onUsability
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- pascii
hello team! our usability teacher wags every lesson with nielsons books... i REALLY need a counterpoint to that to read about other theories who aren't so 1990. can anyone point me to someone else? thanks.
and i need some examples of bad usability. maybe you have some from big companies who failed bitter.
tnx in advance!
- fate_0
pascii, one of the biggest points I make in those type of arguements is that while making content accesible to extreme minorities and predictable by the populous...it does NOT make content effective, and indeed, works AGAINST the effectiveness of content to be remembered and to stand out.
There is so much content out there that standing out from the crowd is much more important than making sure your nav is left aligned. Who cares if it's usable if no one remembers it?
- pascii0
fate_ i loke that point of view very much. but sometimes u have to talk absolutely straightforward to, forgive me, sell a product or brand a product. it could be for a big player or a friend who just developed a nice product such as here ( http://www.planet-s.ch/ )
- fate_0
bump
- heavyt0
there are a couple of books that i like
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product…
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product…these are a little more modern.
I would say that Neilsen's work is a bit outdated. Here are some quotes from his book that illustrate that:-netscape will probably continue to be the dominant browser
-home page must be less then 30k (due to narrowband speed)
-using Tabs as a navigation tool is starting to become popular.TR1
- Clear0
I work for a state agency and by the middle of next year we have to be 508 compliant with all our sites. Try going through a site with a screen reader if you want to know how bad sites can be. Especially try to go through an online form with a screen reader. If you don't name things correctly it's absolutely horrible.
To solve the 508 issue, we're re-designing all our sites with CSS layouts (no more tables). This solves about 90% of all the problems.
D'oh, just realized you typed "usibility" not "accessibility". Well maybe this is still relative though.
- canuck0
It's about knowing your end user.
- Fariska0
What Nilsen forgets it's "target".
Btw, some of his points are true, but he is such a taliban of usability, forgetting that web is also experience.
- pascii0
bump for sunday sponges... err.. . brains
- SF20
Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" is the best read on the subject, in my opinion anyway.
- oBeseLilNinja0
i have the perfect usability test subject - my 60 year old dad
even though jakob might be very 1990's his alertbox is one of my fav sites