Puzzles of Thirst: A man dies of thirst in his own home. How's this possible? And can UX help?
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The Parable of the Corks and Rubber Stoppers
Match between system and the real world The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
-- Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
Recently I found myself searching for a new rubber stopper for a piggy bank. I needed a short and wide rubber stopper or cork. The hole in the piggy bank has to be big enough to get the coins out of the bank yet the stopper must be short enough to allow room for many coins to fit in the small bank.
Not knowing where to find an item with this shape I started by searching the websites of some big name hardware stores. My hope was to visually scan pictures of items until I saw what I wanted and then drive to that store to buy it.
Read MoreHeuristic Evaluation
One of the wonderful resources shared in Klemmer's HCI course are the articles by Nielsen Norman Group. Specifically, here are three we used to help us evaluate assignments during class. How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation discusses how to use a small set of people to examine an interface for usability issues with a list of criteria (heuristics) as an evaluation tool.
10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design presents some of the most general principles of interaction design. This list can be a good starting point for what to look for when evaluating an interface.
Severity Ratings for Usability Problems provides a way to prioritize the issues found with an interface.
Next up I'll be using these as guidelines as I search the web to find sites with usability issues.