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Title: Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide by Jared M. Spool, Tara Scanlon, Will Schroeder, Carolyn Snyder ISBN: 0-9660641-0-0 Publisher: User Interface Engineering Pub. Date: 01 June, 1997 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $39.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.41 (32 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Lots of questions, few answers
Comment: This book is useful if:
1. You are involved in designing a site that is solely information-oriented.
2. You want a counter-point to Jakob Nielsen, who really has some helpful information.
3. You have a boss who doesn't know anything about the web and you want back-up documentation for your decisions.
Otherwise, this book has the following weaknesses:
1. Too many questions are asked with the answer being "we do not know why" and too many sentences beginning: "we believe, but do not know"
2. The goal was too specific: how well do users find information. This leaves out any websites designed for casual use, 'browsing', or entertainment.
3. The authors keep comparing apples to oranges. They do not usually take into account that some sites might have done better due to the type of content rather than the architecture or design.
4. There is no credence given to learned behavior (which, admittedly, Nielsen also gives short shrift).
5. It's just a TAD obvious. For example, "The better users could predict where a link would lead, the more successful they were in finding information." Well, uh, duh.
6. I don't agree with the model of testing. Users were given 4 questions they were to answer on each of 10 existing sites. Hypotheses were created from the results. However, none of the sites were amended to specifically address these hypotheses (unless, through some coincidence, the sites were updated during the process, and even then there was little before/after comparison).
7. The authors keep stressing throughout the entire book that web site usability differs from software usability. However, not once did they step back and think "maybe web site usability TESTING differs from software usability testing."
While Jared Spool is a great speaker (having seen him in person, I was very impressed with his humor and intelligence), this book leaves a lot to be desired.
Rating: 5
Summary: MAGNIFICENT BOOK!!!
Comment: This book is a definite MUST HAVE for any website designer, newbie to web design and anyone and everyone who has an online business. Simple, easy to understand visuals compliment the text, which is written in a very simplistic manner. This book is wonderful - magnificent - excellent, and will help you greatly understand the elements of successful web design. I've used it to consistently update my own website, at:
http://www.aei.dli.com
If you don't have this book, you're missing out on your single-most-important investment in your professional life!
Rating: 5
Summary: Pivotal work shakes preconceptions
Comment: As a report on a major usability study this one is probably pivotal and I would recommend it to anyone involved in delivering a commercial web presence.
Jared Spool and the UIE team discovered many new things in the studies this book is about. Up to the point of publication, web usability and general usability were closely equated, and not just the test methodology. But Spool's studies find unpredictable users surprising our preconceptions at every turn.
Some may say that the book contains too many questions, but when Spool admits "we don't really know what makes a site usable" he is reflecting the number of surprises his studies unearthed.
As for the causes of those surprises... the studies were performed as 'comparison tests' between sites that fulfilled wholly different purposes.... between (for example) Disney and Edmunds (car facts)... it may be invalid to compare usability between sites even if they are in the same domain, however, let alone when they are so diverse. For it may be a usability test can only identify weaknesses, not strengths. Perhaps that's why Spool says we don't know how to design for usability.
One possible weakness of the tests was that they were designed as 'scavenger hunts.' This is still very common, however, and only by studying the results of this book is one led to suspect that this approach generates an overly-directed browsing behaviour, and thereore measures only a subset of real web visitors utilising only a subset of possible tasks, which are not a proxy for general usability.
If you only read three books on web usability, this should be one of them.... Essential.
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Title: An Introduction to Usability by Patrick W. Jordan ISBN: 0748407626 Publisher: CRC Press Pub. Date: February, 1999 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity by Jakob Nielsen ISBN: 156205810X Publisher: New Riders Press Pub. Date: 20 December, 1999 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug ISBN: 0789723107 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 13 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed by Jakob Nielsen, Marie Tahir ISBN: 073571102X Publisher: Pearson Education Pub. Date: 05 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen ISBN: 0125184069 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Pub. Date: 23 September, 1994 List Price(USD): $32.00 |
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