Column Two

Jared Spool has written an article on site maps, highlighting their weaknesses. To quote: A 'design cop-out' is when a designer works on treating a symptom instead of putting resources into solving the root problem. It's choosing a quick fix over solving what could be a wicked problem. Don't get me ...

Jared Spool has written several articles on what he calls a Weighted Differences Matrix. From part 1: The process we’d use is to compare the designs side-by-side and list the differences. A method I’m fond of is to do the comparisons with two sites at a time. In this case, we’d ...

Angela Quail has written about assessing the validity of personas. To quote: Robust Personas are personas we can stand behind with confidence. We have conducted stakeholder interviews, internal research interviews, general industry and domain research, ethnographic field research, and we have tried hard to shoot holes in what we ...

Frank Spillers has written an article on the usability of third-party applications. To quote: What many companies are doing is writing usability guarantees into the contracts so that vendors are forced to adhere to your standards before they win the contract. This is the most direct and legally binding way to ...

Jakob Nielsen writes about bridging the designer–user gap. To quote: The wider the gap between your situation and the users, their tasks, and their context, the more you need a systematic usability process to inform and adjust your design. In most design projects, the gap is wide indeed and you usually ...

Andrew Hinton has written an article on personas and design documentation. To quote: In User Experience Design circles, personas have become part of our established orthodoxy. And, as with anything orthodox, some people disagree on what personas are and the value they bring to design, and some reject the doctrine ...

Jared Spool has written an article on designing account sign-in. To quote: Designing an account registration and sign-in process that doesn't frustrate users turns out to be very difficult to achieve. It looks easy at the outset, but a pile of subtleties can sneak up on your experience, making something ...

Jared Spool responds to recent criticisms of personas. To quote: Some products, like the tools built by 37Signals, don't need personas. Not because the folks at 37Signals have any special powers, but because they themselves are the personas they want to build for. They build tools they like to use ...

Jessica Enders has written an article on usability problems with healthcare questionnares. To quote: Reviewing the 60 randomly selected forms this way, we were surprised to discover that every single form contained at least one error. Half of the patients made between 1 and 5 errors on their form, with the other ...

Jared Spool first published an article on conducting usability tests with 30 observers. To quote: Because there's a large number of design agents and stake holders involved and often a small number of available tests to observe, we can find ourselves in a situation where we need to have many ...