Warmest Greetings,

How Do You Measure Usability?  

:: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 ::

What makes a web site or software more usable than something else?

The question inspired dialog at Cre8asiteForums.

     "I don't think ease of use, by itself, is a good quantifier for usability. Put up a blank web page that does absolutely nothing, and you'll find it very easy to do absolutely nothing. I'm not sure that makes it usable. Conversely, crawl into the cockpit of a Boeing 747 and try to get the plane off the ground. It probably won't be easy, but that's doesn't mean the instrumentation is necessarily unusable. Ease of use just isn't enough of the story to reach a punch line."

     "I also think standardisation plays a significant role."

What do you use to determine what is a qualifier? Is it worth risk?

     "One of the most critical points of roll-out is change management. The thing is, no matter how badly you think the existing system has been designed, the users are accustomed to it, and they do not like change. It slows them down for a while. Obviously, this presents a productivity cost."

In other usability discussion, Web Sites Should Cater to Best Customers wonders what the difference is between Scenerio Design and User Personas.

Code Your Navigation At Your Own Risk

This is a good reminder that text is still king in search engine land...Google Will Only Spider Index Page

Ammon Johns writes, "Do what you like, but if your links are not links (that means anchor tags with HREF attributes), they will probably not be crawled by any spiders."


Totally Hilarious

My great supporter and friend, Diane Vigil, gets down and dirty with fonts in Font Rant

     " … and I don't see myself reading with my face four inches from the screen. Unless it can give me a tan."

Drop What You're Doing and Visit

Search Engine Roundtable's extensive, and I mean bring your laptop to bed with you kind of coverage on SES Chicago. Barry (RustyBrick) deserves a reward for traveling all year and bringing these shows to us little people back home.

Example:

     "Danny Sullivan explained the reason he started Search Engine Watch was because people were building web pages that worked for IE and Netscape but not for the search engines, which he called the 3rd browser." Web Standards. Good Design & SEO: You Can Have It All

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 12/15/2004 07:18:21 PM

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