Category Archives: Usability

Usability is the science and art of creating a better experience for the users of software. That experience is driven by the choices made during software development. These articles focus on the relevance and applicability of usabilty to all facets of software product success.

User Centered Design and Bridging The Canyon of Pain

By Scott Sehlhorst | February 22nd, 2007

There is such a thing as too much choice. For new users, too much choice (or control) is too much. For experienced users, too little choice is a problem. Ease of use usually comes from reduced control – but users don’t stay “new” for long. There’s a “canyon of pain” to quote Kathy Sierra in that transition from “new” to “experienced.” We call them “competent” users and we have to help them cross the canyon of pain.

Posted in Product Management, Software development, UX, Usability | Tagged creating passionate users, kathy sierra, managing data, user centered design | 4 Comments

Usability Sells Software – Word of Mouth Marketing

By Scott Sehlhorst | January 10th, 2007

There are three main models for selling software. You can hire a direct sales force. You can spend a lot on marketing and advertising. You can let your users sell the software for you, a technique commonly known as viral marketing. There’s a catch with viral marketing – users have to like your software.

Posted in Marketing, Usability | Tagged featuritis, idea virus, ideavirus, malcolm gladwell, managing data, seth godin, sneezer, software sales, suck threshold, tipping point, Usability, usability sells software, viral marketing, word of mouth, word of mouth marketing | 2 Comments

Bad Usability Calendar From Netlife Research

By Scott Sehlhorst | November 8th, 2006

What a great way to demonstrate 12 key usability concepts – creating a calendar where each concept is demonstrated. You’ve heard the saying – “If you can’t be a good example, be a horrible warning.” Here is that saying manifested in calendar form.

Posted in UX, Usability | Tagged bad usability, bad usability calendar, managing data, netlife, netlife calendar, netlife research, Usability, usability calandar, usability calendar, usability calender | 5 Comments

Goal Driven Upgrades

By Scott Sehlhorst | October 11th, 2006

Kathy Sierra writes (another) great article at Creating Passionate Users. This time, she talks about why users don’t upgrade and presents ways to get users to install the latest version. We focus in this article on one way in particular – using goal-driven documentation to encourage upgrading.

Flesh Out Those Wireframes

By Scott Sehlhorst | September 22nd, 2006

Stephen Turbek, at Boxes and Arrows, tells us how to get better results from our wireframes. Wireframe prototyping can provide feedback early in the design cycle, reducing costs and improving the quality of the final software. By putting a little flesh on the bone, we can get even better results.

Posted in Design, Requirements gathering, UX, Usability | Tagged content and layout, information architecture, layout and content, managing data, Usability, UX, wireframes | Leave a comment

Office 2007 UX Victory

By Scott Sehlhorst | April 7th, 2006

Microsoft Office 2007 has a completely new user interaction paradigm.

The old interfaces for Microsoft Office 2003 (and earlier) organized the menu structures around features or capabilities. Each grouping represented tasks that appeared to be related in functionality. This, unfortunately, doesn’t help the user very much. The new interface is very task based, and organizes capabilities based upon the task the user is currently performing. What the Office team has done is innovate. And the innovations differentiate them from every other business application I’ve ever seen.

Posted in Interaction design, UX, Usability | Tagged differentiated innovation, innovation, managing data, office 2007, user experience, user interaction | 2 Comments

Foundation Series: User Experience Disciplines

By Scott Sehlhorst | March 3rd, 2006

UX, pronounced you-ex, is the shorthand for user-experience. It represents the science and art of tailoring the experience that users have with a product – in our case, software. UX is a relatively new term, rapidly overtaking HCI (human-computer interface) and CHI (computer-human interface) as the acronym du jour. There are several disciplines within this field, we’ll introduce each of them.

Posted in Foundation series, UX, Usability | Tagged Foundation series, human factors engineering, ia, information architecture, Interaction design, Interface Design, managing data, Usability, usability specialist, user experience, ux | Leave a comment

Death by a thousand cuts: Usability problems add up

By Scott Sehlhorst | January 8th, 2006

topsyWidgetPreload({ “url”: “http%3A%2F%2Ftynerblain.com%2Fblog%2F2006%2F01%2F08%2Fdeath-by-a-thousand-cuts-usability-problems-add-up%2F”, “style”: “big”, “title”: “Death by a thousand cuts: Usability problems add up” }); In Those “Minor” Usability Annoyances, Daniel Read at developer.* writes in on a topic that resonates with me. Daniel describes working on a critical application with multi-year, continuous development and a couple hundred internal users. I’m currently helping a [...]

Posted in Software development, UX, Usability | Tagged managing data | 1 Comment

Top five usability blunders (and fixes)

By Scott Sehlhorst | January 7th, 2006

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Posted in Design, Lists, Software development, UX, Usability | Tagged blunders, Design, expert user, Lists, managing data, novice user, Software Reviews, tips, tyner blain, tynerblain, Usability, user, users, UX | 1 Comment

Getting Past The ’Suck Threshold’

By Scott Sehlhorst | December 14th, 2005

topsyWidgetPreload({ “url”: “http%3A%2F%2Ftynerblain.com%2Fblog%2F2005%2F12%2F14%2Fgetting-past-the-suck-threshold%2F”, “style”: “big”, “title”: “Getting Past The ’Suck Threshold’” }); Kathy Sierra writes a great post in her blog, Creating Passionate Users, that talks about the requirement to make things interesting. The driving objective is to accelerate the user adoption curve – which Kathy calls the Kick Ass Curve. Any user is initially [...]

Posted in UX, Usability | Tagged kathy sierra, kick ass curve, managing data, software design, suck threshold, Usability, users | 4 Comments