[CLUE-Talk] Books on software usability

[Chris K. Chew]

Hi Sean.

Usability has been a problem in the past for my company as well.  This is
mainly because I was the only one who took responsibility for it, and I am
not good at it because I rarely have problems figuring out how to use
things.

Our recent switch to a J2EE framework with Turbine and Velocity was
partially motivated by the hope that our project manager and graphic
designer can more easily dictate the flow and the look-and-feel of our
applications.  Turbine is a model-view-controller patterned servlet that
separates the presentation from logic.  This allows us to use a strong
templating engine and provides means for the graphics guys to completely
changes things without bothering me.  http://jakarta.apache.com for more
information.

We also read Jacob Nielsen's book, and were very disappointed.  He is
extremely critical, and wants very boring website designs.  You can see for
yourself his own website, www.useit.com, which he considers to be absolutely
perfect.  True it is usable, but it definitely lacks in the "user
experience" department.  He shuns any fancy thing that might possibly
obstruct a users navigation.

We would recommend the book GUI Bloopers by Jeff Johnson together, which has
probably helped the most.  I say this not because it gives us a list of
things not to do, but rather shows us by example what to critical of in our
application or website.

I would also suggest Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug specifically for
website usability.  It lays out the standards that have evolved for helping
people use a website analogously to the standards used in books (which have
page numbers in the bottom or top outside corners, chapter titles in the top
margins, indexes in the back, and tocs in the front).

Hope this helps,

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: clue-talk-admin at clue.denver.co.us
[mailto:clue-talk-admin at clue.denver.co.us]On Behalf Of Sean LeBlanc
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2002 2:44 PM
To: clue-talk at clue.denver.co.us
Subject: [CLUE-Talk] Books on software usability


This is slightly off-topic, but bear with me, this is clue-talk. :) I know
there are folks on here who probably know some good titles, or have some
interesting thoughts to share.

Where I currently work, there is no one holding the title of architect or
designer, so we are struggling with getting the usability of our website to
be better - we were recently all asked to read "The Big Red Fez" - something
which I personally thought was a step in the right direction, but...well, I
think the author (Seth Godin) is a bit of a charlatan. Don't ask me why, but
he just comes off like a modern-day P.T. Barnum - but pitching his goods to
marketing people or managers who want to validate their opinion of
"engineers"...of COURSE the web experience for a b2c site is all about the
consumer, but that seems to be the only point that The Big Red Fez seems to
make.

In this book, he just catalogues things that are commonly done by
"engineers" (From some of his descriptions of what "engineers" like to do, I
get the feeling he's never met one - he claims at one point that Flash is
something "engineers" like to do - In my experience, "engineers" avoid such
frill like the plague and it's the graphic designers that like Flash. I hate
Flash intros on sites, or even worse, sites that require Flash to use their
application, and I certainly don't want to foist something I don't like to
use onto others.) and generally lays every fault a web site ever has or will
have at the feet of the "engineers". The book also seems to build a really
unnecessary "us vs. them" mentality - you know, those goofy social misfit
engineers and their slide rulers and pocket protectors - how could they ever
build a good web site? I don't know where Seth worked, but I've never worked
anywhere that the "engineers" designed the site anyway - it's always been
graphic designers or art-school dropout types who whip up screenshots in
something like Photoshop and/or Illustrator, put into some type of flowchart
to show the flow, and approved by management - developers are rarely
involved
until someone needs it to be built...or it is built in parallel, the
developers writing the code to be flexible enough to accomodate any normal
changes, and then putting the face on the site by incorporating HTML given
to them from some web design firm or in-house web designers.

Not that the book doesn't recycle a few golden nuggets of software wisdom -
he doesn't call it this, but the KISS principle seems to come up a lot.
What doesn't come up at all (or if it did in the middle of his generalizing
blather, I didn't notice) is that there are folks who do usability for a
living and that there are people who can be hired to do this very analysis
(ACM even has a SIG for this, IIRC) or usability testing, etc...neither
marketing people, business people or developers should be doing this sort of
analysis, IMHO. Putting that type of information like that would be useful
for management, but I guess it might make them feel uncomfortable seeing the
price tag, and maybe that's why he left that out.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone can recommend any good books on general
usability issues, with a possible focus on the web - since most web
"applications" (I'm talking about the b2c ones here) are little more than
marketing materials with some limited functionality, there *are* some
fundamental differences, but of course a lot of crossover from other
applications. I don't plan on becoming a usability expert, as I personally
find UI stuff and the like very mundane, even though I have done and
continue to do a lot of it, I like doing the stuff under the covers, the
harder, more interesting stuff.  However, knowing some of this stuff at a
more fundamental level than what Seth offers would be nice.

One recommendation I did get from someone (he actually went on to major in
CHI for his masters) was a book by Jakob Nielsen (Designing Web Usability:
The Practice of Simplicity)...but if it's another book with a tone like The
Big
Red Fez, I won't bother.

Another book I did see on the "forthcoming" list from No Starch Press'
catalog
was "Understanding Interactivity", by Chris Crawford. The description looks
interesting.

So if you have any insights to offer in this realm - books to read, people
who are respected in the usability field, please let me know.

Cheers,

--
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at attbi.com Yahoo:seanleblancathome
ICQ:138565743 MSN:seanleblancathome AIM:sleblancathome
Everyone is entitled to their vision of my opinion.
(contributed by Frank v Waveren)

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