Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (Voices That Matter)

Any shared resource (a “commons”) will inevitably be destroyed by overuse.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems.

the facilitator’s main job is to encourage them to think out loud as much as possible. The combination of watching what the participants do and hearing what they’re thinking while they do it is what enables the observers to see the site through someone else’s eyes and understand why some things that are obvious to them are confusing or frustrating

Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left. —KRUG’S THIRD LAW OF USABILITY

The point is that every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand. The distractions may be slight but they add up, especially if it’s something we do all the time like deciding what to click on.

One of the most crucial items in the persistent navigation is a button or link that takes me to the site’s Home page.

The one thing you can’t afford to lose in the shuffle—and the thing that most often gets lost—is conveying the big picture. Whenever someone hands me a Home page design to look at, there’s one thing I can almost always count on: They haven’t made it clear enough what the site is.

To conduct the test, you need a quiet space where you won’t be interrupted (usually either an office or a conference room) with a table or desk and two chairs. And you’ll need a computer with Internet access, a mouse, a keyboard, and a microphone. You’ll be using screen sharing software (like GoToMeeting or WebEx) to allow the team members, stakeho

I think every Web development team should spend one morning a month doing usability testing. In a morning, you can test three users, then debrief over lunch. That’s it. When you leave the debriefing, the team will have decided what you’re going to fix before the next round of testing, and you’ll be done with testing for the month.