a new window has opened, especially if they are using a small monitor where the windows are maximized to fill up the screen. So a user who tries to return to the origin will be confused by a grayed out Back button.
Links that don't behave as expected undermine users' understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows.
10. Not Answering Users' Questions
The ultimate failure of a website is to fail to provide the information users are looking for.
The worst example of not answering users' questions is to avoid listing the price of products and services.
No B2C ecommerce site would make this mistake, but it's rife in B2B, where most "enterprise solutions" are presented so that you can't tell whether they are suited for 100 people or 100,000 people.
Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line.
Even B2C sites often make the associated mistake of forgetting prices in product lists, such as category pages or search results. Knowing the price is key in both situations; it lets users differentiate among products and click through to the most relevant ones.
source:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox:
Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design
Friday, August 28, 2009
Aug 29 - Jokela et al, ..Standard Definition of Usability: Analyzing ISO 13407 against ISO
The Standard of User-Centered Design and the Standard Definition of Usability: Analyzing ISO13407 against ISO9241-11.
Timo Jokela, Netta Iivari. Oulu University, P.O. Box 3000, 90014 Oulu, Finland. +358 8 5531011 {timo.jokela, mailto:netta.iivari%7D@oulu.fi
Juha Matero, Minna Karukka. Nokia, P.O. Box 50, 90571 Oulu, Finland. {juha.p.matero, mailto:minna.karukka%7D@nokia.com
Timo Jokela, Netta Iivari. Oulu University, P.O. Box 3000, 90014 Oulu, Finland. +358 8 5531011 {timo.jokela, mailto:netta.iivari%7D@oulu.fi
Juha Matero, Minna Karukka. Nokia, P.O. Box 50, 90571 Oulu, Finland. {juha.p.matero, mailto:minna.karukka%7D@nokia.com
ABSTRACT
ISO 9241-11 and ISO 13407 are two important standards related to usability: the former one provides the definition of usability and the latter one guidance for designing usability. We carried out an interpretative analysis of ISO 13407 from the viewpoint of the standard definition of
usability from ISO 9241-11. The results show that ISO 13407 provides only partly guidance for designing usability as presumed by the definition. Guidance for describing users and environments are provided but very limited guidance is provided for the descriptions of user goals and usability measures, and generally for the process of producing the various outcomes.
Probably the best known definition of usability is by Nielsen: usability is about learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction [16].
However, the definition of usability from ISO 9241-11 (Guidance on usability) [11] – “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use” - is becoming the main reference of usability.
In addition that it is largely recognized in literature, this ‘standard’ definition of usability is used in the recent Common Industry Format, CIF, for usability testing [1].
To improve the usability of software and information systems, the paradigm of user-centered design1, UCD, has been proposed by a number of method and methodology books, starting from Nielsen [16] to ones published in late 90’s, [8], [4], [5], [15] and ending up with a set of very recent ones, [17] and [18].
1 Called ‘human-centered design’ in ISO 13407. Also called ‘usability engineering’.
My Comments: I think this article is a good resource for "Definition of Usability."
ISO 13407 [9], Human-centred design processes for interactive systems, is a standard that provides guidance for user-centered design. ...it describes usability at a level of principles, planning and activities. A third important aspect is that ISO 13407 explicitly uses the standard definition of usability from ISO 9241-11 as a reference for usability.
Usability is defined in ISO 9241-11 [11] as follows:
Usability: The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.
The terms are further defined as follows:
Effectiveness: the accuracy and completeness with which users achieve specified goals
Efficiency: the resources expended in relation to the accuracy and completeness with which users achieve goals
Satisfaction: freedom from discomfort, and positive attitude to the use of the product
Context of use: characteristics of the users, tasks and the organizational and physical environments
Goal: intended outcome
Task: activities required to achieve a goal
Generally, this definition of usability is a ‘broad’ approach to usability [2]: usability is about supporting users in achieving their goals in their work, it is not only a characteristic of a user interface.
..usability is a function of users of a product or a system (specified users). Further, for each user, usability is a function of achieving goals in terms of a set of attributes (i.e. effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction) and environment of use.
