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Recommended Reading and Resources List |
Note: Assigned reading for this class is listed on the syllabus.
These are just the tip of the iceberg in usability, but are a good starting point for this class.
Barnum, Carol, Usability Testing and Research, Longman Publishers, 2002
Rubin, Jeffrey, Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994.
Krug, Steve, Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. New Riders Publishing, 2000.
Coe, Marlana, Human Factors for Technical Communicators. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996.
Dumas, Joseph S and Redish, Janice C, A Practical Guide to Usability Testing. Revised Edition, Intellect Books, 1999.
Hackos, Joann and Redish, Janice C, User and Task Analysis for Interface Design, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998.
Nielsen, J. Usability Engineering, Academic Press: Boston, MA, 1993
Kuniavsky, Mike, Observing the User Experience: A Practioner’s Guide to User Research, Morgan Kaufman, 2003
Preece, Rogers, and Sharp, Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction,Lewis, Clayton and Rieman, John, Task-Centered User Interface Design:
A Practical Introduction, an online shareware book, available at http://hcibib.org/tcuid/
Here are a few to get started with. I'll be giving you more references as the class goes on, and the web sites listed below under Additional Resources provide access to many, many more.
“The Best of Both Worlds: Combining Usability Testing and Documentation Projects,” (PDF) by Kantner, Rosenbaum, Leas. In the Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC) http://www.teced.com/PDFs/ipcc97.pdf
“Combining Usability Reearch with Documentation Development for Improved User Support,” (PDF) by Keirnan, Anscheutz, and Rosenbaum, http://www.teced.com/PDFs/sigdoc2002.pdf
“Why
You Only Need to Test with 5 Users” by Jakob Nielsen (Alertbox: 3/19/2000),
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
“Paper Prototypes: Still Our Favorites” by Jared Spool and UIE, http://www.uie.com/prototyp.htm
“Paper Prototyping" from IBM DeveloperWorks, http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/us-paper/?dwzone=usability?e
“Six Slick Tests for Docs and Help” by Jared Spool and UIE, http://www.uie.com/sixslick.htm
“Making Online Information Usable” by Jared Spool and UIE, http://www.uie.com/online.htm
Other articles referenced from class
“Usability in Practice: Field Methods Evolution and Revolution,” Ramey, Holtzblatt, Hackos, Rosenbaum, Page, Laakso, ACM/CHI 2002, http://www.kessu.oulu.fi/p898rosenbaum.pdf
“Developing Usable Online Information for a Web Authoring Tool,” by Mark Chignell, SIGDOC96
“Structured Heuristic Evaluation of Online Documentation,” by Laurie Kantner, Roberta Shroyer, and Stephanie Rosenbaum, Tec-Ed., Inc., IPCC 2002 Proceedings, http://www.teced.com/PDFs/kantner_HE_of_online_doc.pdf
“Informal Usability Testing: A Strategy for User Involvement,” Kathy Haramundanis, Digital Equipment Corporation, 1992 ACM
“Creating an Elegant, Intuitive, User Interface,” by Mary Margaret Couse, ACM 1995
“Personas: Practice and Theory,” by John Pruitt and Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft
Research, 2003, http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/coet/Grudin/Personas/Pruitt-Grudin.pdf
STC Usability SIG Website: http://www.stcsig.org/usability/index.html
ID Information & Design web site: http://www.infodesign.com.au/usability/default.html
Good summary definitions and descriptions of usability techniques, plus some files and other things
James Thom’s Usability Testing Toolbox: http://jthom.best.vwh.net/usability
Another set of definitions and examples of usability techniques, with links to lots more information
Keith Instone’s Usable Web site: http://usableweb.com/
Huge collection of links
Papers and Presentations by Tec-Ed, Inc: http://www.teced.com/c_and_p.html
(“Best of Both Worlds” is one of their papers)
ACM Digital Library, through the ACM Portal: http://portal.acm.org/portal.cfm
IBM DeveloperWorks: Usability: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/usability
STC Periodicals online (Access to the articles requires being an STC member): http://www.stc.org/periodicals.asp
EServer TC Library (links to many articles related to both technical communication and usability): http://tc.eserver.org
Both have lots of good stuff (and a fair amount of "guru" attitude :-> )
Jakob Nielsen’s web site (useit.com): http://www.useit.com/
Jared Spool’s site (User Interface Engineering): http://www.uie.com
Usability Professionals Association (UPA): http://www.upassoc.org
BayChi (Bay Area Computer Human Interaction): http://www.baychi.org
CHI (Computer Human Interaction, special interest group of the ACM): http://www.acm.org/sigchi
Society for Technical Communications (STC): http://www.stc.org
©2002-2004, Linda Urban