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Resources
As a usability and interaction design professional, I am always seeking others opinions and ideas in order to provide tools that will make life easier and more pleasant. The ideas to improve our lives come from a variety of sources. Some predictable and others a complete surprise.
I invite you to comment and make suggestions either for additions to the sections I create, or completely new sections you think should be added.
Definitions
Usability: “[Usability refers to] the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” – ISO 9241-11
More definitions of Usability and some great quotes can be found on the Usability Professionals Association Website.
User Experience: The overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a product or system. This includes the “moments of engagement” — touchpoints — between people, products, and brands, and the ideas, emotions, and memories that these moments create. This discipline sits squarely between marketing, PMM, PM, creative, and engineering, and helps craft and refine the experience, emotion, interaction, intensity, etc. to realize the product’s benefits and satisfactions. - great definition from Brian Bureson
A User eXperience (UX) Professional can go into any situation and appropriately apply the methodologies and achieve results in usability. A UX professional has many tools; Visio, Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, Visual Studio, AJAX, javascript, CSS, Flex, SQL, etc. When using these tools to develop products, websites or software, the UX professional relies on the principles of usability and heuristics , defined by Jakob Nielsen. Additional fields of study related to usability are human-computer interaction, cognitive psychology and interaction design.
User Interface Design: is the design of computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the user’s experience , information architectures, flow analysis, user analysis, and wireframes . This discipline is based heavily on HCI (human-computer interaction) design principles.
Human Centered Design: “Human-centered design is characterised by: the active involvement of users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements; an appropriate allocation of function between users and technology; the iteration of design solutions; multi-disciplinary design.” – ISO 13407
Usability Testing: Evaluation by users of existing applications using focus groups, lab testing, benchmarking, and usability test tools, such as Ovo Studios or Morae Software.
The University of Texas has a great tutorial on how to do a Simple Usability Test for your Website
I have found that the field of user experience not only draws professionals from a wide variety of disciplines, but it also has a plethora of job titles.
Typical Job titles:
Information Architect
Interaction Designer
User Experience Designer / Engineer
User Interface Designer
Usability Engineer
Usability Professional
Interface Designer
User Experience Practitioner
Typical Fields:
Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
Human Factors
Interaction Design
User Interface Design
Usability Engineering
User Experience Design
Technology Concentrations:
Mobile / Wireless
Desktop (Windows / Mac)
Web (front-end)
Web (server)
Help / Documentation
Usability Sites
Useit.com (Jakob Nielsen’s Usability site)
Usability.gov
Usability First
http://www.stcsig.org/usability/ (Usability / User Experience Association)
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/ (Usability Professionals Association)
http://www.upassoc.org/usability_resources/about_usability/what_is_ucd.html (Usability Professionals Association description of User Centered Design (UCD))
http://www.ixda.org/en/ (Interaction Design Association)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design (User Centered Design description)
http://www-03.ibm.com/easy/page/570 (IBM’s implementation of UCD: many of the pioneers of this field work or have worked at IBM)
http://www.informationdesign.org/ (e-zine about various areas of design)
apple developer user experience (resources for designing for Leopard OSX)
Design Resources
Guideline Documents
A Visual Vocabulary (used in describing information architecture and interaction design)
Usability Forms
Additional Resources
