The UK Government is trying to make the web work for us, but it does
seem to suffer from a lack of understanding and motivation.  Sound
familiar to anyone?

Some points from a UK based tech news site theregister:

"Tony Blair has made a terrible error in hiring Douglas Alexander as
e-minister - he actually meant to hire Douglas' sister Wendy."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/19638.html

"The Office of the e-Envoy is hotly - but not very convincingly -
disputing claims that the Microsoft-built UK government portal,
gateway.gov.uk, constitutes a Microsoft tax."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/19340.html

"The Government is to shut down its award-winning open.gov.uk Web portal
- best described as the front door to Britain's e-government services -
in July"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/18415.html



-----Original Message-----
From: gordon2611@... [mailto:gordon2611@...]
Sent: 04 July 2001 21:47
To: WebWord@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [WebWord] And so the Web moved back East...


An oldie but goodie rant on usability:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4211693,00.html


The UK is really gripped in a battle to make the web work.

They even have an e-Envoy [gov official]
www.e-envoy.gov.uk

and a big drive to get the UK online:
www.ukonline.gov.uk

and a strategy to do it "right":
http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/ukonline/progress/montprog.htm

eeerrrr...Mr Bush...have you seen this?

Look at the e-commerce stats: [previous post]
http://www.netvalue.com/corp/presse/index_frame.htm?fichier=cp0031.htm

'nuff said?

Thx.
g.
http://gordonmontgomery.net

http://www.bcs-hci.org.uk/

Hi there..I have recently joined this interesting group.

I am a student and my research topic is as follows:

An investigation into the quality and usability of the user interface
for major South African internet banking sytems.

I would appreciate any advice, related aticles or studies in this
area of research. I am now focussing on web usability in detail and
drawing up questionaires for users.

thanks

pragash

An oldie but goodie rant on usability:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4211693,00.html


The UK is really gripped in a battle to make the web work.

They even have an e-Envoy [gov official]
www.e-envoy.gov.uk

and a big drive to get the UK online:
www.ukonline.gov.uk

and a strategy to do it "right":
http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/ukonline/progress/montprog.htm

eeerrrr...Mr Bush...have you seen this?

Look at the e-commerce stats: [previous post]
http://www.netvalue.com/corp/presse/index_frame.htm?fichier=cp0031.htm

'nuff said?

Thx.
g.
http://gordonmontgomery.net

----- Original Message -----

From: hoponpopontoponmoponcop@...

To: WebWord@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2001 11:35 PM

Subject: [WebWord] Acceptance of Usability by company

I recently did a usability study on the software that our company is
writing.  I followed the methodology that Rubin describes in his
book.  I was able with considerable help from marketing to get 6
*real* customers.  (They weren't users as we haven't released any
products yet.)  The short answer was that after balancing the results
the product was 17% usable.  By that I mean that given each specific
task, roughly 17% of people would be able to complete that task
without having to call tech support.  Some tasks (like logging out)
got better, most tasks got worse.

So how do you go about communicating how bad it is?  I provided the
test plan, I conducted the test on a couple of the company's
employees.  I video taped the tests, indexed the tapes and made them
available.  I provided the raw results and the tabulated results. 
Almost everyone looked at the results and that was the end of the
conversation.

As an end note, the company decided to release the product (1.0)
without taking any action at all.

Suggestions?
Thanks


To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
WebWord-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com



Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
WebWord group:

Information Architecture and Usability
are:

   o as different as chalk and cheese
   o related but seperate disciplines
   o one and the same thing


To vote, please visit the following web page:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WebWord/polls

Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
web site listed above.

Thanks!

http://www.section508.gov/

Federal IT Accessibility Initiative Home Page.

**JUST ARRIVED! 508 Acquisition FAQ's, 508 Reference Manual.

COMING SOON! Section 508 Web Accessibility Training.

But, then, I can't actually tell if its news as there aren't any
dates.

