I did some searches with ACM Portal for journal and magazine articles that mention usability. The results in table below. Years Articles Mentioning Usability Total Articles % of Articles Mention Usability 1991-1995 62 2273 2.7% 1996-2000 377 5949 6.3% 2001-2005 861 8909 9,7% 2006-2010 970 10076 9,6% I also did a rudimentary check on how [...]
Category Archives: usability
Usability Research on the Rise: Small Piece of Original Research
Posted by illotus on April 13, 2011
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Steve Krug’s new book on usability testing
Posted by illotus on January 26, 2010
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Great guide to low-cost usability testing. 168 pages, so reading it slowly takes 2 hours and those hours just fly by. Generally books on the practical part of testing are kinda boring, but this one is really easy to read.
Usability Implications of Requiring Parameters in Objects’ Constructors
Posted by illotus on January 14, 2010
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Interesting finding from a research article by Jeffrey Stylos and Steven Clarke A comparative study was performed to assess how professional programmers use APIs with required parameters in objects’ constructors as opposed to parameterless “default” constructors. It was hypothesized that required parameters would create more usable and selfdocumenting APIs by guiding programmers toward the correct [...]
User experience
Posted by illotus on January 7, 2010
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I’ve been reading Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox columns since late 90s and developed kind of usability nazi attitude. Not the worst characteristic to have as users rarely have enough advocates. However I’ve come to realize that there is a false dichotomy between usability and graphic design as there is only one user experience. Both need to [...]