xBlog: The visual thinking weblog » Usability

Touch Gesture Reference Guide

Bill — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:34:00 +0000

The Touch Gesture Reference Guide is a unique set of resources for software designers and developers working on touch-based user interfaces.

The guide contains: 1) an overview of the core gestures used for most touch commands 2) how to utilize these gestures to support major user actions 3) visual representations of each gesture to use in design documentation and deliverables 4) an outline of how popular software platforms support core touch gestures.

Feedback Army [Website Feedback Service]

Bill — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:46:00 +0000

Uses Mechanical Turk: “Simple, cheap usability testing for your website. Start a usability test for your web project in two minutes. Submit questions about your site and receive up to ten responses from our reviewers. The cost is $7.” (Thanks Waxy!)

The Design State

Bill — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:07:00 +0000

“Design State is a weblog about government web design and its attendant subtopics: accessibility, usability, and web standards. In addition to these nuts and bolts, Design State will also focus on higher level issues and project challenges that affect government and public-sector web design.”

Third Annual World Usability Day: Sat 10 Nov 2007

Bill — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:49:37 +0000

“Events at the St. Louis Science Center will focus on usability in healthcare. The advances of technology may have ushered in a new era of convenience, but sometimes along with it comes a new era of frustration. From alarm clocks to zippers, things are becoming more sophisticated but also harder to use for the average person.

To address the balance between ‘new and improved’ and ‘easy to operate,’ a relatively new group of professionals aims to show the St. Louis community how life can become a bit easier on Nov. 10 at the Saint Louis Science Center. Making life a little easier is the goal of the local celebration of the third annual World Usability Day, an initiative that is focused on the benefits of usability engineering and user-centered design. Created by the Usability Professionals’ Association, World Usability Day includes special events across the globe — including here in St. Louis.

With healthcare products as this year’s theme, the celebration and demonstrations at the Science Center will focus on how the average person can better deal with the myriad of complications that come with, navigating health insurance claims, nutrition, prescriptions and supplements, and other products and processes associated with healthcare.”

It all happens Saturday, November 10 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the St. Louis Science Center, 5050 Oakland Ave. St. Louis, MO 63110.

SWFAddress: Deep linking for Flash

Bill — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:55:40 +0000

“SWFAddress is a small script that sits on top of SWFObject and provides deep linking for Flash websites and applications. In other words it enables the Back, Forward and Reload buttons of the browser and creates unique URLs with page titles that can be sent over email or IM. SWFAddress uses the ExternalInterface functionality introduced in Flash Player 8 and comes with a technique that enables search engine indexing for deep Flash links.” (Thanks jonnymac!)

Attach icons to anything with CSS

Bill — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:01:39 +0000

“Thanks to CSS selectors it’s possible to attach icons to anything you want just by adding an attribute of your choosing to your HTML. Want a popup icon? try how about a magnifier? . You can even add them automatically for file types. Here’s how.”

Creating User Friendly 404 Pages

Bill — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:19:53 +0000

“We understand what 404 means: Page Not Found. But the average internet user has no idea what 404 means or what to do about it. To them, it’s yet another unintelligible error message from the computer. Most 404 pages are unvarnished geek-speak. Consider the default 404 page under IIS…”

Transitioning from User Experience to Product Management: Part 1

Bill — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:15:58 +0000

“Increasingly, many UX professionals feel that they have the experience and insight to wield more authority and make a larger impact on the products they help to build. Product management is garnering more interest from interaction designers (IxDs), information architects (IAs), and UX designers looking to increase their influence and ensure user-centered product development. Becoming a product manager is a logical move for many UX practitioners, as it requires many of the same skills, traits, and competencies involved in crafting a user experience.”

dgray_xplane’s photos / Tags / stlux

Bill — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 14:43:40 +0000

A Flickr set of XPLANE founder Dave Gray’s sketches tagged with “stlux” — visual notes from the 2006 St Louis User Experience conference.

The ultimate webdesign usability checklist

Bill — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:58:36 +0000

“I noticed that I, and fellow webdesigners, keep making the same usability mistakes over and over. This checklist with 88 questions is a must read for every webdesigner who cares about usability.”