Usable Usability: Simple Steps for Making Stuff Better

The A-to-Z guide to spotting and fixing usability problems Frustrated by pop-ups? Forms that make you start over if you miss a field? Nonsensical error messages? You're not alone! This book helps you simply get it right the first time (or fix what's broken). Boasting a full-color interior packed with design and layout examples, this book teaches you how to understand a user's needs, divulges techniques for exceeding a user's expectations, and provides a host of hard won advice for improving the overall quality of a user's experience. World-renowned UX guru Eric Reiss shares his knowledge from decades of experience making products useable for everyone...all in an engaging, easy-to-apply manner. Reveals proven tools that simply make products better, from the users' perspective Provides simple guidelines and checklists to help you evaluate and improve your own products Zeroes in on essential elements to consider when planning a product, such as its functionality and responsiveness, whether or not it is ergonomic, making it foolproof, and more Addresses considerations for product clarity, including its visibility, understandability, logicalness, consistency, and predictability Usable Usability walks you through numerous techniques that will help ensure happy customers and successful products!

Table of Contents:
Introduction xvii Part One 1 Chapter One Functional 3 The three keys to functionality 5 From click to conversion: making sure the buttons work 6 Browser wars, hardware headaches 7 Don’t sweat the home page. Fine-tune your forms 8 Four keys to creating functional forms 9 Required fields 9 Forms and business rules 10 Interdependent forms 11 Instructions and functionality 12 Navigation: Getting folks where they want to go 14 My crappy new TV 14 Understand your goals and keep them in focus 15 A true story about a fairy tale 15 Functionality can change over time 17 A complaint is a gift 18 The Donation That Couldn’t Be Made: A Tale from the Trenches 19 Chapter Two Responsive 25 The myth of two-way communication 26 Three traditional keys to responsiveness 26 A fourth view: “Responsive design” 27 “Wake up, you stupid machine!” 30 A closer look at transitional techniques 33 Transitional techniques and physical objects 35 Response mechanisms in the online environment 35 Response mechanisms in physical objects 37 OOPS ! I JUS T ORDERED THREE ROLLS -ROYCES : A TALE FROM THE TRENCHES 39 Chapter Three Ergonomic 43 Henry Dreyfuss: Introducing ergonomics to industrial design 44 Buttons: Why bigger sometimes is better 46 Milliseconds count 48 Bring on the scientists 49 “First word after the bullet” 50 Tabs and other keyboard shortcuts 53 Provide clearance 54 “Go to the back of the line” 55 Improve work organization 56 Eric and the IRS 56 The “silent usher” 58 FLOWERS THAT BLOOM ON THE SCREEN : A TALE FROM THE TRENCHES 60 Chapter Four Convenient 63 Giving inconvenience a positive spin 64 Eric’s advice for the lovelorn 66 Multimodal experiences 66 Switching routines 67 Why I hate calling my bank 68 Switching interfaces 69 Switching from on- to offline 70 Unfamiliar situations highlight convenience 71 Personas and other useful tools 73 Context is the kingdom 73 Make everything people need available 76 “Three clicks and you’re dead” 77 Buying Vacuum-Cleaner Bags Sucks: A Tale From the Trenches 79 Chapter Five Foolproof 85 How the RAF can help win your battle 86 People forget to do stuff. So help remind them 86 Alerts and other warnings 87 The “boy who cried wolf” syndrome 89 Forcing the issue 90 The dangers of personalization 91 The magic of redundancy 92 Write helpful error messages 93 Helping people make better decisions 94 Not everyone can spll 95 People don’t read instructions 96 Don’t make people memorize your messages 98 Sometimes you do have to state the obvious 100 People don’t remember things from one time to the next 100 Physical deterrents 101 Exploding Chicken Alfredo: A Tale From The Trenches 104 Part Two 109 Chapter Six Visible 111 Four ways things become invisible 114 The mysterious “fold” 115 People do scroll! 116 Why we can’t pinpoint the fold 116 When the fold is important 120 When the fold isn’t important 122 Creating scroll-friendly pages 123 Unfriendly scroll-friendly pages 123 Scrolling, menu length, and mobile phones 124 Don’t make important stuff look like an ad 124 USA TODAY .com and banner blindness 125 Blocking out the sum 127 Eric’s Enlightening Elevator Examination 129 Sherlock, Edward, Don, and Ch’i 130 The “Perks” of Business Travel: A Tale From The Trenches 132 Chapter Seven Understandable 137 What is “shared reference”? 138 A word about words 138 Eric’s “light bulb” test 139 Five keys to creating effective “shared references” 141 Creating a comfort zone 143 Don’t be afraid to tell your story 144 Photos and other visual aids 146 Icons and other troublemakers 148 “As big as a breadbox” 149 The sun never sets on the World Wide Web 150 Audio and video 152 For Whom The Ringtone Tolls: A Tale From the Trenches 153 Chapter Eight Logical. 157 Three basic types of logical reasoning 157 The magic word—“why” 158 Functionality and logic 158 Responsiveness and logic 159 Ergonomics and logic 159 Convenience and logic 160 Foolproofing and logic 161 Design dissonance 162 Use cases 164 Linear processes 166 Six Detours on the Road To Usable Navigation: A Tale from the Trenches 167 Chapter Nine Consistent 171 A caveat 172 Seduced by synonyms 172 Keeping things homogeneous 172 Retroductive inference revisited 175 Standardization promotes consistency 177 Don’t take consistency for granted 178 One button, one function 180 One icon, one function 182 One object, one behavior 182 Speed Limit Signs in Denmark—Putting Brains into Top Gear: A Tale from the Trenches 184 Chapter Ten Predictable 189 Six ways to enhance predictability 190 Knowing what to expect 191 Branding, customer satisfaction, and expectations 192 Helping set expectations 193 Instructions revisited—but never visited 194 Telling folks what you expect 195 Let folks know how many steps are involved 195 Let people know which process they are actually in 197 Put things where folks expect to find them 199 Warn of invisible conditions 200 A Short Introduction to McDonaldization: A Tale From The Trenches 202 Chapter Eleven Next steps 207 Guerilla-style usability 208 Formalized think-aloud tests 208 Making usability part of the business case 209 Invention or innovation? 211 Accidents can never be attributed to a single cause 212 Don’t draw a conclusion based on an isolated incident 213 Bibliography 217 Index 223

About the Author :
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Eric Reiss has been meddling with service- and product-design projects for longer than he cares to remember. Today, he is CEO of The FatDUX Group, an international user-experience design company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. Eric has also lectured on design principles at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, is a former Professor of Usability and Design at the IE Business School in Madrid, and serves on the advisory boards of several universities and institutes in both Europe and the United States. His Web Dogma, a design philosophy that transcends both fashion and technology, has been adopted by thousands of developers and companies around the world. You can follow Eric Reiss on Twitter: @elreiss