Why context is important
I recently saw the image below and was instantly reminded about the importance of context when creating usable products.
Usability poll: What are your thoughts about opening links as new windows?
Does opening links as new windows make the site less usable?
- It depends on the situation. (70.0%, 7 Votes)
- Only links to non-html pages (ex. PDFs) should be opened as new windows (30.0%, 3 Votes)
- Absolutely! One should never open links as a new window. (0.0%, 0 Votes)
- Of course not. In fact, opening new windows makes the experience more satisfying for the user. (0.0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 10
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It’s been a while
Apologies for the stale content. A lot of work is a lame excuse for not updating the blog. Andoy and I will be posting very soon.
For a quick update: we are both attending a 4-day mobile usability workshop by the legendary Scott Weiss.
Exciting!
Not a lot of people can say they’ve actually met the experts in their field, and like I said in my previous post, I admittedly have a tendency to be a fan girl. Disclaimer though: just for the experts that I look up to in usability and HCI.
Lucky us, we’ve met several already.
We will resume regular programming very, very soon.
Making User Login More Usable
In the advent of federated login and OpenID, not to mention the release of the usability study conducted by Yahoo on OpenID, it is a relief to stumble upon usability guidelines for enhancing the user login experience.
Gary Barber authored 11 guidelines on how to improve the user experience of login. Usability guidelines and standards make all our lives easier as these already provide how-tos and clearer directions on how to make things easier for the users.
Although user login may well be considered as just one of the many functions in a web site or a mobile service, it is the most crucial part of amost community-based and social networking services (SNS) that require user login and authentication in order to fully maximize features of a service. Read more
Making things usable: A Usability Primer
Let this be our own version of Usability 101. In the Asian region, usability is not a pervasive practice. User-centered design is in its early stages, which makes it difficult for other people to understand it. The concept seems complex that in fact, when friends or acquaintances ask me what I do for a living, I always get a puzzled look when I say I’m a usability professional.
To define usability, I always refer to ISO 9241-11 (Guidance for Usability):
“Usability is 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.” Read more
The epiphany that gave birth to this blog
“On the Internet, it’s survival of the easiest…. Give users a good experience and they’re apt to turn into frequent and loyal customers. But … it’s easy to turn to another supplier in the face of even a minor hiccup. Only if a site is extremely easy to use will anybody bother staying around.”
I just had to quote Jakob Nielsen for my first write-up for Talk Usability.
Yes, make this the official declaration that I am a Jakob Nielsen fan, despite what his critics are saying. As a testament to becoming a fan girl (albeit a geek one), I had to stop Nielsen on his tracks during the Usability Week 2007 in Hong Kong to make him sign my Usability Inspection Methods book authored by him.
C’mon people – you just have to admit it. No matter how radical the guy is about usability, he still popularized and evangelized both profession and practice.
And that… is what we’d also like to do. Read more
Why write about usability?
I love things that are easy to use. These things would range from obscure kitchen utensils (such as the Good Grips Smooth Edge Can Opener) to websites (Google just works!).
Curious as ever, I often asked myself “Why am I attracted to these? Why do I use them? Why do they just work?”
- The Good Grips noted earlier is a wee bit on the expensive side, but I still bought it because it makes opening canned food a snap. It sticks to the side of my canned tuna and effortlessly glides through the metal cutting process. Whereas my former can opener used to jump out of the rim at least four times every time I used it.
- Google was visually sparse when compared to the other leading search sites before, but whenever I wanted to look for something online, it was the ONLY site I would use. Having a page that only contained a text field with submit button told me “Hey, we know that you’re here because you want to search for something particular. Go ahead; we’ve made it easy for you.” It didn’t distract me with links or images to horoscopes or news. It just went straight to the point - search!