As an example, one usability measure of a bank machine
could be: • 90 % users achieve the goal (Es) in less than 1 minute (Ey) with an average satisfaction rating ‘6’ (S) when users are novice ones (U), and they want to have a desired sum of cash withdrawn (G) with any bank machine (Et).
could be: • 90 % users achieve the goal (Es) in less than 1 minute (Ey) with an average satisfaction rating ‘6’ (S) when users are novice ones (U), and they want to have a desired sum of cash withdrawn (G) with any bank machine (Et).
The analysis of the definition of usability shows that one needs to determine the following outocomes when the definition is used in a development project:
(1) The users of the system,
(2) Goals of users,
(3) Environments of use
(4) Measures of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction.
ISO 13407 is aimed to provide ‘overview’ guidance for the planning and management of user-centered design, not to provide detailed coverage of the methods and technique.
ISO 13407 is an international standard established in 1999. The standard “provides guidance on humancentred design activities throughout the life cycle of computer-based interactive systems”. The standard aims at “those managing design processes” and does not provide detailed coverage of methods and techniques.
ISO 13407 describes user-centered design from four
different aspects:
• Rationale for UCD
• Planning UCD
• Principles of UCD
• Activities of UCD.
Rationale. The rationale part briefly describes the benefits that usable systems provide, such as reduction of training and support costs, improved user satisfaction and productivity of users.
Principles. The standard identifies four general principles that characterize user-centered design, and that are not bound to any specific phase of development cycle:
• The active involvement of users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements
• An appropriate allocation of functions between users and technology
• Iteration of design solutions
• Multi-disciplinary design.
Planning. The planning part provides guidance in fitting user-centered design activities into the overall system development process. Among other things, the standard emphasizes that project plans should reserve time and resources for iteration and user feedback. The importance of teamwork and communication is also mentioned.
Activities. The core of the standard – stated explicitly– is the description of user-centered design activities. The standard identifies four main activities of UCD, illustrated
in Figure 2:
Understand and Specify Context of Use. Know the user, the environment of use, and the tasks that he or she uses the product for.
Specify the User and Organizational Requirements. Determine the success criteria of usability for the product in terms of user tasks, e.g. how quickly a typical user should be able to complete a task with the product.
Determine the design guidelines and constraints. Produce Design Solutions. Incorporate HCI knowledge (of visual design, interaction design, usability) into design solutions.
Evaluate Designs against Requirements. The usability of designs is evaluated against user tasks.
Specify the User and Organizational Requirements. Determine the success criteria of usability for the product in terms of user tasks, e.g. how quickly a typical user should be able to complete a task with the product.
Determine the design guidelines and constraints. Produce Design Solutions. Incorporate HCI knowledge (of visual design, interaction design, usability) into design solutions.
Evaluate Designs against Requirements. The usability of designs is evaluated against user tasks.
Usability is one type of a quality characteristic in a product [10] among others, such as functionality, efficiency, reliability, maintainability and portability. In the requirement phase, when the quality requirements for a product are determined, also the usability requirements should be determined.
While all activities of life-cycle are relevant in the design of usability, the definition of usability has a critical impact especially in the requirements phase of a development project. The outcomes of these requirements activities (identification of users, goals, environments, usability measures) provide direction for the design phase and basis for planning evaluations.
In practice, Nielsen’s attributes as such are too ambiguous to be used in determining the usability requirements.
My Comments: This part of the article, particularly on User-Centred Design, is good on the process of applying usability throughout the entire design and development process.
Understand and specify the context of use
The standard describes the activity ‘Understand and
specify the context of use’ as follows:
The characteristics of the users, tasks and the organizational and physical environment define the context in which the system is used. It is important to understand and identify the details of this context in order to guide early design decisions, and to provide a basis for evaluation.
Information should be gathered about the context of use of new products and systems. If an existing system is upgraded or enhanced, this information may already be available but should be checked. If there are extensive results form user feedback, help desk reports and other data, these provide a basis fro prioritizing user requirements for system modifications and changes.
