Ambient Findability
Peter Morvill, Sematic Studios, on Ambient Findability: the new paradigm of finding anything anytime anywhere.

Is 5000 Users Enough?
An article questioning quantitative usability testing (5? 8? 5000?). Noted personalities in the field of usability have made pronouncements that to learn about the usability of a web site it is only necessary to study a handful of users. This can be disconcerting for site owners who have to accommodate thousands of users a day; it seems risky to build the experience of all those people on the actions of a few.
What about qualitative methods?

Interface Standards and Design Creativity
Do Interface Standards Stifle Design Creativity? Again, Jacob Nielsen raises the question aboutthe gap between the (desired) standards and creativity. But he is talking about a sort of “arty” creativity that leads the reader to some Rules for Design Standards - that doesnt really help for any serious designer. (Alertbox Aug. 1999)

Bad Banks Usability
Europe’s 20 Largest Banks’ Web Sites All Fail User Experience Testing By Forrester Research: UK And German Bank Sites Lead As France, Italy, And Spain Lag
Flawed navigation and customer service frustrate today’s Web banking users, but low-cost design fixes and an ongoing focus on user experience will help firms win sought-after online transactions, according to a new report by Forrester Research (Nasdaq: FORR).

Does your design research exist?
John Thackara providing 16 tips on the communication and presentation of design (research). In the bubble.

Three Media Generations

As Jay David Bolter wrote in his book remediation, new media is both emerging from existing media and changing existing media. As there is a strong focus on mobile, location-based or -aware media, this will affect strongly our “static” media (formerly known as Personal Computer, neutrally named as the base unit). There are physical and conceptual interactions between this unit an dthe mobile unit, including the space unit, that gives information to a “dumb” and simple device. And the red line between all those tech-driven aspects is the human beeing, using those applications, tools or devices - if there are good concepts. Well, and this is a strong design task. If you are interested in learning more about this you can contact us as there will be an english text about that topic soon.

Studien- Software Usability Research Lab
Übersetzungen und gekürzte Zusammenfassungen von Usability Studien des SURL an der Wichita State University.
Das Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) ist eine Serviceabteilung des Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Laboratory der Wichita State University, die im Auftrag von Unternehmen Software-Usability-Analysen und -Forschung betreibt.
Der aktuelle Forschungsschwerpunkt liegt auf der Usability von Websites, Informationsbeschaffung im Web, Website Design und Menüauswahl-Techniken.
Die Site bietet eine Auswahl von Studienberichten, die im Sommer 2002 auf der Website von SURL vorgestellt wurden.

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