15 ways in which the usability of free software can be improved. The easiest way of getting volunteers to contribute to a program is to make it open source. And while thousands of people are now employed in developing Free Software, most of its developers are volunteers. So it's in Free Software that we see volunteer software's usability problems most often. Also read John Gruber's thoughts on making improvements... ... Read full entry

Friday 1 August is Usability Challenge 2008 day. Because the world needs a usability shake-up. And more emphasis on end user and customer testing before web or software applications are launched. Or the layout of the cheese display is finalised at the supermarket, for that matter. I'm talking about poor information architecture in the gourmet cheese section of the deli (where's the BLOODY stilton???). I'm talking about cash registers ... Read full entry

Of the Ten Commandments of Web Design, they leave the most important one at the bottom of the list. At least in my humble opinion. Though the slogan is old, it still stands. Aesthetic design can only go so far in making a site successful. Beautiful can't make up for empty.

Web users "getting more selfish" Website users are more interested in cutting to the chase, that is seeking whatever information they are looking for, and then moving on. This means they don't particularly appreciate efforts by a website owner to encourage them to stay and look around, according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen. Bloggers will also be interested to learn that many website visitors loathe widgets, and other third party ... Read full entry

The science of keyboard design In depth article by Amar Sagoo which examines keyboard design. As Amar points out many people spend "several solid hours" daily interacting with keyboards, so their design, or aspects of their design, are indeed a science. One of the most-cited criteria for keyboard aficionados to prefer a certain keyboard over another is "clickiness". The idea behind this is that a good keyboard should give you ... Read full entry

Paper money unfair to blind This story has been featured in a few places but I thought it was worth relinking here, as there are usability and accessibility lessons for web designers in it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a 2006 district court ruling that could force the United States to redesign its money so blind people can distinguish between values. Suggested solutions include ... Read full entry

Zebra Striping: Does it Really Help? Jessica Enders challenges the notion that "zebra striping", that is applying faint shading to alternative lines of text or information, assists in better comprehending multiple rows of data, especially online. Her research revealed there was a 4 per cent difference in comprehension error rates when reading zebra striped data against non zebra striped information. Many believe that zebra stripes aid the reader by guiding the ... Read full entry

Flash is not sexy or so they say Flash, in a place where there was no need for Flash, is particularly non-sexy. To me there is nothing worse than going to a site constructed almost entirely in Flash that at first glance you are like, "wait is this just straight HTML & CSS?", nope they tricked you. I truly do not understand this one ... Read full entry

Ideas4, an initiative of The Australian Web Industry Association, takes place in Perth on the evening of Wednesday, 30 January 2008. The Australian Web Industry Association is proud to announce the first speaking event of 2008 - Ideas4. Please come along, hear two great speakers talk about usability, accessibility, web start-ups and more, mingle with industry peers and support the work of the Australian Web Industry Association. Lisa Herrod ... Read full entry

Accessible can be Beautiful. Andrew Faulkner tackles a couple of "design verses accessibility and design loses" myths at fadtastic. It may be true that often accessible sites are created from a pool of fairly unimaginative templates (think the accessible template set from pre-Dreamweaver 8.) They don't do anything wrong (except harm my case thus far) but they're not exciting. They're not really designed. I aim to show you examples of ... Read full entry