Usabilityweb

n this article, we contrast the "sales cycle" and related models with the "experience cycle" model. The sales cycle model is a traditional tool in business. The sales cycle frames the producer-customer relationship from the producer's point of view and aims to funnel potential customers to a transaction. The experience cycle is a new tool, synthesizing and giving form to a broader, more holistic approach being taken by growing numbers of designers, brand experts, and marketers. The experience cycle frames the producer-customer relationship from the customer's point of view and aims to move well beyond a single transaction to establish a relationship between producer and customer and foster an on-going conversation.

Even in a recession when budgets are tight, people are attracted to positive emotional experiences. They will scrimp on things of less emotional value to be able to splurge on experience that up lift their spirits. They get an emotional ROI and this is remembered.

The book never emerged from the bag. I was too busy with my internet-connected mobile phone: sending messages to friends; reading articles after clicking on links they'd sent; even looking at a couple of pages of a Sherlock Holmes story which I have stored in an application on the phone. Which brings us to the oft-asked question - is the internet killing the book?

When we developed our web usability benchmarking tool - a tool to measure web site usability and directly compare the usability of one web site with another - we knew that collecting the data was only half the battle. We knew that companies don't act on usability data unless senior management are swayed by the findings. So we set to work devising a way to present the data in a format to help them managers engage with the data.

The vast majority of iterations are never seen by anyone outside the team. So, it looks to the outside world that, when a great product comes out, that the team just sat down, thought it through, and built it, without any trial or errors. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

1. Build web products that meet audience needs\n2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well\n3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves\n4. Fall forward, fast\n5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas\n6. The web is a conversation\n7. Any website is only as good as its worst page\n8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever\n9. Remember your granny won't ever use "Second Life"\n10. Maximise routes to content\n11. Consistent design and navigation needn't mean one-size-fits-all\n12. Accessibility is not an optional extra\n13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes\n14. Link to discussions on the web, don't host them\n15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent

an internal training document that teaches Best Buy blue shirts how to stereotype customers. While Best Buy's use of personas has been known for several years, our exclusively obtained document contains several brand-new Best Buy personas, including "Maria Middle America" and "Empty Nesters" Helen and Charlie.

The woman was a "Jill," code name for a soccer-mom type who is the main shopper for the family but usually avoids electronics stores. She is well-educated and usually very confident, but she is intimidated by the products at Best Buy and the store clerks who spout words like gigabytes and megapixels.

Brad Anderson, chief executive officer of Best Buy Co., is embracing a heretical notion for a retailer. He wants to separate the "angels" among his 1.5 million daily customers from the "devils."

Take a look at the tabs from the new Firefox 3 Beta. Not only are the tabs smaller in size than in previous versions (and thus creating a smaller target), they have foolishly added borders around them (which aren't clickable), making the targets smaller still and far more difficult to hit.

"[With eyetracking] we can see that a user may navigate the page of an interface that houses the info she wants," she said, "but if the text is poorly presented, or the navigation is cluttered, or there are too many superfluous images so she cannot easily find what she needs. This is a lost opportunity.

. Our User Experience Research team has found that people evaluate the search results page so quickly that they make most of their decisions unconsciously. To help us get some insight into this split-second decision-making process, we use eye-tracking equipment in our usability labs. This lets us see how our study participants scan the search results page, and is the next best thing to actually being able to read their minds.

For those that required attention to detail--such as proofreading a list of addresses--participants were slightly more accurate when the background was red, compared to blue or white. Blue, on the other hand, stimulated creativity.

combine this research with this research http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090126112315.htm. Do rational people have more preference for color red and experiential for blue.

Since some people tend to think more rationally and others tend to think more intuitively, different people will have greater success and happiness with different activities. However, everyone is capable of thinking both ways, and sometimes just nudging yourself to think in a different direction can help you be more successful and feel more satisfied

Human-factors engineers -- whose training includes psychology -- specialize in testing products for usability, for example checking whether a copying machine's legs get in the way, or measuring how much force it takes to open a coffee canister. The engineers can then suggest design changes, which benefit all users but especially those with disabilities or conditions such as arthritis.

The definition of usability is sometimes reduced to "easy to use," but this over-simplifies the problem and provides little guidance for the user interface designer. A more precise definition can be used to understand user requirements, formulate usability goals and decide on the best techniques for usability evaluations. An understanding of the five characteristics of usability - effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, easy to learn - helps guide the user-centered design tasks to the goal of usable products.