The context in which the system is to be used should be identified in terms of the following:
a) The characteristics of the intended users: relevant characteristics of the users can include knowledge, skill, experience, education, training, physical
attributes, habits, preferences and capabilities. If necessary, define the characteristics of different types of users, for example, with different levels of
experience of performing different roles (maintainers, installers, etc).
b) The tasks the users are to perform: the description should include the overall goals of the use of the system. The characteristics of tasks that can influence usability should be described, e.g. the frequency and the duration of performance”…. Tasks should not be described solely in terms of the functions or features.
c) The environment in which the users are to use the system: the environment includes the hardware, software and materials to be used. Their description
can be in terms of a set of products, one or more of which can be the focus of human-centred specification or evaluation, or it can be in terms of a set of
attributes or performance characteristics of the hardware, software and other materials. Relevant characteristics of the physical and social environment
should also be described. These can include relevant standards, attributes of the wider technical environment, the physical, ambient, legislative and the social and cultural environment.
The output from this activity should be a description of the relevant characteristics of users, tasks and environment, which identifies what aspects have an important impact on the system design. (See ISO 9241-11 for more information about the context of use and a sample report.)
The context of use description should
a) Specify the range of intended users, tasks and environments in sufficient detail to support design activity;
b) Be derived from suitable sources;
c) Be confirmed by users or if they are not available, by those representing their interests in the process;
d) Be adequately documented;
e) Be made available to the design team at appropriate times and in appropriate forms to support design activities.
The context of use description should
a) Specify the range of intended users, tasks and environments in sufficient detail to support design activity;
b) Be derived from suitable sources;
c) Be confirmed by users or if they are not available, by those representing their interests in the process;
d) Be adequately documented;
e) Be made available to the design team at appropriate times and in appropriate forms to support design activities.
Specify the user and organizational requirements
In most design processes, there is a major activity specifying the functional and other requirements for the product or system. For human-centred design, this activity should be extended to create an explicit statement of user and organizational requirements in relation to the context of use description. The following aspects should
be considered in order to identify relevant requirements:
a) Required performance of the new system against operational and financial objectives;
b) Relevant statutory or legislative requirements, including safety and health;
c) Co-operation and communication between users and other relevant parties;
d) The users’ jobs (including allocation of tasks, users’ well-being, and motivation);
e) Task performance;
f) Work design and organization;
g) Management of change, including training and personnel to be involved;
h) Feasibility of operation and maintenance;
i) The human-computer interface and workstation design.
User and organizational requirements should be derive and objectives set with appropriate trade-offs identified between the different requirements.
The specification of user and organizational requirements should:
a) Identify the range of relevant users and other personnel in the design;
b) Provide a clear statement of the human-centred design goals;
c) Set appropriate priorities for the different requirements;
d) Provide measurable criteria against which the emerging design can be tested;
e) Be confirmed by the users or those representing their interests in the process;
f) Include any statutory or legislative requirements;
g) Be adequately documented.
ISO 13407 does not address the general complexity and specific challenges related to systematic identification of different users, identification of the different goals that users may have; nor determination of measures (effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction) of usability. The determination of environments of use is addressed in most detailed manner.
DISCUSSION
ISO 9241-11 and ISO 13407 are two important standards related to usability: the former one provides the definition of usability and the latter one guidance for designing usability. We carried out an interpretive analysis of ISO 13407 from the viewpoint of the standard definition of usability from ISO 9241-11. The results show that ISO 13407 provides only partly guidance for designing usability as presumed by the definition. Guidance for describing users and environments are provided but very limited guidance is provided for the descriptions of user goals and usabilty measures, and generally for the process of producing the various outcomes.
References that I may want to read further in future:
1. ANSI. Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports., NCITS 354-2001, 2001.
3. Bevan, N., Claridge, N., Maguire, M. and Athousaki, M., Specifying and evaluating usability requirements using the Common Industry Format: Four case studies. in IFIP 17th World Computer Conference 2002 - TC 13 Stream on Usability: Gaining a Competitive Edge, (Montreal, Canada, 2002), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 133-148.
8. Hix and Hartson. Developing User Interfaces: Ensuring Usability Through Product & Process.
John Wiley & Sons, 1993.
9. ISO/IEC. 13407 Human-Centred Design Processes for Interactive Systems, ISO/IEC 13407: 1999 (E), 1999.
John Wiley & Sons, 1993.
