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Column Two
News and opinion on all things KM & CM |
James Robertson
Step Two Designs
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Written by James Robertson Step Two Designs |
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Articles by Category: Design & usability guidelines
Creating & maintaining a web style guideMaish Nichani has written a comprehensive article on web style guides. To quote: A web style guide is a key deliverable at the end of a website design/redesign process. It is a document (usually a subsite in itself) that describes what needs to be done to maintain and grow the website according to a common set of principles derived during the design or redesign process. Posted by jamesr at 08:45 AM
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Better Practice ChecklistsAGIMO (formerly known as NOIE) have released their updated set of Better Practice Checklists, covering a wide range of issues surrounding online content. While these are designed to give guidance to Australian government agencies, they are equally useful for other organisations (both public and private sector). We were very pleased to be appointed to a select panel to assist in the development of these new checklists. As part of this, we were responsible for writing the following checklists:
as well as editing or rewriting the following checklists: Posted by jamesr at 08:21 PM
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Making guidelines part of the teamTanya Rabourn has written an article on the use of guidelines. To quote: Guidelines. We seem to have a love-hate relationship with them. At the same time we construct them, we worry they’ll come back to haunt us. How did guidelines get such a bad reputation? On the whole they're usually a sincere attempt to capture valuable knowledge or provide instruction to the less experienced. Implicit within efforts (such as Boxes and Arrows) is the development of guidelines, and that’s a good thing. Guidelines themselves aren't the problem; it’s their misapplication that is. Posted by jamesr at 01:08 PM
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HCI Bibliography: GuidelinesThe HCI Bibliography has collected together a list of design guidelines, which currently contains 16 entries, and was recently updated. Posted by jamesr at 07:36 PM
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Web Style GuideLynch and Horton have apparently released the fully text of their book titled Web Style Guide (2nd edition). To quote: The guidance we offer in Web Style Guide has always been grounded on the functional aspects of design. In this second edition we extend our focus on functionality with additional sections on Web site accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets, and flexible page design. We include additional sections on information architecture, site maintenance, and multimedia design. And we have added illustrations and updated our Web site examples to reflect current best practices. Posted by jamesr at 07:34 PM
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Section 508In the United States, the accessibility of electronic systems in Government is mandated by Section 508. To quote: Section 508 requires that Federal agencies' electronic and information technology is accessible to people with disabilities. The Center for Information Technology Accommodation (CITA), in the U.S. General Services Administration's Office of Governmentwide Policy, has been charged with the task of educating Federal employees and building the infrastructure necessary to support Section 508 implementation. Using this web site, Federal employees and the public can access resources for understanding and implementing the requirements of Section 508. Posted by jamesr at 07:21 PM
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Java Look and Feel Design GuidelinesThanks to recents posts on CHI-Web, this is another set of design guidelines: the Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines. To quote: Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines, second edition, provides essential information for anyone involved in creating cross-platform GUI (graphical user interface) applications and applets in the JavaTM programming language. In particular, this book offers design guidelines for software that uses the Swing classes together with the Java look and feel. Posted by jamesr at 07:18 PM
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Oracle Browser Look and Feel (BLAF) GuidelinesOracle has released a set of look-and-feel guidelines for use in their applications. To quote: The BLAF Guidelines are a set of specifications regarding common UI components, templates, flows, and general heuristics. These specifications should be used to develop html-based Oracle products to provide a consistent user experience regarding look and feel of applications, flow of applications, layout of pages, and interaction of components. Using the guidelines to design your application will also ensure a consistent suite of applications and tight product intergration. Posted by jamesr at 07:09 PM
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Using a style guide to build consensusWhitney Quesenbery has written an article on using a style guide to build consensus. To quote: Style guides are often requested as a way to promote a common look and feel but do little to address the real problems in the way user interfaces are developed. In many situations, a collection of rules for visual design and the use of controls can seem like a band-aid; promoting surface-level consistency rather than solving the real usability problems. Even when a good style guide is created, it is often ignored after release. Worse, the style guide can become a weapon where a user-centered design process is needed. In either case, the style guide has failed to produce the desired effect. What?s missing is a consensus on the scope, ownership, or content. Solving this problem requires a change in the way style guides are developed, distributed, and used. Three suggestions for teams developing style guides are to start early, to make the emerging style guide widely available, and to plan for long-term maintenance of the guidelines. Posted by jamesr at 07:05 PM
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ISO 13407: Human centred design processesRecent mailing lists posts have reminded me about the existence of ISO 13407, the international standard for user-centered design processes. Now, I haven't seen it, and I was wondering whether anyone can comment upon its usefulness, and whether I should purchase a copy? Posted by jamesr at 12:33 PM
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Intranet Guide projectAs part of the most recent Intranet Peers in Government forum, I set a half-day project to come up with the outline of a "best practice" Intranet Guide for authors, reviewers and administrators. This proved to be a lot of fun for all concerned, and and the two teams also came up with some really interesting ideas. I've now gathered their results together into a report, for use by the broader intranet community. Download the PDF file (224k) Your thoughts and comments on this? Posted by jamesr at 01:23 PM
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Gathered resources on heuristic evaluationsThe Usability SIG has gathered together a range of resources on heuristic evaluations, providing a good starting point for further research. [Thanks to Todd Zazelenchuk.] Posted by jamesr at 08:45 PM
