Maish 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 ...
Blog category: Design & usability guidelines
May 27, 2004 by James Robertson
Better Practice Checklists
AGIMO (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 ...
April 10, 2004 by James Robertson
Making guidelines part of the team
Tanya 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
May 24, 2003 by James Robertson
HCI Bibliography: Guidelines
The HCI Bibliography has collected together a list of design guidelines, which currently contains 16 entries, and was recently updated.
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May 24, 2003 by James Robertson
Web Style Guide
Lynch 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 ...
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May 24, 2003 by James Robertson
Section 508
In 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 ...
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May 24, 2003 by James Robertson
Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines
Thanks 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 ...
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May 24, 2003 by James Robertson
Oracle Browser Look and Feel (BLAF) Guidelines
Oracle 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 ...
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May 24, 2003 by James Robertson
Using a style guide to build consensus
Whitney 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 ...
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April 19, 2003 by James Robertson
ISO 13407: Human centred design processes
Recent 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?
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March 6, 2003 by James Robertson
Intranet Guide project
As 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 ...
February 11, 2003 by James Robertson
Gathered resources on heuristic evaluations
The Usability SIG has gathered together a range of resources on heuristic evaluations, providing a good starting point for further research. [Thanks to Todd Zazelenchuk.]
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February 11, 2003 by James Robertson
Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usabilty heuristics: annotated
Keith 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.]
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February 11, 2003 by James Robertson
Alternatives to Nielsen’s heuristics
Todd 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
February 10, 2003 by James Robertson
NSW Government website guidelines
I 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 ...
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February 4, 2003 by James Robertson
GNOME and KDE interface guidelines to join forces
Aaron 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 ...
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January 16, 2003 by James Robertson
Even more style guides
As expected, discussions on sigia-l has thrown up more good style guides: Web Style Guides: Mostly from UniversitiesA big list of primarily University-sourced web style guides. CSU Web Style GuidesA brief but useful listing of web style guides Carnegie Mellon Web Publishing Style GuideThis guide was developed to assist the ...
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January 14, 2003 by James Robertson
More style guides
Thanks to a recent thread on sigia-l, I've come across a good number of web style guides: Att.com style guideThis site is a central resource for agencies, developers, and organizations who create AT&T corporate and business Web sites hosted on the AT&T public server and associated public servers. BCM Web ...
December 16, 2002 by James Robertson
Open source web designs
I 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...
December 5, 2002 by James Robertson
GNOME style guide, and more
The 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.
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November 25, 2002 by James Robertson
SAP Design Guild
A 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.
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October 11, 2002 by James Robertson
Victorian website guidelines
The 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: Content Site architecture Presentation Interactivity Legal issues Management and maintenance (You can't have too many website guideline documents, as they all have something of value ...
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October 11, 2002 by James Robertson
Victorian accessibility guide
Multimedia 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.)
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October 10, 2002 by James Robertson
Evidence-based usability guidelines
A 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: Design process Design considerations Content/content organisation Titles/headings Page length Page layout Font/text ...
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September 12, 2002 by James Robertson
Australian accessibility plan
Internet 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 ...
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September 11, 2002 by James Robertson
Evolution instead of guidelines
Jared 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 ...
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July 27, 2002 by James Robertson
Online accessibility book
Mark 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 ...
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