Web Design and Usability Primer

A little while ago, in conversing with my coworkers, I realized one of the fundamental flaws of the Web: the sort of people drawn to creating content for it, designers and programmers, seldom have experience in the human factors necessary for the medium. I assembled a short list of references which will hopefully serve as a starting point for discovering the science of usability.

First, the basics, by Bruce Tognazzini, human-computer interaction consultant and founder of Apple's Human Interface Group:

First Principles of Interface Design

Start here even if you think you know usability and interface design. It's an excellent overview of the general concepts required to design things that people can use. It's also basic enough to make a wonderful set of interview questions. :-)

The Sorry State of Web Design

In contrast to the above, this is an opinion piece, through and through. Some might say "rant". Consider it a why to accompany the previous article's how. (Take note that Tog's argumentative style tends towards hyperbole. Watering down what you read here leaves you with a handful of points worth reading.)

Jakob Nielsen, usability and interface consultant. *Very* important stuff, this guy more than any other knows what's going on in terms of Web interface and Web users:

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

An absolute classic, this article should be required reading for anyone that puts anything on the web. Many of the mistakes on this list would also appear on a top-ten list of technologies embraced by designers, which is about as strong a symptom of the state of web design today as you could find.

"Top Ten", updated for 1999

(Be sure to read the original first.) Often, people react to Nielsen's 1996 Top Ten list suggesting that things have changed between 1996 and the present. Surprise, they haven't.

The Increasing Conservatism of Web Users

This article explains why Web users don't want the flash and creeping featurism that designers like to implement. The conclusion he reaches regarding client and server is a paradigm of Web application development that is far too often ignored.

Stuck with Old Browsers until 2003

The above article updated for 1999, and evidence to suggest that Web users aren't getting any more liberal.

Accessible Design for Users with Disabilities

Web design that assumes a perfectly-abled user, in particular a user with perfect vision and color recognition, is a pet peeve of mine. This article provides an introduction to accessibility concerns on the Web, but I wish he had hammered one point in a little harder:

Making websites accessible both to users with disabilities (and to users without the latest browser, plugin, or fast connection, for that matter) doesn't mean a disappointing experience for able (and cutting-edge) users; that disappointing experience is the result of a designer who hasn't learned how to make his work degrade gracefully. Degrading gracefully should be a requirement before a new Web technology is used in the real world. Even more, knowing how to degrade a new Web technology gracefully should be a requirement before a web designer works in the real world. (End rant.)

Disabled Accessibility: The Pragmatic Approach

This updates his comments in the Accessible Design article with the Web Accessibility Initiative Standard introduced by the W3C. I encourage everyone reading to do what is necessary to introduce the WAI as standard procedure within their organization. (Let me know if you succeed, or if your organization has already done so. I'll keep a little list.)

Writing for the Web

A collection of papers and articles on writing for the Web, including microcontent. The Sun Microsystems guidelines are of particular merit.

It's hard to choose a subset of Nielsen's columns. They're all easy to read, to the point, and informative. Go see what else he's got. There's a new one every two weeks.

Some other useful, interesting, and often amusing stuff:

Web Pages That Suck

The companion site of the book by the same name. I'm not a big fan of the book; talking about webpages is something that works considerably better on the web than on paper. (Interestingly, design magazines regularly include screenshots of web pages in their awards issues. An entire industry, so unclear on the concept. Save us.) Proof by counterexample can be useful, and this site provides plenty of those.

Interface Hall of Shame and Hall of Fame

The Hall of Shame is a comprehensive site of proof-by-counterexample of interface failures. It's oriented towards standalone application design, but is still applicable to Web application developers, and to designers. An entertaining read as well; it's astounding that there's so many stupid interfaces out there. Their review of Apple's Quicktime 4.0 Player interface convinced Apple to redesign it for the upcoming Mac OS X.

The Hall of Fame is in a similar style and still useful, but considerably shorter. I think there's a message there.

Writing ALT Texts in IMG Tags

From the "It's Easy To Get The Little Things Wrong" comes this article of astounding depth on what should go in the ALT tags you always include in your IMG tags. (If you don't always include ALT tags in your IMG tags, you shouldn't be this far down the page yet. Go back up to the accessibility articles.) It's not enough just to include the ALT tag; what's in it matters too.

Sun Microsystems' Guide to Web Style

One of the original how-to-do-things-right guides (which first appeared in 1995!), the Sun guide is still a must-read for the basics of sensible Web design.

Alas, the Sun guide has gone away. I wish I'd archived it.

Usable Web

For those looking for more, here's an extensive collection of other material on Web usability.

Comments

The page just went up. No-one's commented yet. Of course, this means that you can be an innovator.

Last Updated 2000-03-04 by Rich Lafferty.