Does your Web site convey your message effectively? Are your customers finding what they need easily? Determining these factors is a difficult task that has challenged usability professionals since the first Web page was posted. Company Web sites aren't optional in today's highly competitive business environment and ensuring that your investment on the Web is well-spent, is a challenge facing all levels of Web professionals. With the hands-on guidance and examples provided in this book, readers will find practical tools to make certain that their site is as effective and user-friendly as possible. It shows how to create sites that are free of navigation "dead ends", difficult to use interfaces, and other barriers to usability. All of the principles of User Centered Design (UCD) are covered along with critical Human Factors, and guidelines for implementing a test plan. Examples of usability issues and how they are dealt with are covered through a case study focused on fixing an existing site. As new techniques and tools are introduced, the team of usability specialists detail how they implement these new tools as they work through the evaluation, testing, and transformation stages. The CD-Rom (Windows/Mac) includes sample Web site designs with an analysis of good and bad features, and free usability testing software.
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Amazon Review
Web Site Usability Handbook is for individuals who evaluate and improve the usability of Web sites. It does not, as the title implies, specifically show Web developers how to make their sites more usable.
The book explores the growing field of Web usability with equal emphasis on theory and practicality, focusing primarily on accurately measuring usability and applying it to formal and informal testing. The concept of a usability toolbox--a collection of tools and techniques--is presented, along with sound reasoning for the use of each component. The tools vary from index card sorting to heuristic evaluation to focus groups. There is also some fascinating material about the human factors of usability, such as the mechanics of vision and the idiosyncrasies of human memory.
A chapter devoted to design guidelines includes some concrete suggestions such as "Don't overuse emphasis" and "make printer-friendly pages." This section contains no revolutionary ideas, but it is a helpful list of pointers worth revisiting from time to time. More elemental are the 10 usability heuristics--originally developed by usability guru Jakob Nielsen--presented in the next chapter. These high-level concepts demand careful consideration but can produce impressive results.
Web Site Usability Handbook presents the framework for a usability lab complete with video observation, and shows how to conduct objective usability testing. Many organisations skip the potentially critical development step of usability analysis. If yours wants to be more forward thinking in Web strategy, this is a good guide for getting started in usability. --Stephen W Plain, Amazon.com
Topics covered:
- User-centred design
- Usability tools
- Human factors psychology
- Sensation and perception
- Design guidelines
- Heuristic evaluation
- Usability lab set-up
- Usability testing
- Web accessibility
- Usability statistic analysis
About the Author
Mark Pearrow (Dedham, MA) is a sponsored research staff member at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Cambridge, MA. His current research is in the area of Technology, Psychology, and Society. He is also the author of the first edition of the Web Site Usability Handbook and The Wireless Web Usability Handbook (Charles River Media).
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Imagine that you turn up to work one day and your boss tells you that you're next project is to test the company web site for usability. You are relatively new to web technologies, and you have no experience of any sort of usability testing. This book definitely is for you!
On the other hand, if you are an experienced web designer, or you have experience of usability testing, you will find little, if anything, to interest you in this book. It is not, as both the title and price implies, a handbook. That is to say it, is not a substantial or authoritative reference volume. It treats its topics lightly, without getting into any technical details, although it covers all the key areas. The author is to be commended for mentioning "Accessibility" even if the treatment is trivial.
The book provides some useful common-sense guidelines and checklists, and would certainly get you started on a usability project. Experienced website designers would be better advised to read Jacob Nielsen`s "Designing Web Usability". Mark Pearrow would be better advised to change the title of his book; "Getting started with Web Site Usability" should do it!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I disagree with the previous review, this book actually gets down to the nitty gritty of usability testing rather than; here's what you shouldn't do and now use my consultancy to make your site usable. Web Site Usability Handbook provides an insight into how to set up a usability test project enabling you to specifically focus on the issues affecting your site.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars
9 reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Needed Resource
1 Aug 2000
By Scott Standridge
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Many websites you surf into these days seem less than user-unfriendly--they seem openly user-hostile. If more web site designers made themselves more knowledgeable about usability in their design, everyone would benefit.
This book is a great introduction to web site usability. I've been interested in learning more about this subject but haven't been able to find a book (other than Jakob Nielsen's recent work) that puts all the pieces together. This book does that. The parts I found most useful were the chapter on "usability tools" and the chapters on heuristic evaluation and classical usability testing. The chapters on statistics and research design were a little on the elementary side for anyone with research or statistical background, but I can see how someone new to the topic could benefit.
The author has rather a strange sense of humor, but this keeps the material interesting--and let's face it, without a sense of humor this is pretty dry stuff. It's refreshing to read someone willing to crack a smile or give the reader a wink in such a usually arid subject. I highly recommend Pearrow's book to both novice and intermediate web site designers.
32 of 34 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Practical, Useful and Usable Book
31 Aug 2000
By George M. Donahue
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Though it's probably most helpful for newcomers to usability (I refuse to say "user experience"), this little gem of a handbook may also be quite helpful to more experienced u-pros, in that it provides a very approachable, clear and cogent discussion of usability, common usability techniques, how and when to apply them, etc., that could be shared with non-usability colleagues (or quoted from) to educate them about usability. It's greatest strength is its practicality. I wish I'd had this book four years ago. Although I don't agree with every point Pearrow makes, my hat's off to him for the contribution he's made to the field. If you only recommend one usability book this year, this is the one.
29 of 35 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
More then I expected
2 Sep 2000
By A Customer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I had ordered this book a few months before I took my new job. My second day at work I was told that I was in charge of organizing the Heuristic Evaluation for a new product being developed. Since I had never even heard of a Heuristic Evaluation I was beginning to stress. I came home that very same night to find that my new book had been delivered. As I was flipping the pages I stumbled upon the chapter on performing Heuristic Evaluation. This was a godsend. The book saved me a lot of worry and stress. Since then I have refereed to almost every chapter in the book to help me with many different projects. If you are looking for something that is easy to read and explains the principles usability and usability testing then I highly recommend this book.
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4.6 out of 5 stars
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