Here is a quick critique of some of the organization schemes and navigation structures found on two websites — download PDF here.
Read on »Posts By: Dave Bartkowiak Jr.
Examining Information Architecture (two website reviews)
This is a brief assignment in which I was asked to identify information architecture elements of two websites (download PDF here):
Read on »Discussion: All sites need robust search
Websites with a lot of content and various types of content need a search system. In fact, I argue many content-heavy websites are sometimes better off with a more prominent search system than the navigation itself. That may sound radical to some, but it’s quite necessary on many sites that have a continuous flow of content,
Read on »Labeling: Redundancy can be very helpful to the user
Moosejaw is one of my favorite clothing stores, and it’s not even because I love all of their clothes so much — I don’t. I admire the company’s overall marketing and customer service approach. Perhaps more importantly, I like their digital platforms. Moosejaw is known for its online catalog and store. Here’s a screenshot of the Moosejaw.com
Read on »Discussion: Information Architecture happens, no matter who does it
I find myself getting lost in sites with confusing navigation structures and poorly organized content. I define confusing as any time I have to look twice for the main navigation or when pages within the site have extremely differing structures and layout from the home page for no apparent reason. As for the content: Anything
Read on »Book Review: ‘Selling Usability: User Experience Infiltration Tactics’ by John S. Rhodes
The phrase “user experience infiltration tactics” was enough to get me interested. John S. Rhodes offers his advice, based on his professional experiences, about spreading the knowledge and influence of usability practices within an organization. Rhodes’ major assumption is that his reader is a usability and UX proponent who wants to “infiltrate” his or her
Read on »Analyzing the results of eye tacking
This past week I put together a report about an eye tracking study for Kent State University’s library website. The task was: Ask the library to order your favorite book. This proved to be a huge difficulty for the five participants. They had no idea where to start, what to do, and how to do
Read on »Benefits of eye tracking usability studies
In their “How to Conduct Eye Tracking Studies” report, usability experts Kara Pernice and Jakob Nielsen suggest such studies can help reveal: … the time a person spends on a page, the action he takes there, what he reads aloud, what he hovers the mouse over, whether he smiles or grimaces, and what he comments
Read on »Mobile Device Usability Test Setup
Over these past few weeks I have undertaken the task of putting together the plan for a mobile device usability testing setup. There are a lot of little details — from hardware to software — to pay attention to. You can view my full proposal here or below. The main issues I had was how
Read on »Usability Testing: Yes to gesture tests!
It’s absolutely necessary for usability studies to include steps for testing gestures, specifically on user interfaces which will be used on more than one device. A gesture test could be included as its own separate study within the overall usability testing study of the interface. There could be specific gestures to be tested, which means
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