3rd
July
2000
“A formal test plan is a document that provides and records important information about a test project, for example: project and quality assumptions, project background information, resources, schedule & timeline, entry and exit criteria, test milestones, tests to be performed, use cases and/or test cases. For a range of reasons — both good and bad — many software and web development projects don’t budget enough time for complete and comprehensive testing. A quality test team must be able to test a product or system quickly and constructively in order to provide some value to the project. This essay describes how to test a web site or application in the absence of a detailed test plan and facing short or unreasonable deadlines.”
posted in Usability | Permalink |
3rd
July
2000
“Initial work on the new design was based on a parallel design exercise where six very different Web site concepts were developed and tested with representative users. The most creative of these concepts was probably the ‘crystal bowl’ home page which is shown here, but many of the other designs were also very interesting. The usability study showed that users were not interested in far-out designs. Instead, they preferred the more straightforward of the designs, including one with plain buttons and small feature story illustrations that eventually developed into the current home page.” Note: It would help if the far-out designs were also intelligent, and not simply ‘far-out’ or ‘interesting.’ And I’ll arm wrestle anybody who actually thinks the ‘crystal bowl’ concept is ‘creative’ when it’s really just a plain stupid and quasi-metaphorical nav that is wholly unsuitable for a web site like Sun’s. Thank you. Have a nice day.
posted in Usability | Permalink |
3rd
July
2000
“From ‘Web Site Usability: A Designer’s Guide.’ In this excerpt, Spool presents his findings from usability tests with groups of users on a set of nine popular websites. Some of the results may surprise the seasoned web designer.’ A year ago, we started wondering what made a Web site usable. We had heard the opinions of experienced designers about what they felt it took to create a good site. We looked at books and magazines that talked about how to make a ‘cool’ site. But no matter where we looked, we couldn’t find any data — based on real user experience — about what it takes to make a usable site. This report is our attempt to start providing that data to web site designers. What Is ‘Usability’ on the Web?”
posted in Usability | Permalink |
3rd
July
2000
From the “Learning for the Global Community: Seventh Annual Hypermedia ‘95 Conference.” This page leads us to Final Report: Design-Research for the Indiana University Bloomington World Wide Web, another old study that I haven’t read yet.
posted in Usability | Permalink |
