Stewart
25th Apr 2010, 09:50 am
Steve Krug's 'Don't make me Think' is a classic when it comes to web usability, in fact its of course on the reading list. The concepts contained in this book are still as true today as when the book was written but it was also written at a time when usability was typically something you did at certain times during a project. Or for the more enlightened when you had a particular issue with an area of the site. But the book is more conceptual than practical in nature, which perhaps is its only weakness.
The advent of user centered design as a web design buzz word seems to suggest that we should be talking to our users at every stage of the design process up to launch and through out the life of the website. But big user tests in the traditional model are too expensive and time consuming right? Well wrong actually as do it yourself usability testing can deliver 85% of the value at a fraction of the cost.
In his follow-up book "Rocket Surgery made Easy: The do-it-yourself guide to finding and fixing usability problems" Steve Krug addresses the weakness of his previous book and provides a detailed step by step approach to usability testing which all "UCD" web projects should follow. If you want to talk UCD then this book provides all the details necessary to integrate it into the design process or to explain and to a client how they should implement it down to testing scripts, check lists and suggestions on software.
The advent of user centered design as a web design buzz word seems to suggest that we should be talking to our users at every stage of the design process up to launch and through out the life of the website. But big user tests in the traditional model are too expensive and time consuming right? Well wrong actually as do it yourself usability testing can deliver 85% of the value at a fraction of the cost.
In his follow-up book "Rocket Surgery made Easy: The do-it-yourself guide to finding and fixing usability problems" Steve Krug addresses the weakness of his previous book and provides a detailed step by step approach to usability testing which all "UCD" web projects should follow. If you want to talk UCD then this book provides all the details necessary to integrate it into the design process or to explain and to a client how they should implement it down to testing scripts, check lists and suggestions on software.