Posts in Usability

21 posts in this category

Sep 08, 2006
Usability

The Spoolcast Continues

Parts two, three, and four of Jared Spool’s Spoolcast are also available. Part 1: Description - MP3 - Transcript Part 2: Description - MP3 Part 3: Description - MP3 Part 4: Description - MP3

Sep 07, 2006
Usability

Jared Spool on…just about everything

Jared Spool, noted usability guy and wiseass (read his bio), introduces the Spoolcast, a roundtable podcast, covering a variety of topics. Episode 1 includes the following topics (and thankfully does not feature a Jamaican alien with floppy ears):...

Sep 05, 2006
Usability

The Unfortunate Ergonomics of the School Cafeteria

Diana Wynne, blogger extraordinaire and a design manager at an unnamed company in San Francisco, opines about the sorry state of ergonomics in your child’s cafeteria. At Microsoft, we have a vaguely similar setup, except that our receptacles are ...

Aug 25, 2006
Usability

KDE' New, Snazzy Start Menu

I found a video of the new start menu for KDE on the Web the other day. It’s actually pretty cool; it looks far more polished than previous versions I’ve seen, it’s resizable, and includes some nice integrated search functionality. One complaint ...

Aug 22, 2006
Usability

Bad Errors and Really Bad Errors

One of my favorite websites, the Daily WTF, posted a laundry list of spot-on examples for how not to write an error message a few days back: Press 'Y' if you promise not to do it again. Error: 1>=0. No! - Bad User!!! ... Do not do this again! O...

Aug 21, 2006
Usability

The Dirty Business of Software Updates

Jan Miksovsky wrote a while back about the dirty business of software updates. He describes the difficulty rich client software developers have with updating their software once it’s in the field (truer words were never spoken…it’s a serious pain)...

Aug 19, 2006
Usability

Screen Resolution Redux

Last Tuesday, I wrote about Jakob Nielsen’s latest thoughts on screen resolution and web browsing. His conclusion was that you should optimize for 1024x768px, but ensure that the site is still usable at 800x600px. I also posted a breakdown of the ...

Aug 11, 2006
Usability

A Brief Primer on Fitts' Law

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror has a great writeup today on Fitts’s Law, which can help you conceptualize the amount of time needed to interact with a user interface (which doesn’t need to be the user interface of a computer; it applies just about e...

Aug 07, 2006
Usability

Tabs, Tabs, Everywhere!

The tab control is a fantastic tool for grouping large numbers of related UI elements into a limited amount of space. Jennifer Tidwell, author of Designing Interfaces, provides a set of reasons, use cases and common designs for correctly applying ...