From the category archives:

websites

UXURLS: A usability news aggregator

by Richard Pak

Harry Brignull has created a convenient news aggregator for user experience and usability news from around the web.  A nice one-stop shop.

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Tabs, tabs, and more tabs…

by Richard Pak
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This post on Smashing Magazine about vertical navigation had me thinking about the book Anne and I are writing (manuscript due this Friday; panicking…I’m a 10 on the Wong-Baker scale).  In one of the chapters I discuss tab navigation.  When I was looking for a particularly bad example of the use of tabs I remembered Amazon’s website circa 2000.  Fortunately, [...]

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HF Potpourri

by Richard Pak
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James Rubinstein sends along a this post about a 32 inch LCD TV presumably designed for older users.  It has features such as a dramatically simplified remote control, fewer wires, and a shut-off timer.  [Engadget]
Designing Devices is a relatively new blog devoted to “how and why to create devices” from Dan Saffer (author of Designing for Interaction).  I’m loving the [...]

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Vision-themed Potpourri

by Richard Pak
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Today’s potpourri happens to be related to understanding or enhancing what your users see (or don’t see):

Google Browser Size let’s you see how much of your web content is visible by users.
Rocker Lou Reed (of the Velvet Underground) designs an iPhone app for near-sighted users.  It basically increases the font size in the contacts application.  It appears that Mr. [...]

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HF Potpourri

by Richard Pak
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More potpourri from the web:

Jakob Nielsen has a new book on using eye-tracking in web usability. View a 32 page chapter PDF (26 mb) for free (via PhotoshopSupport).
Using autistics for software quality-control work. Would this work for usability? An obsessive attention to detail is good for design/usability (via Slashdot)
The HF/usability company HumanCentric held an internal competition to [...]

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Web-based tool to measure task workload

by Richard Pak
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I frequently use the NASA TLX workload assessment tool to measure a user’s perceived workload after they complete a task (e.g., complete an information search task). When the test is administered with paper it can be quite laborious to administer and score. A stand-alone computer-based version has been available but has some usability issues itself. For [...]

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HF Potpourri

by Richard Pak
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Some interesting items that have passed through my reader:

Jerk can be emulated in software.  Cars with continuously variable transmissions sound and behave differently from other cars.  In this video, the speedometer and RPM smoothly increases (in most cars the RPM would bobble as gears shift and you’d feel a slight jerk).  I don’t know how I reached this page but [...]

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HF/Usability Potpourri

by Richard Pak

Study Suggests People Prefer Bing’s Design To Google’s
“The study was an intense focus group in which 12 subjects were monitored with eye-tracking cameras as they conducted searches. Afterward, they were interviewed and completed a survey.” (TechCrunch with usability report)
Nielsen recommends abandoning password masking in online forms
“Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is [...]

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Map Information Visualizations = HOT!

by Anne McLaughlin
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I‘ve noticed a trend in the newsworld/blogworld recently. Everyone wants to represent everything on a map. Some of these are genius, others make me wonder “why bother?” I collected some of each for this post… but I warn you, once you notice this pattern you’ll start seeing it multiple times per day.
Job loss from Slate.com: (Usability note: good luck mousing-over [...]

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High-tech Grandma

by Richard Pak

This really isn’t human factors related other than the fact that my research interests include older adults and the web.  Just to give you a teaser, here is some of the grandmother’s dialog:
The other day, I was hacking around thinking I was running port forwarding my POP packets through SSH encrypted tunnels.  Turns out I got the port number wrong [...]

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Crowdsourced Usability II: Mozilla Test Pilot

by Richard Pak

Interesting distributed/crowdsourced usability effort from Mozilla, the makers of Firefox.
Enter Test Pilot. It’s a still-in-concept platform for a new user-testing program for Mozilla that aims to build a 1% representative sample of the Firefox user base for soliciting wide participation and structured feedback for interface and product experiments.
From Wired:
Raskin notes that the project was initially intended to provide feedback for [...]

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Crowdsourced Usability Testing?

by Richard Pak

Feedback Army is a new service where you submit your website, $7, and you receive 10 comments.  I wonder how effective such ultra discount usability evaluation would be.  I guess if some is better than none, this is a pretty good service.  However, who exactly is offering the feedback, what are their qualifications?  And is it more than, “your website [...]

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Where are visitors coming from?

by Richard Pak

This post isn’t human factors-related but I just wanted to share with you an image showing where the last 100 or so visitors came from (click for a larger image). For our United States readers, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

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Amazon Windowshop

by Richard Pak

Amazon has a new interface for “window shopping” on its website.  It is strangely compelling and offers something that the website lacked–that quality of just browsing what’s there without having to do too much clicking, searching, etc.  The navigation is simple and intuitive (right/left arrows) and if you stand at a window for a few seconds, a video description starts [...]

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Another tool to keep up with election news

by Richard Pak

TechCrunch posted a link to another tool to keep up with the flood of election-related news coming from news services and each of the presidential campaigns.  Dipity Election Center presents news items in a time-line format.
The interface is very cluttered and not exactly intuitive (e.g., unclear what all the little icons below the timeline mean), but an interesting way to [...]

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Mac-based usability testing software: Silverback

by Richard Pak

Easy usability testing on the Mac is now possible with Silverback.  The software looks incredibly simple and is quite inexpensive.  Although it appears to have much less functionality than Morae (on the PC), it is about 30 times cheaper!  They probably shouldn’t be compared since Morae has so much more functionality, but Silverback looks like a good solution to capture [...]

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