There are a few posts on usability but none of them was useful to me. I need a quantitative measure of usability of some part of an application. I need to estimate it in hard numbers to be able to compare it with future versions (for e.g. reporting purposes). The simplest way is to count clicks and keystrokes, but this seems too simple...
A while ago I created a drag-over check box list which allows you to check many check boxes in a single gesture. Do you think it is viable and usable on the web where people might not know how to use it. The default behaviour still works for the individual check boxes. A demo of it can be found here: http://jonathanparker.com.au/Demos/...
I'm designing some dialog boxes, and I'm having a hard time to fit everything. (and it has to fit on a single dialog box by design, so please don't tell me I should make two dialogs instead of one:)) I'm wondering what's the max size a dialog can have before being annoying for the end user. Of course it should't be bigger than his resol...
On a wiki-style website, what can I do to prevent or mitigate write-write conflicts while still allowing the site to run quickly and keeping the site easy to use? The problem I foresee is this: User A begins editing a file User B begins editing the file User A finishes editing the file User B finishes editing the file, accidentally ov...
We are developing a web application with a hetereogenous base of users. Additionally, we must provide a visually appealing experience. So, I would like to know if there is any way to get estimates of user bandwidth in such manner, that we can decide if we serve a given version, or another one. Or should I aim for the lowest denominator ...
Our customer is using our software (Java Swing application started using Webstart) besides other software like MS Office, to do his job. From time to time there are important events he has to deal with in our software without much delay. The customer wants to have a prominent notification then. Now he might be using Excel at the moment, ...
Many animation effects are simply gratuitous eye candy -- however, there are situations where animations effectively communicate to the user what's going on. What are some of your favorite uses for animations, and what specific animation type would you use? E.g.: Animate items downwards when a new item is inserted into a list ...
Gradients and patterns lend a certain visual "depth" to an application, but apart from that, do they yield any discernible usability improvements? ...
The Back and Forward buttons in a browser or browser-like application navigate temporally (sequence in which user navigated pages), which may not necessarily reflect the logical order of the pages. Are there any studies that looked at how this impacts the user's mental model? Any thoughts on how to improve usability and reduce confusion?...
What are some generally accepted practices for navigating between irregularly placed and sized elements in a canvas (such as controls on a form) using the arrow keys? For example, if the currently focused element is a tall element (A) whose height encompasses three shorter elements to the right of it (B, C and D): ####### ####### # ...
What is the best way to communicate visually that an element has been added to or removed from a list of items? (I'm going for usability, not gratuitous eye candy) Slide the other items up or down to show the new item or hide the deleted item Fade items in or out, but do not animate the other items A combination of #1 and #2 No animat...
I like to display more info on certain keywords in a web page. I don't want to send the visitor to another page and I prefer to show the extra info on top of the current page. The keywords are in an html list. It's basically a list of features and I want to offer more info about the features. So I have two ideas based on having 'More In...
I'm building a line-of-business application in Silverlight and need to get the user to edit two .NET TimeSpan values. One is a time of day (relative to midnight) and the other is a duration. Currently I'm using two TextBoxes, formatted as hh:mm. This is pretty straightforward, but it could definitely be improved. I've observed people usi...
I need suggestions about a setup CD layout for non technical users. My software is deployed on a CD with a setup.exe bootstrapper and a MSI file. There are also several dependency files used by the installer. The CD root looks something like this: myapp.msi setup.exe sqlexpr32.exe dotnetfx.exe myapp.ico ... It is not rocket science f...
I am designing a web application that deals with lots of data. I find it difficult to present this data in a usable, intuitive way. The data has to be sortable/searchable, and the relationships between the data should be obvious (records can have "child items"). Are there any books that specifically deal with this? I am not looking for ...
Anyone know of not-perfect-but-usable, affordable eye tracking software that works with run-of-the-mill webcams, preferably iSight? ...
Here are some examples of what I mean: google.com - focus is set on the "search" box gmail.google.com - focus is set on the "user name" field (actually, most web email clients do this). stackoverflow, ask a question - focus is set on the "title" box. Sometimes, this is a convenient feature - e.g., on Google. From a usability standpoi...
Just ran across a "for" parameter in an HTML label tag: <LABEL for="required-firstname">First Name</label> <small>*</small> <input name="required-firstname" type="text" tabindex="2" id="required-firstname" size="24" maxlength="40"> I'm converting this form to a PHP processed script, can I get rid of the for= pa...
I'm working in a small development group. We are building and improving our product. Half a year ago we couldn't think about higher characteristics, such as usability, because we had so many problems with our product. Many bugs, high technical debt, low performance and other problems kept us from being able to focus on usability. With ...
Say I have some state which the user can toggle, for example [ON] | [OFF] . Typically, I use ONE switch (BUTTON) and when the thing is ON, the user sees: LIGHT IS [ON] When it is OFF they see LIGHT IS [OFF] My question is: is it obvious (sensible) that one should click [ON] to turn the light [OFF]? How do you do it? Any thoughts ...