Charles Goodier (http://doid.com/)

http://www.silicon.com/a45374

thx.
g.
http://gordonmontgomery.net

http://www.qualityofexperience.org/flightdeck.html

http://www.qualityofexperience.org/report2001.html

"In December 2000 through January 2001, we conducted a research
program aimed at developing a broad initial understanding of the
experience that end users of web-enabled applications are having with
both business-to-business and business-to-consumer applications."

http://ajr.newslink.org/ajrbarbmay01.html

"If integrity isn't a compelling enough reason to think about these
things, consider the fact that content sharing is making errors
harder to erase. With more sites grabbing one another's content
outright or referencing it in research, slip-ups are more likely to
be immortalized. Now imagine getting caught trying to swallow your
own words. Think publishing online means never having to say you're
sorry? Well, maybe it does. Then again, a little humility never hurt
anyone."

http://www.asktog.com/columns/048GoodGrips.html

"Good Grips kitchen tools grew out of one man's desire to build a
better potato peeler for his arthritic wife. It has become one of the
great marketing stories of the last decade, garnering a huge market
share. Software designers can take from it two lessons: Good designs
for the disabled can also benefit the normally-abled, and effective
product design must come before 'branding.'"

(via Tomalak's Realm)

Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
WebWord group:

How are you feeling today?

   o Great!
   o Fair.
   o I'm sick...


To vote, please visit the following web page:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WebWord/polls

Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
web site listed above.

Thanks!

> > I recently did a usability study on the software that our company is
> > writing.
>...........
> > As an end note, the company decided to release the product (1.0)
> > without taking any action at all.


First cut your losses. This 1.0 is obvioulsy lost.
Talk to your boss about your job and your value to the company. They
probably think having a usability test done is enough (e.g. no need for
making changes) Explain them to avoid usability debacled like this one
you'll need to create usability awareness in the company, and include
usability testing at the beginning of the project.
Good luck!
Peter
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://liga1.com building multiple language/culture websites
http://poorbuthappy.editthispage.com online ethnology, up&down

Welcome to the real world of software publishing. Live with it.

Gabi.

--- In WebWord@y..., hoponpopontoponmoponcop@y... wrote:

> I recently did a usability study on the software that our company is
> writing.

...

> As an end note, the company decided to release the product (1.0)
> without taking any action at all.

I recently did a usability study on the software that our company is
writing.  I followed the methodology that Rubin describes in his
book.  I was able with considerable help from marketing to get 6
*real* customers.  (They weren't users as we haven't released any
products yet.)  The short answer was that after balancing the results
the product was 17% usable.  By that I mean that given each specific
task, roughly 17% of people would be able to complete that task
without having to call tech support.  Some tasks (like logging out)
got better, most tasks got worse.

So how do you go about communicating how bad it is?  I provided the
test plan, I conducted the test on a couple of the company's
employees.  I video taped the tests, indexed the tapes and made them
available.  I provided the raw results and the tabulated results.
Almost everyone looked at the results and that was the end of the
conversation.

As an end note, the company decided to release the product (1.0)
without taking any action at all.

Suggestions?
Thanks

Go UK Go UK...etc etc

http://www.netvalue.com/corp/presse/index_frame.htm?fichier=cp0031.htm

thanks.
Gordon "moving to London" Montgomery
http://gordonmontgomery.net

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2781327,00.html

"The poll, which questioned 1,200 office workers, revealed four
distinct categories of people when it comes to passwords. Nearly half
of the employees questioned fall into the "family" group, choosing
their own name or nickname or the names of their partners, children
or pets for their login."

(via Slashdot)

http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200106/in_06_20_01a.html

"Sun Microsystems usability experts calculated that 21,000 employees
wasted an average of six minutes per day due to inconsistent intranet
user interface design and navigation. Multiplying lost time by user
salaries, the estimated productivity loss exceeded US$10 million per
year."

http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=662203

"Ideas are ten a penny. Put a handful of bright engineers in a
brainstorming session and they will come up with literally scores of
clever ideas for new products or processes. Invention is the easy
bit. Innovation, by contrast, is the genuinely difficult part. And
what makes a successful innovation usually has little to do with the
originality of the idea behind it."

(Comments: Think about Microsoft here too. They typically don't have
the best products, but they are marketing masterminds. The know how
to control minds. The don't invent too much, but they innovate like
mad.)

