UsableWebb

The latest Facebook design has one major issue, the ambiguity of the icons for Friend Requests, Mail and Notifications. Name the first thing you think of when you see each of the icons. Friend Requests – Friends, People? What about the requests you get from people who really aren’t your friends? Mail – Chat? Is [...]

Windows Security Essentials I recently discovered Windows Security Essentials and installed it on a new Windows 7 desktop. Satisfied with the product, I went back to the Web site, to see if Windows Security Essentials was compatible with Windows XP. Was the team not focused enough on user tasks and goals? Or were they just focused on [...]

Users come to your site to complete tasks The web is a functional, task-oriented place. On the web, we want to find the information we’re looking for quickly. We go to the web to get answers to our questions or to complete specific tasks. Imagine the last time you went to your bank web site. Were [...]

I’ve set up a user interface design / user experience search engine (#1 below). Thanks to @cbehrlich for the heads up on her user experience search engine (#2 below). User experience search engine #1: http://snipurl.com/uxsearch User experience search engine #2: http://tinyurl.com/UI-UX-Search The searches engines return results from trusted user experience and user interface design Web sites. If you [...]

To ensure users don’t have trouble downloading files (Word, PowerPoint, Excel files or PDF’s), follow these guidelines when naming files to be uploaded and used on your Web site. Remove spaces from file names (hyphens are okay to separate words) Some web browsers may not recognize the spaces. Spaces can also cause links sent in e-mail to [...]

Web site features and functionality continue to grow, making it important to carefully consider and display only the most relevant feedback to your users. I came across this example when trying to find a service to update my status on various social networks. To help uncover the problem and the solution you must understand how your [...]

The urge to insert the phrase “click here” or “more” is somewhat common among content contributors when creating links on a page. Non-descriptive link text makes your site difficult to scan and causes accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO) issues. Replacing the phrase click here with a meaningful word or phrase (which makes sense out [...]

A common goal of usability and user-centered design is making the desired action as clear as possible. The first thing you’ll notice about the webcast player page (below) is the Download Player/ System Requirements stand out nearly as much as the desired action (viewing the webcast). Before: To solve this: I moved the download player links below the System [...]