9. ISO/IEC. 13407 Human-Centred Design Processes for Interactive Systems, ISO/IEC 13407: 1999 (E), 1999.
12. Jokela, T., Making User-Centred Design Common Sense: Striving for an Unambiguous
and Communicative UCD Process Model. in NordiCHI 2002, (Aarhus, Denmark, 2002), ACM, 19-26.
13. Jokela, T. and Iivari, N., Systematic Determination of Quantitative Usability Requirements. in to be published in the proceedings of HCI International 2003, (Crete, 2003).
and Communicative UCD Process Model. in NordiCHI 2002, (Aarhus, Denmark, 2002), ACM, 19-26.
13. Jokela, T. and Iivari, N., Systematic Determination of Quantitative Usability Requirements. in to be published in the proceedings of HCI International 2003, (Crete, 2003).
15. Mayhew, D.J. The Usability Engineering Lifecycle. Morgan Kaufman, San Fancisco,
1999.
16. Nielsen, J. Usability Engineering. Academic Press, Inc., San Diego, 1993.
17. Rosson, M.B. and Carroll, J.M. Usability Engineering. Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2002.
1999.
16. Nielsen, J. Usability Engineering. Academic Press, Inc., San Diego, 1993.
17. Rosson, M.B. and Carroll, J.M. Usability Engineering. Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2002.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Aug 26 - Vainio & Ahonen, A critical approach to an adaptive user interface design
A critical approach to an adaptive user interface design.
Teija Vainio. Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere, 33014 University of Tampere, Finland. E-mail: teija.vainio@uta.fi
Mikko Ahonen. Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere, 33014 University of Tampere, Finland. E-mail: mikko.ahonen@uta.fi
Learning With Mobile Devices: Reserch and Development. a book of papers, edited by Jill Attewell and Carol Savill-Smith. Learning and Skills Development Agency, Regent Arcade House19–25 Argyll Street, London W1F 7LS. pg 189-192
Abstract:
In our study we present a critical approach to usability issues and usability evaluation particularly involving adaptive user interface design for mobile learning environments. We describe some design challenges for adaptive user interfaces and key usability issues in the MOBIlearn project. In addition, we compare these challenges in three different learning contexts.
Our hypothesis is that the concept of ‘learning’ is not clearly defined in most usability studies. Additionally, the influences of different learning contexts are not considered enough in usability evaluation. Our aim is to develop mobile systems that are adaptable to more than one learning context.
This paper introduces one approach to a user interface design in the MOBIlearn project, eg adaptive human interface design. Our work aims to design user interfaces that take account
of different kind of users, contexts, content and devices.
..the learning itself is different in each of these contexts: the first is focused on blended, formal learning, the second more on informal learning and the last on lifelong learning.
Studies of web-based educational systems and mobile learning environments have recently started to focus on systems described as adaptive. Adaptive systems can be seen as an alternative to the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach (Brusilowsky et al. 2000).
In many cases adaptation is seen as a part of contextawareness in mobile applications and systems.
Adaptivity refers to a system that adapts itself according to the user. Furthermore, adaptability refers to a system where the users have to change the system behaviour.
Adaptive user interfaces can be focused on, for example, information or content-based filtering,
recommendation, social or collaborative filtering, or optimising (Langley 1999).
Since the learning systems with mobile devices are expected to be used for the short-term, we argued that it might be better let the system adapt itself (adaptivity) to the user rather than forcing the users to change the system behaviour (adaptability).
We see adaptive user interface design as a vital part of the usability design of an application or a service.
Usefulness is defined as the ability to achieve a goal by using the system. Usefulness can be divided into utility and usability. Utility refers to the functionality of a system, and usability to the ability to make use of that functionality (Nielsen 1995).
The usability of a system is determined by the usability of both the underlying system engine and the contents and structure of the information base. Usability has been associated with five
attributes: ease of learning, efficiency, easy to remember, consistency (few errors) and pleasantness of use (Nielsen 1995).
Usability focuses on making applications easy for people to use. Accessibility on the other hand focuses on making applications equally easy for everyone to use, including people with a disability. ... In the context of mobile collaboration, access and accessibility are often more essential issues than ease of use (Ahonen 2003).
Vavoula and Sharples (2002) have inspected learning episodes and personal learning projects, and have developed the following criteria for lifelong learning organisers (LLOs): LLOs should be available and functional any time, during any day of the week.
