Posts

Showing posts from November 30, 2008

Usability Testing - few thoughts

Image
Usability testing is a technique used to evaluate a product by testing it on users Usability testing focuses on measuring a human-made product's capacity to meet its intended purpose . Examples of products that commonly benefit from usability testing are web sites or web applications, computer interfaces, documents, or devices. Usability testing measures the usability, or ease of use, of a specific object or set of objects, whereas general human-computer interaction studies attempt to formulate universal principles. If you develop web sites, you need to be doing usability testing. It is that simple . This tutorial will teach you how to conduct a simple usability test on your web site (using the hands-on task based method). Plan the Usability Test 1) Know the Goals of the Usability Test The primary point of usability testing is to provide feedback during the design/development process to ensure that the web site will actually be easy and effective to use and provide valuable inform...

User-centered design approach

A user-centered design process involves the participation of users from the very first stage of development, and continues to involve users at each step of the process. A user-centered design process involves the participation of users from the very first stage of development, and continues to involve users at each step of the process. The goal of user-centered design is to create a product that works for the potential users and is well-designed for that user group . The first step in this process is to identify the target audience and to meet with them. By conducting interviews, watching users complete tasks and listening to them talk about their work, you will find out: what the users need what their work environment is like what is important to them what tasks they do both frequently and infrequently how they accomplish these tasks now how do they think about their tasks (the mental model) By understanding the users and their tasks, you will easily devise scenarios to test your pro...

What is a Microformat?

Image
"Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards" The concept of a Microformat might be best seen as a subset of an existing technology focusing on solving a specific problem or an open source data format that can be used to solve a problem. It's hardly new - not in web terms. Microformats are a method of marking-up types of content to be easily lifted or shared with other websites or applications. For instance, the name and address of your company can have certain class names attributed to your HTML elements. These class-names can then be read by a web app, which will allow a site visitor to insert those details directly into your address book with the click of a link. Microformats are not that difficult to apply - in most cases it's just a slight modification of your HTML classes. Put in more plain English, it’s about marking up your (X)HTML with semantic and predefin...

The benefits of Web Standards to your visitors, your clients and you!

Benefits of Web Standards http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/ CSS Tips CSS Tips

21 advices ... guides

ONE. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully. TWO. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other. THREE. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want. FOUR. When you say, 'I love you,' mean it. FIVE. When you say, 'I'm sorry,' look the person in the eye. SIX. Be engaged at least six months before you get married. SEVEN. Believe in love at first sight. EIGHT. Never laugh at anyone's dreams. People who don't have dreams don't have much. NINE. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely. TEN.. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling. ELEVEN. Don't judge people by their relatives. TWELVE. Talk slowly but think quickly. THIRTEEN! . When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, 'Why do you want to know?' FOURTEEN. Remember that great love an...

Building Joomla! sites from scratch, and systematically customizing them to your needs

Image
Building Joomla! sites from scratch. A sitemap is critical to having a well organized site. You must make an effort to draft one before you start working in the administrator backend. Joomla generates a page the instant you click its link. This means that the pages viewed can be easily changed by changing the menu links rather than the content itself. Joomla offers two methods to organize articles. The first is to use uncategorized articles, which are suited for very small sites. For larger sites the second method of sections in categories needs to be used. Building Joomla! sites from scratch. A sitemap is critical to having a well organized site. You must make an effort to draft one before you start working in the administrator backend. Joomla generates a page the instant you click its link. This means that the pages viewed can be easily changed by changing the menu links rather than the content itself. Joomla offers two methods to organize articles. The first is to use uncategorized ...