Cool usability resource website

User Interface Resource Center
The User Interface Resource Center (UIRC) provides free articles and White Papers written by industry leaders about user interface design and rich Internet applications (RIAs). From business strategy and implementation to hands-on techniques, this site is packed with valuable content.

Usability or user experience - what’s the difference ?

“So what does User Experience include?…It includes all aspects of usability and desirability of a product, system or service from the user’s perspective.”

Persona and persona descriptions defined

Jared Spool has written an insightful article on personas. Or…I guess in reality, he’s writing about the difference between a persona and the resulting persona description/document.
My goal isn’t merely to rehash what he has stated already in his blog. The main purpose of my post is to define personas and persona documents for the sake [...]

Accessibility and usability are different

I used to think accessibility and usability were the same thing. The terms even seem to suggest the same idea. They both sound like concepts which indicate how someone interacts with something. But they are different.I’ve looked at the definitions out there and most are long and complicated. So, I thought I would try to [...]

When bad usability is good usability

Not everything should be made easy to use. Zippo lighters are probably the easiest lighter in the world to use. And that’s exactly why I don’t want one in my house. If my kids ever got a hold of one, they could easily light it, drop it on the floor, and catch the house on [...]

Usability is good business

Jakob Nielsen makes a great point about website usability in his article, Usability 101: Introduction to Usability. In it he states,
“On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave.”
What he says is absolutely right-for websites. But, what about other user interfaces? Watches, microwaves, coffee mugs, [...]

Mind, body, and spirit

What is the most important factor in good usability? I say, people. Obviously people are the benefactors of good usability, but I mean something more than that. Good usability requires us to get into the minds of the user. And, as corny as it may sound, their bodies, and their spirits. Usability is a science, [...]

Usability defined again

Well, I thought about it for a while. I tried using the method marketing people use. I imagined an imaginary person who didn’t know anything about usability. I then tried to explain to that person in one sentence what usability was. Here is what I came up with. My new definition for usability is:
How easy [...]

Usability.gov’s explanation of usability

I realized recently that my own definition of usability wasn’t very…well…usable. It was too wordy. I knew it was bad the day I showed it to my wife and she didn’t have a clue what it said. Here is the definition I showed here:
Usability is the quantitative and qualitative measurement of how easy any particular [...]

The usability of a flip-flop

Possibly my favorite line from any song is the following line from Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett,
“I blew out my flip flop,
Stepped on a pop top…”
As strange as an introduction to a usability blog post as that may seem, they are the lyrics that got me thinking about the usability of a flip-flop.
Flip-flops have incredible usability. [...]