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=679981

"GE now does more business on its own private online marketplace than
do all the public B2B exchanges put together. Siemens hopes to cut
its annual costs in the medium term by 3-5%. The room for more is
evident. One estimate suggests that, for routine office purchases, e-
procurement costs only a tenth as much per order as does physical
procurement."

http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=602

"The overriding goal of CMS is to separate site content from site
design. In practical terms, that means an editor shouldn't have to
be -- or hire -- a Web guru to post a story and make sure it winds up
in the right spot. And when the story does go up, the structure
shouldn't mess with the surrounding page layout."

(via CamWorld and Scripting.com)

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1278-210-6397016-1.html

"Recent court decisions upholding laws against unsolicited e-mails
will increasingly focus attention on a few individuals who send out
the majority of such unwanted advertising messages."

http://www.sacbee.com/news/news/local03_20010628.html

"Sign language interpreters working in classrooms have a higher risk
of developing repetitive injuries because of the pace and sustained
use, said Bill DeGroote of the National Technical Institute for the
Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology."

(via Disability Times)

http://www.robotwisdom.com/issues/eyes.html

"But even more, the eyelids are a very poorly understood microcosm of
the ongoing 'world battle' between life-affirming personalities and
life-deadening personalities: 'chinese eyes' refers to a special look
of compassion conveyed by the eyelids, that represents a very high
human ideal."

http://www.waaglobal.org/press/standards_press.html

(via UXblog)

http://list.design-inst.nl/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe

"The Cafe serves as a forum for unmoderated discussions of
information design issues."

http://www.stcsig.org/id/definitions.html

Hi everybody...

I need assistance from the valuable WebWord community :).

I am a usability engineer who is involved in design of stand-alone
software, software accessibility for blind users, and, more recently,
control-based web apps. My greatest challenge to date is gathering
information and articles pertaining to specific analyses of web-based
control apps. Control apps being web-based applications which serve
as monitor points, information centers, and data-input centers.
Although I have tried to apply principles of general GUI guidenlines
and stand-alone control-based software example guidelines (which
aren't many articles to speak of), I still lack much information.
Let me explain why I think this is a unique issue.

1. Web sites have their own design guidelines. These are mainly to
dictate the navigation issues in websites, as well as some layout
guidelines.
2. Stand-alone software has its own unique guidelines. These are
mainly different from web-based, as there is no necessary navigation
scheme to follow, and information is very limited, whereas the web is
open and context-sensitive.
3. Control-based software has its own guidlines. These include issues
of monitoring/vigilance, signal detection theory, information
architecture, information layout. Essentially, the user needs only
specific information at a time, to assist in keeping or changing the
state of the system.
4. A web-based application which is there to help the user monitor
and change the state of the system is complex. Not only are there
issues of delay/feedback, but also information architecture issues,
as well as GUI layout issues.

I am looking for resources to specific studies and guidelines for web-
based control apps. I was hoping some WebWord readers out there have
run across similiar situations, and could be of some assistance :).

For reference, there is a great set of demos of web-based control
apps at: http://demo.cobalt.com


Great that someone decided to start up a discussion group. This is my
attempt at adding a discussion and content :).

Take care, all!

.dego.

(1) The primary purpose of this group is to gather usability news.
The secondary purpose is to discuss usability news.

(2) This group is being promoted by WebWord.com. Using this group
effectively will give me more time to write articles, conduct
interviews, and take care of WebWord.

(3) I will visit this group at least once per day to gather and
review the news. I will probably post news to this group, and I will
probably add commentary once in a while.

(4) I strongly suggest that you visit WebWord.com each day to see the
final news, and to catch any comments I might have.

(5) I do not plan on using this group to ask or answer usability
questions. I suggest that you use the U-TEST and CHI-WEB forums for
that activity. Again, the primary purpose of this group is to gather
usabilty news.


CHI-Web Mailing List
>> http://www.acm.org/sigchi/web/chi-web.html

UTest-L
>> http://www.upassoc.org/html/utest.html


Thank you,

- John

John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Industrial Strength Usability
http://webword.com
john@...