Shaping Web Usability: Interaction Design in Context [Paperback]

It's no longer enough to make your site easy to learn and use: Web designers need to help their users feel comfortable with every aspect of their site interactions: physical, mental, and emotional. Drawing upon advanced research in psychology and human-computer interfaces -- as well as extensive practical Web design experience -- Albert N. Badre shows precisely how to accomplish this. Badre goes beyond "mere usability," introducing a complete, Web-specialized framework that lets you "design for context," taking into account every aspect of the Web environment. Shaping Web Usability begins by reviewing essential human-computer interaction principles for the Web; then outlines a usability strategy that takes multiple contexts into account: extrinsic design, users, genre, site, and page. Badre offers deep insight into Web users themselves: their skill levels, personalities, and demographics; and presents a full chapter on the unique needs of older Web users. Along the way, he addresses the key issues that make Web usability so challenging, including security and privacy, platform independence, dynamic content, compatibility, and navigation. You'll learn how to ensure that aesthetics and usability complement each other; how to extend usability to handheld devices; and how to evaluate Web usability most effectively. For all Web designers, developers, usability specialists, marketers, and others concerned with the Web user experience.

--James D. Foley, coauthor of Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice

All successful computer applications have one thing in common: They are designed with the user in mind. Author Al Badre has for years contributed to the ideas and methods needed to make any computer application fully usable. In Shaping Web Usability, he adapts and applies this firmly rooted knowledge and practice specifically to the Web.

Badre recognizes that Web sites comprise a unique application, where designers face a host of complex issues, including dynamic content, a broad and diverse audience, multiple entry points, intolerance of steep learning curves, and one-click abandonment. And with the arrival of handheld devices, Web designers confront additional difficult issues. Offering a structured approach to Web usability, Shaping Web Usability describes several contexts in which each site must be viewed, from the genre to which it belongs to the individual page. The book then provides a concrete methodology for designing a site effectively for the convenience, practicality, and pleasure of its users.

Inside, Web designers will find useful information on such topics as:

• Links, buttons, site maps, and indexes for smooth site navigation
• Keywords and site search engines
• Effective design of home, content, and transaction pages
• Achieving a balance between Web usability and impressive graphics
• Retrofitting Web pages for small-screen and mobile devices
• Addressing users' information-processing limits
• Designing Web sites for older adults
• Addressing the international cultural context of the Web
• Specific guidelines to support design excellence
• Using an iterative design process with continuous testing to
• maximize Web usability
• Constructing storyboards and interactive prototypes
• Conducting task analysis to discover the sequence of events visitors use to reach their goals

Numerous real-world examples illustrate the book's concepts, techniques, and guidelines. This one book puts decades of knowledge and experience into the hands of every Web designer.