Usability

Modified: 2007-04-12

Most Web pages neglect users or force them to hunt hard for information. Designers of Web pages could easily create pages that are easier to navigate, find, and view. Usability is the art, craft, and science behind making Web pages better for users. Below, we will examine user-driven usability, usability testing companies, usability conferences, date consistency, and Mac OS X, a new operating system and its GUI features.

Usability Testing Companies. Here are some companies that specialize in usability testing. Such testing is not cheap, but can easily pay for itself in additional business.

Human Factors International, Inc. (Fairfield, IA)
Austin Usability Inc. (Austin, TX)
Nuance Nine (Odessa, TX)
WebWord.com
CURE (Vienna, Austria)
Da Vinci Usability (Lexington, MA)
A Google search yielded about 349,000 hits in 2002 and 42, 700, 000 in 2007 for "usability services"
Jakob Nielsen
Usability.gov

Usability Conferences. Here are few upcoming conferences in the area of usability.

Web-based Surveys and Usability Testing (2002-06-19-21, San Francisco)
User Experience (Hong Kong, Washington, DC, London, San Francisco)
- Washington Post (2001-10-25) article on User Experience meeting in Washington, DC
The 16th British HCI Group Annual Conference incorporating European Usability Professionals' Association Conference 2002 (2002-09-02-06, London)

Date consistency. An international problem in usability is the wide variety of methods for citing dates.

International Date and Time Notation--long discussion of ISO 8601:2000, a document which specifies an international agreement on date and time notation. Note the dates on this page, btw.
ISO 8601:2000--site where users may purchase ISO 8601:2000, a 29 page document describing an international standard for date and time notation.
Date and Time Formats--another long article covering dates and times and international usage.

Mac OS X. Apple Computer has released a new operating system. What kinds of usability reviews is it receiving? What does it look like?

Articles
- PC Magazine Reviews Mac OS X 10.1--honest review of Mac OS X discusses its usability. Users can take a tour of the OS X by clicking on "(Click Here to Take a Tour of Mac OS X) on the first page of the article.
Demonstrations
- Mac OS X in Motion--From Apple Computer Inc., features several QuickTime movies about OS X and its features.

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