User Experience

A New Website Architecture for Salisbury District CouncilThe first Salisbury District Council website opened in 1999. Created and maintained by administrators from council services who updated to their own […]

Learning Lessons from Citizen Involvement at Aberdeenshire Council Aberdeenshire Council’s website is an increasingly important communication channel, significantly improving customer service and delivery efficiency. […]

In the Service of Citizens: Persuasion is Fine but Legislation is QuickerI work for CSI-Piemonte, one of the largest Italian information and communication technologies (ICT) companies. Our focus is the local public service […]

Encouraging Participatory Democracy: A Study of 30 Government WebsitesFor the first time in history, a wide distribution of technology allows citizens to get involved in public governance and participate in institutional […]

<!–:en–>The View from Here: E-Government Needs to Do More to Ensure Citizens’ Privacy <!–:–>Electronic government sounds attractive, with its promise of convenience, reduced costs, and enhanced data quality. But horror stories of leakages of […]

<!–:en–>What’s News: Up, Up and Away <!–:–>It took some courage, merely days after a test flight of Airbus’s new A380 super-jumbo jet was aborted mid-flight due to faulty landing gear controls, b […]

<!–:en–>Book Review: What We Find Changes Who We Become <!–:–> Ambient Findability By Peter Morville O’Reilly, 2005 Ambient Findability is the second book written by Peter Morville. His first, Information A […]

<!–:en–>With Access for Many, a New Way to Govern <!–:–>Could the founders of the United States of America have envisioned what the Internet, telecommunications, and the PC enable in terms of government […]

<!–:en–>Rubes: As the Crow Flies <!–:–> [greybox]  One crow is on a laptop.  He says to the other “Bah! These driving directions are completely worthless!  Wouldn’t it be considerably sho […]

Finding Uses For New Technology: Moving with a Magic Thing Even  if  we  user  experience  professionals  would  like  to  think that  new  product  development  is  always  user-pushed,  we have  to  admit […]

Cultural Probes: Understanding Users in Context One of the latest techniques in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community is a data collection mechanism called cultural probes. These were […]

Alarm Reliability: What If an Alarm Goes Off and No One Hears It? The first time I used sound for alerting was in May 1948, just a few seconds after I was born. Presumably, the sound I generated was intended to notify […]

Point, Counterpoint: What Three Experts Say about Speech UsabilityPractitioners and researchers who work with speech technology face a more complex problem than those who work with GUIs. In a VUI (voice user interface) […]

Auditory Displays in Healthcare Anyone who has spent any time in a critical care area of a hospital is aware how noisy it can be. There is noise from telephones, pagers, and equipment, […]

<!–:en–>What's News: Make it Easy<!–:–>In a case of “doing well by doing good,” the Arthritis Foundation’s Ease-of-Use Commendation program rewards companies for developing products that […]

<!–:en–>Editor's Note: Sonification: Its Time Has Arrived <!–:–>This issue focuses on sonification. Some usability and user-experience professionals in medicine, health, music, video, the military, and other realms […]

Radio Frequency Identification: How User Expertise Can Make a New Technology Welcome User-experience professionals can play a role in the success of new technologies by ensuring that the technology facilitates, rather than inhibits, […]

COMMUNICATION GAP: Designing an Interface for Chinese Migrant Workers While there are many problems to be solved in China, we chose to address the need for communication between migrant workers and their children left […]

Usability Practice in China: An UpdateAbout three years ago, I wrote an article for User Experience (Spring/Summer 2003) entitled “East Meets West,” on usability in China. In the int […]

Usability Opportunities in ChinaThoughts after a Short Trip to China Usability is still in its infancy in China. However, many companies have begun to recognize the importance of […]