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Events | Interviews | Press Releases | Usability Makes News | Usability Humor
Events
- Usability Testing of E-Learning: Easy, Effective, Affordable
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Carol Barnum shares further thoughts on a company's loss of usability focus with a switch to agile programming
Barnum and Dayton present usability case study at Society for Technical Communication conference, Minneapolis, May 12, 2007. - U.S. News and World Report lists Usability/User Experience Specialist in its Best Careers of 2008 list . Of course, we've known that since 1993, when we taught our first graduate course in usability testing and opened our usability lab. It's great to see the increasing, world-wide recognition of its importance in product development.
- Carol Barnum, invited Keynotespeaker at ELearn 2007 Conference, Quebec, Canada, October 17, talks about usability testing and e-learning. Using video clips of the “good, the bad, and the ugly” from a test of WebCT Vista, Carol presents evidence of what you can learn about your users from usability testing.
- Carol Barnum and David Dayton speak at the STC Annual Conference, May 2007, on the impact of Agile on usability testing with a software client. Based on their usability work with Ipswitch, Barnum and Dayton presented the results of two surveys of Ipswitch employees, designed to get feedback on their attitudes about usability before and after the implementation of agile programming. The results proved very interesting. A research paper is in the works.
- Carol Barnum speaks in Wellington, New Zealand, Friday, May 12, 2006, "Is UA in your QA?"
- Carol Barnum speaks at Australasian Online Documentation and Content Conference, AODC 2006, Friday, May 5, 2006, "Search vs. Look-Up: Results of Usability Testing"
- Carol Barnum invited speaker at Nov 3rd Michigan State World Usability Day event
- Usability Center invited to present usability results at IEEE Professional Communication Conference Limerick, Ireland July 11, 2005
Usability Center hosts Steve Krug, author of "Don’t Make Me Think." Steve Krug entertains standing room-only audience with usability stories.
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Interviews
Press Releases
Usability Makes News
- Tell Me What You're Thinking
Usability testing no longer an afterthought
Georgia Department of Transportation brings its usability testing need to Southern Poly. - Cultural divide in e-mails
from the Wellington, New Zealand Dominion Post, InfoTech section
- Cross-cultural communication on the Web: four practical steps
Article inspired by Dr. Barnum's New Zealand seminar, created by Rachel McAlpine, a New Zealand author and web content developer, who attended.
- Scientist finds complexity causes 50% of product returns
The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working, before giving up, the study found. Product developers, brought in to witness the struggles of average consumers, were astounded by the havoc they created.
- Hotels dumb down alarm clocks
Weary travelers soon to find them more user-friendly
- Unexpected Search Results
It's a common feature to send an e-mail to share an article you have read. Clearly, there is a usability problem when the top response to a search request is “page not found.” It wouldn't take many users in a usability evaluation to uncover this big problem.
Usability Humor
- Police Excuse Angry Computer User
Have you ever felt like throwing your computer out the window? Read about one man who did and made the news for not getting arrested. - Calendar of usability
Norwegian usability specialists Netlife Research give us their take on calendar usability. - Frogs reviewing web content
Enjoy the humor in this situation but can you see the usability problem here?
- Costello calls to buy a computer from Abbott
Bud and Lou's comical conversation pokes usability fun at familiar computer names and terms.