Jun26
Tags: usability, web design
It’s all too easy for someone who follows Web Standards to blab on about good usability and I’m often asked what is usability?
Hopefully this post, on Luke W’s Functioning Form website, will give an idea as to what is good usability. It highlights how simple good usability can be. It’s very often a case of basic common sense, but without someone pointing it out to you it may not be obvious. In short this post shows how having simple defaults in forms that we fill in on the internet will prevent those dumbass annoying errors - “you forgot to fill in this bit!”
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?691
Sep15
Tags: books, review, usability, web design
Author: Steve Krug.
Publisher: New Riders
Since reading the first edition some years ago, I always refer to this book during usability presentations and recommend it to not only designers and developers, but also consultants, project managers and even clients. When the second edition was released in 2006 I purchased a few copies for the office and made it essential reading for everyone!
It’s a very easy read and doesn’t complicate matters with technical jargon, but instead relates to everyday tasks such as likening finding a product on a website to looking for a chainsaw in a hardware store. It examines the way we use the internet, it highlights that people don’t use websites the way the designer intended and that we don’t ‘read’ websites, we scan them. It covers popular, common-sense solutions to these issues and uses clear, well-illustrated examples. It also talks about simplifying usability testing so you do enough of it, and uses some real-world examples to demonstrate.
It is an essential purchase for anyone involved in website creation and there are three new chapters in the second edition that help justify a new purchase if you already own the first edition.
Buy Don’t Make Me Think at amazon.co.uk
Buy Don’t Make Me Think at amazon.com
