Usability Design

1. Usability Design

2. What are the things users will want to do with your site This is not what you want users to do with your site This is not necessarily what looks cool How do you make the most common things users want to do easier? And how do you still support more advanced users? Designing for Usability

3. Remember: Speed Efficiency Learnability Memorability User Preference Usability

4. Task: Find the calorie content of a small serving of Mushroom Stroganoff at Noodles & Co. http://noodles.com/ May look cool, but becomes really annoying when you are trying to find information Poor in terms of 5 usability measures Example

5. Google http://google.com Example

9. Yahoo http://yahoo.com Example

11. Make the most important task the most obvious thing on the page Make other features easy to find for users who want them and easy to ignore for those who don’t Limit distractions that could confuse users Make navigation extremely clear Rely on memes for where to place links (e.g. Advertising, Privacy Policy on the bottom) General guidelines

12. Long text is bad Cryptic text is bad (e.g. Error 325.15) Do not interrupt the user’s flow (e.g. Vista) Provide clear and meaningful choices with obvious outcomes (e.g. buttons that say “Save” and “Don’t Save” rather than “Ok” and “Cancel”) General Guidelines

13. Inane Dialog Boxes What happens when you cancel a cancelled operation? Uhhh… I give up on this one

14. Inane Dialog Boxes Umm, thanks for the warning, but what should I do? Do I have any choice in this?

15. Inane Dialog Boxes Some of these interfaces were posted on Interface Hall of Shame

16. Inane Dialog Boxes

17. Inane Dialog Boxes Midwest Microwave's online catalog Some of these interfaces were posted on Interface Hall of Shame

18. Inane Dialog Boxes

19. Inane Dialog Boxes ClearCase, source-code control Rational Software