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Jakob Nielsen's 10 usabilty heuristics: annotatedKeith Instone has annotated Jakob Nielsen's usability heuristics in this article, which helps to provide context to this well known list. [Thanks to Todd Zazelenchuk.] Posted by jamesr at 08:42 PM
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Alternatives to Nielsen's heuristicsTodd Zazelenchuk talks about alternatives to Nielsen's usability heuristics, highlighting that although they are very popular, they don't always match the specific need at hand. To quote: In a "true" HE [heuristic evaluation], Nielsen’s heuristics are used. However, many evaluators have found that Nielsen’s list does not always meet their specific needs and they frequently require alternative guidelines or some re-interpretation of Nielsen’s original descriptions in order for each item to make sense. Several variations on Nielsen's theme have been developed as a result [C] as well as numerous original efforts at creating both short and long lists of helpful guidelines [D]. Posted by jamesr at 08:39 PM
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NSW Government website guidelinesI have just come across another set of website guidelines, published by the Office of Information Technology in NSW, Australia. To quote: The guideline is primarily concerned with the use of the Internet to deliver information and services, but this may also involve access to other delivery channels. These include on Intranet (where shared by two or more separate agencies), interactive voice recognition, call centres and digital television. Posted by jamesr at 02:19 PM
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GNOME and KDE interface guidelines to join forcesAaron J. Seigo reports on a move to create an integrated set of user interface guidelines for GNOME and KDE (the two dominant Linux GUIs). It is planned to host the combined document on freedesktop.org. To quote: The goal is to have one URL (on www.FreeDesktop.org) and one document for developers to go to for KDE and GNOME Human Interface Guidelines. We hope this site can eventually house guidelines for multiple desktops and graphical toolkits. Posted by jamesr at 04:05 PM
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Even more style guidesAs expected, discussions on sigia-l has thrown up more good style guides:
[Thanks to David Williamson.] And one more to round out today's listings:
[Thanks to Gene Smith.] Posted by jamesr at 10:22 AM
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More style guidesThanks to a recent thread on sigia-l, I've come across a good number of web style guides:
[Thanks to Charles Chapman.] Posted by jamesr at 08:35 AM
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Open source web designsI have been pointed to a new site that collects together open source web designs. These are freely-usable page layouts and graphics styles, suitable for a range of sites. I particularly like the ability to select designs according to whether they meet W3 guidelines... Posted by jamesr at 02:59 PM
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GNOME style guide, and moreThe GNOME project (Linux user interface) has published an early draft of their style guide. Perhaps more usefully, they have also gathered together a good list of other styleguides, from Microsoft's to other Unix/Linux guides. Posted by jamesr at 01:26 PM
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SAP Design GuildA recent thread on one of the usability lists pointed me to the SAP Design Guild, which provides a pretty extensive set of design resources. I keep stumbling across this (it's been around for a while), so I'm blogging it now so I don't lose it again. Posted by jamesr at 05:06 PM
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Victorian website guidelinesThe Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet has published the Whole of Victorian Government (WoVG) Web Site Guidelines, which provides resources for managing government sites. This covers the following major sections:
(You can't have too many website guideline documents, as they all have something of value to add.) Posted by jamesr at 05:45 PM
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Victorian accessibility guideMultimedia Victoria has published a Victorian Government Accessibility Toolkit, which pulls together a range of accessibility guidelines into the one location. Substantially the same as the W3C's WAI, it does use local examples. (It's a pity the site itself uses such tiny, unreadable text.) Posted by jamesr at 04:52 PM
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Evidence-based usability guidelinesA post on ia/ has drawn my attention to the truly excellent list of evidence-based usability guidelines provided by usability.gov. This is not just a public-sector approach, but a truly amazing set of resources for all web designers. The following categories are covered:
Posted by jamesr at 06:41 PM
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Australian accessibility planInternet Industry Association (IIA) and Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association (AIMIA) have jointly released a Accessibility Web Action Plan. This is designed to educate Australian web managers, and assist them to deliver accessible sites. To quote: Gaynor Gravestock, Chair of the IIA Taskforce who developed the Plan, says "There are great benefits to all organisations who adopt website accessibility. It just doesn't make good business sense to turn so many customers away by building a web site for the minority." Another interesting quote: So who will benefit from improved accessibility to web sites? It seems that the majority of Australians will benefit in some way. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 18% of Australians have some form of disability; 12% of the Australian population is over 65; 16.9% of the Australian population speak a language other than English at home; In 1996 almost 50% of Australians 15-74 had poor literacy skills and could be expected to experience difficulty using many of the printed materials they encounter in everyday life. Added to this up to 30% of Australians experience their Internet connection at less than 14.4k, whereas in the metropolitan areas 56k or broadband are accepted as the norm. Posted by jamesr at 11:05 AM
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Evolution instead of guidelinesJared M. Spool writes about the dangers of usability guidelines. He highlights several well-known guidelines, and then compares them to the empirical research UIE has conducted. The net result? Many guidelines which seemed obviously beneficial had no effect, while some actually reduced e-commerce sales. He ends the article by discussing how evolutionary changes can be used to explore different designs and approaches, while testing the results "in the field". Posted by jamesr at 11:04 AM
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Online accessibility bookMark Pilgrim has followed on from his excellent 30-day series of weblog entries on practical website accessibility, and has created an online book. His introduction reads: This book answers two questions. The first question is "Why should I make my web site more accessible?" If you do not have a web site, this book is not for you. The second question is "How can I make my web site more accessible?" If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second. The style of the book is very friendly, no-nonsence, and packed with useful information. I would highly recommend this for anyone doing website design work. Posted by jamesr at 12:49 PM
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