IDIA 642.185 humans, computers, and cognition

research methods for interaction design

resources

usability: www.useit.com; www.usableweb.com; www.usability.gov; University of Maryland's Usability Resource List
www.otal.umd.edu/guse/testing.html; Usability Professionals' Organization
www.upassoc.org; a list of the categories you can use to rate the severity of usability problems:
Categories of usability errors
information about informed consent procedures:
informed consent
flowcharting: A project at Ryerson Polytechnic University adapting flowcharting symbols to multimedia design
www.rcc.ryerson.ca/rta/flowchart/symbols.html
storyboarding: An introduction to storyboarding for movie production
www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/storybd/
site design: Yale C/AIM Web Style Manual
info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html; Lynda Weinman's site about web site design
www.lynda.com; Design Interact
www.designinteract.com; Web Page Design for Designers
www.wpdfd.com; online course on gestalt theory and design
daphne.palomar.edu/design/gestalt.html@anchor1123302
accessibility: Bobby
www.cast.org/bobby; W3C accessibility guidelines
www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT
cardsorting: www.iawiki.net/CardSorting; www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/analyzing_card_sort_results_with_a_spreadsheet_template.php; www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/cardbased_classification_evaluation.php
freelisting(an alternative to cardsorting): www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/beyond_cardsorting_freelisting_methods_to_explore_user_categorizations.php

The Counter keeps current stats on what screen resolutions, operating systems, and browsers people are using to explore the web. Look to the right for navigation-- poor site design, in my opinion.
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2003/November/res.php

Bobby is a utility for testing website accessiblity to disabled users.

http://www.cast.org/bobby

The W3C accessiblity guidelines are a little dry, but specific.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

Jakob Neilsen's site includes excellent advice and is a good example itself of how to write for the web.
http://www.useit.com

Usable Web is a little out-of-date but still contains one of the best collections of links on usability.
http://www.usableweb.com

Usability Professionals' Organization
http://www.upassoc.org

University of Maryland's Usability Resource List contains links to papers describing usability methodologies and tools.
http://www.otal.umd.edu/guse/testing.html

Usability Testing of World Wide Web Sites is a paper on website usability research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/ore/htm_papers/st960150.htm

Announcements

3/20
We are still scheduled to do contextual observations of kids doing homework on Thursday afternoon, 3/27, at 2:30 pm. Watch for an email cancellation if there is any problem.

Shannon, Jay, and Betsy will be performing their contextual interview with Jon Shorr on 3/19 at 11:30

Holly, Rahul, and Amit will be performing their first contextual interview with Nancy Kaplan and Carmen Wooden on 3/12 at 10 am.

On 3/13 we will attend the STC usability lecture at JH Applied Physics Lab.

I will let you know by email as soon as I have scheduled the visit to the library to talk to children. We will NOT be videotaping these interviews, so you'll need to take good notes.

The usability testing on the UBalt college sites will hopefully take place between April 7 and April 18. Each group will be in charge of scheduling their own tests, but try to keep your calendar as open as you can during that time.

overview • calendar • assignments • resources • class list