Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide

by Jared Spool, Will Schroeder, Tara Scanlon

"Without a doubt, the most important book I've read this year on Web design isWeb Site A Designer's Guide. The book is easy to read and full of relevant information."—Bill Skeet, Chief Designer, Knight-Ridder New Media"Even experienced Web designers should read these usability findings about 11 different site designs. Competitive usability testing is one of the most powerful ways of learning about design and this book will save you hours of lab time."—Dr. Jakob Nielsen, The Neilsen Norman Group"This report challenges many of my assumptions about Web design, but that's a good thing. We're still babes in the woods, crawling along trying to distinguish the trees from the forest. Any sign posts are helpful, right now."—Mary Deaton, KNOWwareWeb Site A Designer's Guide is a report that every person involved in Web design, commerce, or online marketing will want to have. This book is, undoubtedly, the most comprehensive data demonstrating how Web sites actually work when users need specific answers. Researched and compiled by User Interface Engineering, the results are written in an easy to understand style, illustrating the need to make Web sites useful, not complicated.- Based on an extensive study of actual users — not theory, not graphic design principles, and not new tricks to make a "cool" Web sites- Demonstrates how people actually navigate and extract information on Web sites- Offers guidance for evaluating and improving the usability of Web sitesJared M. Spool, Principal Investigator, is with User Interface Engineering, a consulting firm specializing in product usability and design. User Interface Engineering's mission is to empower product development teams to build applications that meet the needs of their users by providing critical data for creating designs and products that work.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Art Design, Business

156 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1997

Reviews

[Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very easy to read and to use as a reference. It also comes in handy for showing to developers to make them stop the insanity of their designs.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dated since using Netscape Browser and many of the test users were not familiar with the Back button, but many of the findings apply.