8.3 – September 2009 – User Experience

Usability Evaluation

New Standards to Help Screen Readers Navigate Web Forms: Techniques to Improve Usability for All

Introduction Web 2.0 entices web authors with dynamic capabilities, but these advances in performance and functionality have proven a barrier to a growing contingent of users. Many interactive web elements, including forms with dynamic updates and error validation, can be disorienting to users and inaccessible to blind people who use

UX Magazine September 15, 2009 12:12 pm No Comments

Usability Evaluation

Role Reversal: Testing for Ease of Learning and Recall

When testing a software package, include traditional roles found in a pyramidal training model but also a reversed, “train the trainer” round.

UX Magazine September 15, 2009 12:12 pm No Comments

Accessibility and Universal Design

Stepping In: An Outsider’s Guide to Crossing the Digital Divide

“Bridging the Global Digital Divide” teams are looking at new interaction technologies and design practices for users whose lives could be transformed by advances in computing and communication.

UX Magazine September 15, 2009 12:11 pm No Comments

User Research

Model-driven Inquiry: A Streamlined Approach to Data Collection

Contextual design models can be developed through exploratory modeling, providing a potentially useful framework to guide and speed up the later modeling activities.

UX Magazine September 15, 2009 12:10 pm No Comments

User Research

Help! Where Is It When You Need It?

Provide form instructions on a separate web page and place a “Help” link at the beginning to help users who prefer or require “up front” instructions to complete the form.

Editor UX September 15, 2009 12:09 pm No Comments

Visual Design

Information Graphics: An Eclectic Celebration

Guidebooks on effective visual communication are frequently published for those who have not been exposed to information design and visualization, often obscuring similar publications of decades past.

UX Magazine September 15, 2009 12:09 pm No Comments

User Interview Techniques: Guidelines for Obtaining Better Results

An interview technique review worksheet emphasizes continual improvement and provides an easy way for team members to evaluate a user research interview session.

UX Magazine September 15, 2009 12:08 pm No Comments

The View from Here: Raising the Floor

Raising the Floor is creating an open source set of tools to create free public access features built directly into information infrastructure, facilitating affordable assistive technologies.

UX Magazine September 15, 2009 12:07 pm No Comments

Book Reviews

Deal Them Again: Card Sorting Revisited (Book Review)

A whole book on card sorting? This book is replete with solid advice, clearly written and illustrated, and well supported by case studies and examples.

Gerry Gaffney September 15, 2009 12:05 pm No Comments

Book Reviews

The Classy Classic: Designing the User Interface (Book Review)

This updated edition of a text about designing user-interfaces is testament to the evolution of these and other related topics the past two decades.

UX Magazine September 15, 2009 12:04 pm No Comments

User Experience