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Web Usability LinksThese web site usability references are used throughout our Web Site Usability Workshops.
Heuristics and Web Site Usability Traits
Nielsen originally developed the heuristics for heuristic evaluation in collaboration with Rolf Molich in 1990 [Molich and Nielsen 1990; Nielsen and Molich 1990]. He since refined the heuristics based on a factor analysis of 249 usability problems [Nielsen 1994a] to derive a set of heuristics with maximum explanatory power, resulting in this revised set of heuristics [Nielsen 1994b]. Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide (Spool, Scanlon, Schroeder, Snyder, and DeAngelo, 1997)
A report in book form of 50 usability tests of 9 different web sites using "scanvenger hunt" tasks. They compared the various sites and extracted usability principles based on these tests. Unfortunately the details of the methodology used is not available. Book is only available through the author. Usability Heuristics for the Web (Keith Instone, 1997)
A web specific look at Nielsen's 20 Heuristics. The overriding theme for applying these heuristics to the Web is to use links effectively. What Makes a Great Web Site? (Andrew B. King, 1997)
A nice set of traits that make a nice web site that's easy on the eyes. Seven Deadly Web Site Sins (And Why You Must Avoid Them at All Costs) (Jese Berst 1998)
You can't get to Web heaven if nobody will visit your site. I want you to succeed. So I offer you these commandments, this list of Web site sins you must never be guilty of committing. 7 Debilitating Diseases of Business Websites (and their cures) (Ralph Wilson 1998)
Most of these problems are design flaws: not mediocre graphics, but basic flaws in the planning and execution of the site itself. Guidelines for Designing Usable World Wide Web Pages (Borges, Morales, & Rodriguez 1996)
Guidelines compiled from heuristic evaluations of existing web sites. Web pages designed using the guidelines were usability tested.
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Navigation and Searching
A set of navigation and usability rules. A nice compilation of rules that focus on navigation, frames, and multimedia.
A comparative evaluation of several popular WWW search engines (AltaVista, Excite, InfoSeek, and Lycos) is reported using Signal Detection Theory.
Optimizing search by showing results in context (Dumais, Cutrell, Chen, 2001)
Reading of electronic documents: the usability of linear, fisheye, and overview+detail interfaces (Kasper Hornbæk, Erik Frøkjær, 2001)
Auto-construction of a live thesaurus from search term logs for interactive Web search (Shui-Lung Chuang, Hsiao-Tieh Pu, Wen-Hsiang Lu, Lee-Feng Chien, 2000)
Using thumbnails to search the Web (Allison Woodruff, Andrew Faulring, Ruth Rosenholtz, Julie Morrsion, Peter Pirolli, 2001)
An Alertbox column about current web searching problems and ways to improve searching. How people revisit web pages: empirical findings and implications for the design of history systems (Tauscher & Greenberg, 1997)
This very nice International Journal of Human-Computer Studies paper reports on users' revisitation patterns to web pages and uses these results to lay an empirical foundation for the design of history mechanisms. Using User Centered Design Methods to Create and Design Usable Web Site (Jeanette Fuccella, Proceedings from SIGDOC 1997, Snowbird, UT) This paper from IBM outlines the use of techniques such as the "category identification description" activities during early design of hierarchical web sites.
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Scenario Based Design
This International Journal of Human-Computer Studies presents a theoretical underpinning to scenario based design. It then uses a rigorous form of scenario based design on a web site as a case study. They employ user participant design scenarios, with claims and design propositions to discuss the artifacts presented in the scenarios. Scenario-Based Design (edited by John M. Carroll, 1995)
This landmark book on scenario based design includes chapters written by several researchers in the area of scenario based design. The chapters outline many forms, tools, and uses for scenarios in design.
