In this May 2008 article for Apogee - Usability in Asia, Whitney discusses the importance of content to usability.

"Think about the last web site you worked on. You probably did card sorting for the information architecture. You created paper prototypes to try out different page layouts. You ran iterative usability tests to make sure people could use the site. But what about the information on the site?

Too often, user-centered design stops where the content begins."

Here is an article by John Rhodes from Apogee - Usability in Asia, published June 2008.

"About 10 years ago I would have told any new usability specialist to spend time learning about the Internet. I might have even encouraged that person to learn about web site hosting, HTML, and JavaScript. I would have made these recommendations because the web ushered in such a profound change.

These days, I would not talk about the web that much. Yes, it still offers a million opportunities to usability specialists, much like desktop software still offers opportunities, but it isn’t as cutting edge or as interesting. I would point a new usability specialist to mobile phones. More precisely, I would encourage folks to specialize on the iPhone. I know that this is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket, but the basket is huge and growing. More importantly, the challenges are intense from a user experience perspective."

Article addressing the relationship of usability and marketing requirements including links about gathering marketing requirements.

In this blog post from Web Guild, Reshma Kumar interviews Luke Wroblewski on web form design:

"Forms are a staple of the online experience. We use them daily for a host of activities from signing in/up, purchasing something, asking a question, to downloading a document. They come in all sizes, layouts, and configurations. Some are better executed than others and ultimately, impact our businesses adversely if their designs and usability are impaired. So, how do we ensure that in creating web forms, we get them right? I am speaking with Luke Wroblewski, Senior Principal at Yahoo! and author of a new book "Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks"."

In this blog post from Publishing 2.0, Scott Karp discusses design in the context of publishing and journalism.

"On the web, in the age of Google, design has no margin of error, and there are no stupid users, only inadequate designs."

These are the slides from Carey Schwaber's webcast for the Catalyze Community on June 12, 2008.

"It’s no secret that in the battle to bring effective business software to market on time and on budget, business analysts are on the front lines. What can business analysts do to improve requirements definition practices and make a difference in project outcomes? Join us as Forrester Senior Analyst, Carey Schwaber, shares a set of 10 practical tips that you can immediately put into action in your organization." 

| View | Upload your own

"Everyone knows they should be doing it, but like software testing, it’s one of those things we often don’t get round to. In this presentation, Lisa Herrod looks at some sure fire user testing techniques that produce proven results, don’t cost the earth, and are easy to implement. After this session you won’t have any more excuses for not doing solid user testing of any site or application you develop ever again."

A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

| View | Upload your own

Lisa Herrod is the Principal Usability Consultant at Scenario Seven. The primary focus of her work is web usability, which she believes incorporates much more than just user testing. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, Lisa takes an holistic approach to web usability incorporating user research, accessibility, interaction design and web standards development.

Here is a presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008, and Web Direction Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

Most great web applications have a few key things in common. But can you name them? Better yet — can you achieve them consistently in your own projects?

In this closing keynote, Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious (New Riders) describes the seven qualities of great web-based software and how to achieve each and every one of them by learning to communicate through design.

| View | Upload your own

 Robert Hoekman, Jr., is the founder of Miskeeto, a product development and web design consultancy focused on socially-conscious projects that improve the world.

He’s a passionate and outspoken interaction designer, writer, and user-experience evangelist who has written dozens of articles and has worked with Adobe, Automattic, United Airlines, DoTheRightThing.com, Go Daddy Software, and countless others to create superior user experiences for a wide range of audiences. He also gives in-house training sessions and speaks regularly at industry events like Adobe MAX, Flashforward, SxSW, Future of Web Design, and others.

Robert is the author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious, which focuses on seven guiding principles of great web-based software and how to leverage them in any real-world project. Learn more about Robert through his blog at rhjr.net.

Here's a link to a blog post by Mark Hurst that discusses the top 8 mistakes in usability.

Read about the 3 challenges from Jared Spool of UIE:

1. Finding the application
2. Setting proper preparation expectations
3. Matching the user's flow

"We make a lot of this stuff up as we go along," the lead designer said. Everyone in the group laughed until he continued, "I'm serious. We don't assume anything works and we don't like to make predictions without real-world tests. Predictions color our thinking. So, we continually make this up as we go along, keeping what works and throwing away what doesn't. We've found that about 90% of it doesn't work."

This is a case study of how NetFlix designs and re-designs their website every 2 weeks.

From the HFI April 2008 Newsletter:

"There is a lot of chatter going on about designing the customer experience.

Usable designs – interfaces where the user can do the task – are no longer enough. Today's focus is broader. An individual interface is less important than understanding how the interface fits in the larger system of interactions. We don't create customers, we create relationships with customers.

Establishing a relationship via technology-2-human "conversation" is tricky. Without actually being there, you need to hold up your end of the conversation. This means predicting both where the conversation could go, and knowing how to repair it when it doesn't.

It's well known that humor is an important part of human-2-human interaction. Appropriately invoked, humor can help to establish and deepen relationships. Can humor also help to establish and deepen relationships in a technology-2-human interaction?"

 From  Ferry den Dopper in Slideshare.net - "My notes from a workshop on Interaction Design & Psychology I attended in 2002"

| View | Upload your own

Esther Schindler discusses what she feels are "three unforgiveable usability sins" in this opinion piece at CIO.com:

1. Making the user do something the computer's better at
2. Losing context
3. "Blaming" error messages

From IA Summit 2008 - a presentation on Storytelling by Dorelle Rabinowitz.

"Everyone agrees that stories are powerful and add impact - your audience remembers stories and passes them on. How you tell your story makes a big difference too, and the more personal and poignant - the more the audience can identify, making the message more effective. Storytelling is a powerful way to bring a concept to life, and I recommend we do it more often as a design tool.

Many of you are already using storytelling techniques -- through personas and scenarios. But there are other phases of the design process where storytelling can augment methods. During user research sharing stories connect us with our subjects. Storytelling helps teams collaborate. When we articulate concepts we can establish credibility by telling a story. It’s especially compelling as an adjunct to diagrams and numbers -- a good story can facilitate buy-in and approval of solutions. From problem definition to research, team building to communication, stories are a winning tool to gain consensus, improve collaborative relationships and create user experiences that resonate.

This presentation will demonstrate how to combine storytelling techniques with the user-centered methodologies we are already practicing. Building on work by Tom Erickson, Dana Atchley and others, we'll listen to stories, practice telling our own, and learn when, where, why and how to add storytelling to our toolkit."

 Dorelle Rabinowitz leads a user experience design team at Google, creating standards, patterns & resources. Previously, she managed a UX team at Yahoo!, was an experience lead at SBI.Razorfish and produced Oxygen.com’s "Our Stories" site. She is on the advisory board of the IAI, and is a former editor of Boxes and Arrows. A graduate of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, Dorelle also holds a BFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design.