A B C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y

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Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Scott McCloud. (1993)
This book explains the details of how comics work: how they're composed, read and understood. More than just a book about comics, this gets to the heart of how we deal with visual languages in general.

Understanding Hypermedia 2.000: Multimedia Origins, Internet Futures. Bob Cotton and Richard Oliver. 2nd ed. (1997)
This book charts the developments in technology, culture, science and the arts to give a very broad understanding of just what hypermedia is and where it came from. The book also looks at the components of hypermedia, the processes of designing and building new media projects, and the future of the medium.

Understanding Web Users' Browsing Choices. Kathryn M. Dobroth. From: Common Ground. 8:2, 8-11 (May 1998)
Designers need a way of assessing users' expectations of the content behind the links that are often cryptically titled. The results of this study indicate that one factor that affects users' expectations is the exemplariness of the item that they are searching for.

Usability Engineering. Jakob Nielsen. (1994)
This book is about cheap and fast methods that anybody can use in any interface design project (whether web design, software design, or gadget design) to drastically improve usability.

Usability Engineering for the Web. Keith Instone. From: Proceedings of Web Design & Development '98. (September 22-26, 1998)
As ease of use becomes more important than being "cool" on the web, usability engineering techniques will let developers create more usable web sites by helping them know their audience, valuating their user interfaces, and redesigning their sites based on user feedback. Understanding the tradeoffs between standards and new web technologies is essential in creating usable sites.
Note: PowerPoint slides.

Usability Is Good Business. George M. Donahue, Susan Weinschenk, and Julie Nowicki. (July 27, 1999)
This paper discusses the cost-effectiveness of usability engineering and performing usability cost-benefit analyses in order to acquaint software professionals and other interested parties with these topics.

The Usability Methods Toolbox. James Hom.
This document contains information about many methods and techniques used in usability evaluation.

Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) Conference. Usability Professionals' Association (UPA). (1991-)
A practioner oriented conference that focuses on "how-to" usability and user testing presentations.

Usability Studies and Designing Navigational Aids for the World Wide Web. D. Bachiochi and et al. From: Proceedings of the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference. (April 7-11, 1997)
This paper describes how usability testing was used to validate design recommendations. The results show a need for navigational aids that are related to the particular website and located beneath the browser buttons.

Usability Studies of WWW Sites: Heuristic Evaluation vs. Laboratory Testing. Laurie Kantner and Stephanie Rosenbaum. From: Proceedings of the 15th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation. (October 19-22, 1997)
This paper describes the strengths and weaknesses of two usability assessment methods frequently applied to web sites. The discussion not only compares the two methods, but also discusses how an effective usability process can combine them, applying the methods at different times during site development.
Note: Also available through ACM. Registration is required.

UsableWeb. Keith Instone.
This site is a collection of links about human factors, user interface issues, and usable design specific to the web.

User and Task Analysis for Interface Design. JoAnn T. Hackos and Janice C. Redish. (1998)
Task analysis is an important aspect of user interface design, insuring that the end product is usable and practical. Written by task analysis experts, this book is the first book that provides full-length coverage of task analysis, and discusses the methodologies behind it.

A User-Centered Approach to Designing a New Top-Level Site Structure for a Large and Diverse Corporate Web Site. Jack J. Yu, Prasad V. Prabhu, and Wayne C. Neale. From: Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Human Factors and the Web. (June 5, 1998)
This paper describes the user-centered approach utilized in the design of Kodak's web site. The authors discovered that combining the knowledge gained from a variety of data collection methods was critical to understanding and defining web site user requirements. An online preview and survey were useful tools for assessing user acceptance of the new designs.

User Interaction in Machine Aided Text Categorization: Design Considerations for an Indexing Assistant. Catherine Baudin and Scott Waterman. (February 1998)
This study investigates requirements for effectively using automatic categorization technology to support human decision making. The researchers present the Indexing Assistant, a prototype tool that uses technical term extraction and text categorization to help humans categorize documents in technical domains.