Design Practice

Design Practice

Heuristics for Modern Web Application Development

Heuristic evaluation is a technique that involves analysing the usability of a website against a set of general usability precepts. One or more "experts" will analyse the target site, often following a series of pre-defined scenarios. Whenever they encounter an issue that breaks one of the precepts or "heuristics", they will note the issue and sometimes the severity. Heuristic evaluation is usually done either to augment usability testing, or where usability testing is impractical or cost prohibitive. Heuristic evaluation is considered slightly more objective than a simple "expert review" as the results are based upon generally agreed guidelines rather than personal opinion. There are a number of different usability heuristics around, but the most popular ones on the web are Jakob Nielsen's "10 usability heuristics":http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini's "basic principles for interface design":http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html As part of my consultancy work at Clearleft I run a lot of expert reviews and heuristic evaluations. While planning a recent evaluation, I started to feel that the existing heuristics didn't accurately describe the requirements of a modern web application. In particular I felt that Mr Nielsens heuristics were somewhat convoluted, contained a lot of overlap and varied widely in terms of scope and specificity. Since Mr Nielsen first created his heuristics back in 1990, the web has changed on a lot. Many of the underlying principals remain the same, but their relative weight has shifted. So using these heuristics as a starting point, I set out to create a set of web application heuristics that better reflected the current landscape. Usability heuristics are by their nature subjective, so I don't claim what follows is a definitive list. However I have tried hard to cover as many common usability issues as possible. There is still a lot of overlap, but I think this is because one problem can the result of multiple causes. Anyway, this is just a first draft so I'm really keen to hear your opinions.

Design Practice

User Error is Our Problem, Not Theirs!

I witnessed something happen on a web developer mailing list the other day which I'm not proud of, but which is all too common in our industry. A group of experienced users rounded on a group of less experienced users for making a simple error, and then proceeded to put them down in public for their "stupidity and laziness" in not learning the system.

Design Practice

The Power of Info-graphics

There has been an "interesting story":http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6231137.stm circulating in the press today about food labelling. The government are trying to encourage food manufacturers to label food in such a way that shoppers can clearly tell which of a number of similar products are healthiest just by glancing at them. The food standards agency realised that the current labelling system—while very good by international standards—is still quite complicated. If you want choose between two products for health reasons, you need to spend a considerable amount to time looking at the two labels, and even then it is difficult to tell which is better unless you know exactly how much salt, fat or sugar you are supposed to eat each day

Design Practice

TheTrainLine Usability Problems

About 6 months ago I was running a workshop in the north of England and wanted to buy a return train ticket. I tried to book tickets using thetrainline.com but it was such a nightmare I swore never to use them again. Sadly I didn't learn from my mistakes and 6 months later I'm back at their site desperate to part with my money and being thwarted at every turn.

Design Practice

Accessibility Interview

I was recently interviewed for an article on accessibility in this month’s ".Net magazine":http://www.netmag.co.uk/. Here is what I had to say: 1: Why are so many sites still inaccessible? There is still a large amount of ambivalence regarding web accessibility, from both developers and clients. Many clients are either unaware that the disability discrimination act covers them, or simply don’t care. However, it is not really the clients fault. It is the responsibility of the web development profession to educate clients about their legal responsibilities and build accessibility into their projects, whether specified or not. Unfortunately, due to the increased commoditization of web design, budgets continue to fall and accessibility is often one of the first areas to be affected.

Design Practice

What's in a Name

Most mature industries have pretty fixed job titles and roles. Take the construction industry for instance. You've got Architects, Engineers and Draftsmen. You've got Electricians and Carpenters, Bricklayers and Plumbers, Foremen and Site Inspectors. Each one has a defined role and if you met one down the pub, you'd have a pretty good idea what their job entailed. The movie industry is the same. Every film will have a Director and a Cinematographer. There will be Producers, Actors, Special Effects people and Stuntmen. Each person knows roughly what the other does and how all the roles fit together to produce a great – or not so great – movie.