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Usability Design, Methods, and Process
A condesnsed book about why some sites "work" and others don't. Contains nice examples, simple illustrations, and highly readable. Takes a very "quick and dirty" approach to usability testing. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity (J. Nielsen, 2000)
Nielsen's latest book covering the design of web site usability from the site to the page level. His next book will be about evaluation of usability. Many topics were taken from his www.useit.com site. A User-Centered Approach to Designing a New Top-Level Structure for a Large and Diverse Corporate Web Site (Yu, Prabhu, & Neale, 1998)
The paper describes the user-centered approach utilized in the design process of the Kodak web pages. The used many tools such as web server log files, focus groups, on-line surveys, previous usability tests, interviews with business unit reps to define their user requirements. The group elicitation method (GEM) for participatory design and usability testing (Guy Boy, 1997; interactions, Volume 4 , Issue 2 (1997))
The paper describes the Group Elicitation Method that we use for understanding the core issues of any customer-centered research project. The full GEM paper can be found in the ACM reference, but you must be a member of ACM Digital Library: The Difference Between Web Design and GUI Design (J. Nielsen, 1997)
An Alertbox column about how Web design is inherently different from traditional design for software user interfaces. User Centered Design Tools (IBM User Centered Design Team, 1999)
Two tools, USort and EZCalc, are provided for conducting automated card sorts and cluster analysis. Improving the Usability of A Corporate Intranet (Donna L.Cuomo and Linda I. Borghesani, Mitre Corporation, 1997)
A recent redesign of MITRE's corporate intranet, the MITRE Information Infrastructure (MII), improved the system's usability. The redesign team gathered its requirements from a corporate-wide employee survey, MITRE management, and the project team, and performed a heuristic user interface evaluation of the original system. A major goal of the redesign was to assess whether new web capabilities, such as frames and Java, could improve the usability of the MII. This paper describes the requirements gathering process, the redesign process, the user evaluations performed throughout the redesign process, and the lessons learned in this redesign of a large-scale web site. Usability Issues in Web Site Design (Serco Usability Services)
Unless a web site meets the needs of the intended users it will not meet the needs of the organization providing the web site. Web site development should be user-centered, evaluating the evolving design against user requirements. Fixing Web-site usability: How to let visitors to your Web site cut through the document maze (Lynda Radosevich 1997)
The fact is, most Web sites stink when it comes to gathering useful information. ... the problems lie in faulty intent and poor testing. Designing information-abundant web sites: issues and recommendations (Shneiderman, 1997)
This International Journal of Human-Computer Studies paper attempts to set forth some issues and recommendations for future research in the nascent area of web site design. Some categorization for web site it set forth. A four phase framework for search is proposed which is useful. Using User-Centered Design Methods to Create and Design Usable Web Sites (Fucella & Pizzolato, 1999)
The process described in this paper is intended to provide the web site designer with "quick and dirty" approaches to including user feedback throughout the design process. The Non-Designer's Design Book (Robin Williams, 1994)
Design and typographic principles for the visual novice. Concisely written with good examples of how to recognize and apply 4 basic design principles. The Non-Designers Web Book (Williams & Tollett,1998)
This book takes Williams' previous book, The Non-Designer's Design Book, and applies the concepts to the web. Designing Large-Scale Web Sites: A Visual Design Methodology (Darrell Sano,1996)
This book describes a process and design methodology for web site design. Sano has a Netscape bent, but there are some nice examples of designing the organizational framework and concentrating on use and content. Designing Large-Scale Web Sites: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (Rosenfeld & Morville,1998)
The authors' background is infromation and library studies and this is revealed in their focus on labeling, searching, indexing, and navigation. They also discuss conceptual design and scenarios.
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Web Site Evaluation
This paper presented at the 5th Conference on Human Factors and the Web outlines a GOMS-based model used by WebCriteria (www.webcriteria.com) to provide automated evaluation of usability of web sites. The State of the Art in Automated Usability Evaluation of User Interfaces. (Ivory, Melody Y. and Hearst, Marti A., 2000)
This survey of the state of art in automated usability tools includes a section on web usability automated tools. Site Usability Evaluation (Keith Instone, 1997)
This article discusses heuristic evaluations. Heuristic evaluation is well-suited for the Web because it can be easy, fast, and inexpensive. Usability Inspection Methods (Jakob Nielsen & Robert L. Mack (Editor), 1994)
Overview of Usability Inspection Methods. This book is, to date, the most comprehensive source for usability methods, but doesn't include some of our methods such as the directed dialog technique. Developing Usability Tools and Techniques for Designing and Testing Web Sites (Scholtz, Laskowski, & Downey, 1998)
This paper discusses the work at NIST for development software tools and metrics for developing usable web sites. The tools are meant to "educate web developers on usability issues in general and the specific instances of usability issues in their sites." Cost of User Testing a Website (J. Nielsen, 1998)
An Alertbox column that discusses the costs for planing the test, defining the tasks, recruiting the users, conducting the test with five users, analyzing the results, and writing the report. Usability Studies of WWW Sites: Heuristic Evaluation vs. Laboratory Testing (Kanter & Rosenbaum, 1997)
The discussion not only compares the two methods, but also discusses how an effective usability process can combine them. Evaluating the World Wide Web: A Global Study of Commercial Sites (James Ho, 1997)
A global study covering 1800 sites, with representative samples from diverse industries and localities worldwide, is conducted to give a profile of commercial use of the World Wide Web in 1996.
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Style Guides
IBM Web Guidelines (1998)
National Cancer Institute - Research-Based Design Guidelines
Style guide for online hypertext (Berners-Lee, 1998)
Tim Berner-Lee's W3C style guide for writing for the web.
Web Style Guides: Who, What, Where (Kenneth Ohnemus, 1997)
A rapidly aging list of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) information and web style guides from the WWW with descriptions of each.
Specialized AudiencesWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (W3C Committee, 1999)
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Web User Demographics
Constantly updated. The latest published information about user demographics for the web.
Over 50,000 users surveyed. Data free to public. Dated, but has good survey questions.
Continuous survey data from more than 375,000 online and offline households, but you can only see so much before you have to pay.
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Other References of Interest
A presentation of a 3 layer model of form design (paper or web) consisting of perceptual, conversational, and relationship.
Reviews some of the sessions and ideas at the March 1998 Seybold Conference. The review focuses on User-Centered Design as well as other interesting topics Back to Top
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