My Comments: My PhD research may also go on "adaptive" concept; generalisation; one size fits all; one set of usability criteria fits all MLearn applications.
References to be considered for future reading:
MOBIlearn (2003). MOBIlearn EU IST project overview. At http://www.mobilearn.org/, accessed January 2004.
Nielsen J (1995). Multimedia and hypertext. the internet and beyond. Boston: AP Professional, 280–281.
Vavoula G, Sharples M (2002). Requirements for the design of lifelong learning organisers. S Anastopoulou, M Sharples, Vavoula (eds) MLearn 2002: Proceedings of the European Workshop on Mobile and Contextual Learning. Birmingham: 23–26.
Teija Vainio. Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere, 33014 University of Tampere, Finland. E-mail: teija.vainio@uta.fi
Mikko Ahonen. Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere, 33014 University of Tampere, Finland. E-mail: mikko.ahonen@uta.fi
Learning With Mobile Devices: Reserch and Development. a book of papers, edited by Jill Attewell and Carol Savill-Smith. Learning and Skills Development Agency, Regent Arcade House19–25 Argyll Street, London W1F 7LS. pg 189-192
Abstract:
In our study we present a critical approach to usability issues and usability evaluation particularly involving adaptive user interface design for mobile learning environments. We describe some design challenges for adaptive user interfaces and key usability issues in the MOBIlearn project. In addition, we compare these challenges in three different learning contexts.
Our hypothesis is that the concept of ‘learning’ is not clearly defined in most usability studies. Additionally, the influences of different learning contexts are not considered enough in usability evaluation. Our aim is to develop mobile systems that are adaptable to more than one learning context.
This paper introduces one approach to a user interface design in the MOBIlearn project, eg adaptive human interface design. Our work aims to design user interfaces that take account
of different kind of users, contexts, content and devices.
..the learning itself is different in each of these contexts: the first is focused on blended, formal learning, the second more on informal learning and the last on lifelong learning.
Studies of web-based educational systems and mobile learning environments have recently started to focus on systems described as adaptive. Adaptive systems can be seen as an alternative to the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach (Brusilowsky et al. 2000).
In many cases adaptation is seen as a part of contextawareness in mobile applications and systems.
Adaptivity refers to a system that adapts itself according to the user. Furthermore, adaptability refers to a system where the users have to change the system behaviour.
Adaptive user interfaces can be focused on, for example, information or content-based filtering,
recommendation, social or collaborative filtering, or optimising (Langley 1999).
Since the learning systems with mobile devices are expected to be used for the short-term, we argued that it might be better let the system adapt itself (adaptivity) to the user rather than forcing the users to change the system behaviour (adaptability).
We see adaptive user interface design as a vital part of the usability design of an application or a service.
Usefulness is defined as the ability to achieve a goal by using the system. Usefulness can be divided into utility and usability. Utility refers to the functionality of a system, and usability to the ability to make use of that functionality (Nielsen 1995).
The usability of a system is determined by the usability of both the underlying system engine and the contents and structure of the information base. Usability has been associated with five
attributes: ease of learning, efficiency, easy to remember, consistency (few errors) and pleasantness of use (Nielsen 1995).
Usability focuses on making applications easy for people to use. Accessibility on the other hand focuses on making applications equally easy for everyone to use, including people with a disability. ... In the context of mobile collaboration, access and accessibility are often more essential issues than ease of use (Ahonen 2003).
Vavoula and Sharples (2002) have inspected learning episodes and personal learning projects, and have developed the following criteria for lifelong learning organisers (LLOs): LLOs should be available and functional any time, during any day of the week.
My Comments: My PhD research may also go on "adaptive" concept; generalisation; one size fits all; one set of usability criteria fits all MLearn applications.
References to be considered for future reading:
MOBIlearn (2003). MOBIlearn EU IST project overview. At http://www.mobilearn.org/, accessed January 2004.
Nielsen J (1995). Multimedia and hypertext. the internet and beyond. Boston: AP Professional, 280–281.
Vavoula G, Sharples M (2002). Requirements for the design of lifelong learning organisers. S Anastopoulou, M Sharples, Vavoula (eds) MLearn 2002: Proceedings of the European Workshop on Mobile and Contextual Learning. Birmingham: 23–26.
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